Powerful reason why exercise protects your heart....

Today's Post:  Thursday, 1-22-2013

Wow!

We already knew that BDNF can prevent and reverse all kinds of mental problems.  (See the next section.)  But recent research shows that it also provides profoundly important protection for your heart too!

1.  We know that depression is caused by brain damage and that boosting BDNF long enough to repair the damage can lift such depression.  (Talk therapy to help you think more productively about making good things happen and more accurately about why bad things happen also helps.  But, boosting BDNF repairs damage to your brain that causes depressive feelings and is also worth doing.)

(BDNF is the growth hormone for nerves and brain cells released when you exercise.)

This is further supported by research into how to turn off PTSD. 

Even a 12 week course of talk therapy if at all well done turns off PTSD in many people and at least turns it down enough to reduce the disability it causes.

But it also has been found that if you get people with PTSD to do regular exercise you get a similar result.  AND, the more vigorous and frequent the exercise is the better this seems to work. 

Here’s why:  You can see damaged areas of the brain in people with most cases of PTSD if you scan the brains of people with it.  When people exercise and release BDNF these damaged areas are repaired or partially so. 

How do we know?  When the follow up scans of people who exercise are done the repairs show up. Guess what?  The more repair the scans show, the more symptom relief the people report!

2.  We know that exercise and the BDNF it produces keeps your brain's white matter and interconnection centers from disappearing gradually.  Since this white matter connects you to your memory center, it causes problems if it disappears in this way. 

So, one of the key ways to prevent mental decline is to get regular exercise every week for exactly this reason.  Vigorous exercise is both more effective and time efficient--  making it more likely you can sustain enough exercise each week to work. However, moderate walking most days also has been proven to protect your white matter if you walk enough miles a week and do some on most days each week.

3.  We know that eating or taking choline, DHA, and bacopa act strongly to assist exercise in boosting BDNF release. Choline and DHA also increase your heart beneficial HDL and reduce the amount of the small particle LDL you have that causes heart disease.  So, if you both get regular exercise AND eat these things or take them as supplements you get more of that kind of heart protection AND your body releases more BDNF.

4.  And, we know that vigorous strength training and more intense but briefer cardio cause fitness better and faster than mild or moderate exercise even for quite long periods and release regular growth hormone. So they may also do this by releasing more BDNF!

Last week Medical News Today reported a new study showing that BDNF provides several other kinds of heart protection too!

 “….nerve-growth factor called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor) - helps sustain the ability of heart muscle cells to contract and relax properly.

There is a possible biochemical link between depression and heart disease, two disorders that often occur in tandem, but with a relationship that remains poorly understood.”

I think this specifically means that regular vigorous exercise most days of every week and eating or taking choline, DHA, and bacopa can help prevent or even treat AFib and heart failure! 

When the nerves to the heart don’t transmit the signals they should or do so only partially or intermittently or not at the right time occasionally, AFib and heart failure happen or happen more often or happen to a lager degree.

The reason exercise can help prevent or treat these things is that regular, vigorous exercise not only makes your heart muscle stronger, the BDNF it releases keeps your heart’s  nerve based control system working right!

Here’s the link to the Medical News Today story.

Protein sustains both 'a sound mind and a strong heart'

http://mnt.to/l/4sVK

BDNF protein, known to act as a natural antidepressant, enhance learning, power 

nerve cell growth and nourish blood vessels, has also been found to maintain 

heart muscle vitality.  

Note that this also strongly suggests that people with AFib or heart failure should never be given statins or beta blockers.  That’s because statins and beta blocker have each been shown to prevent exercise from having these effects.

It’s also worth noting that there are ways to lower high LDL and small particle LDL that are more effective than statins that do NOT do this.

And, there are also ways to lower high blood pressure that are more effective than beta blockers that do NOT do this.

Many of my previous posts have been on ways to lower high LDL and small particle LDL that are more effective than statins and have other health benefits instead of such side effects.

And, I’ll be posting in the future on ways to lower high blood pressure that are more effective than beta blockers and have other health benefits instead of such side effects.