How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.240 | where we discuss science

00:00:03.680 | and science-based tools for everyday life.

00:00:05.880 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.280 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.440 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.440 | Today, we are discussing exercise and brain health,

00:00:18.500 | which includes brain longevity and brain performance,

00:00:21.680 | our ability to learn new information

00:00:23.840 | over long periods of time and indeed into old age.

00:00:27.160 | Today, we are going to discuss

00:00:28.340 | how different forms of exercise,

00:00:30.280 | resistance training, cardiovascular training

00:00:32.920 | of both long, medium, and short duration

00:00:35.720 | can be used to improve the way

00:00:37.320 | that your brain functions acutely,

00:00:39.400 | meaning immediately in the minutes and hours

00:00:42.960 | and the day that you do that exercise,

00:00:45.080 | as well as in the longterm,

00:00:46.900 | in the days, weeks, and months

00:00:48.740 | after you perform that exercise.

00:00:50.680 | And of course, if you're exercising regularly,

00:00:53.760 | the effects of exercise on brain health and performance

00:00:56.200 | compound over time, making you better able to learn things,

00:00:59.900 | better able to retain information from the past,

00:01:02.640 | and indeed to expand your brain's capacity

00:01:05.320 | to learn new types of information in new ways.

00:01:08.700 | In researching today's episode,

00:01:10.560 | I quickly came to realize that the number of studies

00:01:13.320 | that have explored the relationship between exercise,

00:01:15.960 | brain performance, and brain health,

00:01:18.000 | as well as the range of different types of exercise

00:01:20.380 | that have been explored in that context is extremely vast.

00:01:24.280 | There are literally tens of thousands of studies

00:01:26.800 | on this topic, as well as meta-analyses and reviews,

00:01:30.080 | all of which point to positive effects

00:01:32.300 | of doing exercise of various types

00:01:34.600 | on brain health and performance.

00:01:36.840 | Within those many, many studies,

00:01:39.080 | you'll find many, many different exercise protocols

00:01:42.240 | that lead to improvements

00:01:43.440 | in brain performance and longevity.

00:01:45.560 | So the goal of today's episode

00:01:47.040 | is to synthesize that vast amount of information

00:01:49.720 | into a logical framework that simplifies it

00:01:52.600 | and clarifies it and places it within the context

00:01:55.560 | of specific mechanisms, both neurobiological mechanisms

00:01:59.120 | and endocrine-based mechanisms,

00:02:01.320 | that together can very well explain the data

00:02:04.440 | on how exercise impacts brain health and longevity,

00:02:07.160 | such that by the end of today's episode,

00:02:09.400 | you'll have both some specific recommendations

00:02:11.560 | about how to use exercise

00:02:12.800 | for sake of brain health and performance

00:02:14.440 | that I believe will be new to most of you,

00:02:17.000 | as well as the ability to think about the mechanisms

00:02:19.720 | and the logical framework

00:02:20.960 | that wraps around this incredibly large literature

00:02:23.400 | on exercise and brain performance,

00:02:25.020 | so that you can customize your exercise program

00:02:27.560 | on the basis of how much time you have available,

00:02:30.360 | your specific age, your health status,

00:02:33.200 | and the specific types of brain changes

00:02:35.620 | that you might be seeking through the use of exercise.

00:02:38.600 | And I should also say that by learning

00:02:40.160 | how exercise impacts brain performance and brain health,

00:02:43.400 | you're also going to learn some of the incredible ways

00:02:45.800 | that your body communicates with your brain

00:02:47.780 | and your brain communicates with your body,

00:02:49.920 | not just during exercise, but all of the time.

00:02:52.520 | So today, you're going to learn a lot of practical tools,

00:02:54.920 | of course, about exercise, brain health, and longevity.

00:02:57.360 | It's based on research that is incredibly interesting,

00:02:59.760 | in some cases, surprising,

00:03:01.560 | and in almost all cases, actionable.

00:03:04.160 | As some of you may already know,

00:03:05.700 | I have a book coming out this year, 2025,

00:03:07.960 | entitled "Protocols,

00:03:09.400 | an Operating Manual for the Human Body."

00:03:11.920 | I'm super excited about the book.

00:03:13.980 | It includes protocols,

00:03:15.240 | that is actionable steps that anyone can take

00:03:17.460 | to improve their sleep, motivation, creativity,

00:03:20.240 | gut microbiome, nutrition, exercise,

00:03:22.440 | stress modulation, and much more.

00:03:25.040 | Now, the book was originally scheduled

00:03:26.600 | to be released in April of 2025.

00:03:29.080 | However, to make sure

00:03:29.920 | that the book reflects the latest scientific research,

00:03:32.560 | I've decided to expand on the yes,

00:03:34.600 | already finished version of the book,

00:03:36.560 | to make sure that the protocols

00:03:38.000 | are as up-to-date as possible

00:03:39.680 | and reflect the most modern and best findings.

00:03:42.640 | So the new release date for protocols

00:03:44.600 | is going to be September of 2025.

00:03:47.000 | I do apologize for the delay in release,

00:03:48.940 | but I assure you that I will make it worth your wait.

00:03:51.780 | To learn more about the book

00:03:52.900 | or to secure a copy by presale,

00:03:54.780 | go to protocolsbook.com.

00:03:57.100 | There you'll find all the information about the book,

00:03:59.700 | as well as the various languages

00:04:01.220 | that the book will be translated into.

00:04:03.220 | Before we begin,

00:04:04.140 | I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:04:06.200 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:08.920 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:04:11.220 | to bring zero cost to consumer information

00:04:13.060 | about science and science-related tools

00:04:15.100 | to the general public.

00:04:16.540 | In keeping with that theme,

00:04:17.660 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

00:04:20.460 | Our first sponsor is BetterHelp.

00:04:22.580 | BetterHelp offers professional therapy

00:04:24.320 | with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online.

00:04:27.540 | Now, I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years.

00:04:30.360 | Therapy is an extremely important component

00:04:32.180 | to overall health.

00:04:33.220 | In fact, I consider doing regular therapy

00:04:35.200 | just as important as getting regular exercise.

00:04:38.020 | Now, there are essentially three things

00:04:39.380 | that great therapy provides.

00:04:40.700 | First, it provides a good rapport

00:04:42.620 | with somebody that you can really trust

00:04:44.140 | and talk to about any and all issues

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00:04:47.240 | Second of all, great therapy provides support

00:04:49.620 | in the form of emotional support,

00:04:51.300 | but also directed guidance,

00:04:52.820 | the do's and the not to do's.

00:04:54.740 | And third, expert therapy can help you arrive

00:04:56.700 | at useful insights

00:04:57.780 | that you would not have arrived at otherwise.

00:05:00.220 | Insights that allow you to do better,

00:05:02.140 | not just in your emotional life and your relationship life,

00:05:04.780 | but also the relationship to yourself

00:05:06.420 | and your professional life and all sorts of career goals.

00:05:09.260 | With BetterHelp, they make it very easy

00:05:10.780 | to find an expert therapist

00:05:12.020 | with whom you can really resonate with

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00:05:16.160 | Also, because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online,

00:05:19.220 | it's very time efficient

00:05:20.440 | and easy to fit into a busy schedule

00:05:22.540 | with no commuting to a therapist's office

00:05:24.340 | or sitting in a waiting room

00:05:25.380 | or looking for a parking spot.

00:05:27.200 | So if you'd like to try BetterHelp,

00:05:28.700 | go to betterhelp.com/huberman

00:05:31.100 | to get 10% off your first month.

00:05:33.200 | Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman.

00:05:36.500 | Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.

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00:06:55.660 | Okay, let's talk about the relationship

00:06:57.100 | between exercise, brain health and longevity and performance.

00:07:00.980 | And let's just take a couple of minutes

00:07:02.300 | and really clearly define what we mean by exercise,

00:07:05.300 | because most of us have a concept of what exercise is,

00:07:08.220 | but for sake of understanding the relationship

00:07:09.920 | between exercise and brain performance,

00:07:12.060 | most of the peer-reviewed studies

00:07:13.820 | focus on two general categories of exercise,

00:07:16.300 | either cardiovascular exercise or resistance training.

00:07:20.100 | Now, of course, cardiovascular exercise

00:07:21.900 | can be a very short duration, high intensity,

00:07:24.940 | so getting heart rates up way, way, way up,

00:07:27.360 | or longer duration, lower intensity.

00:07:30.460 | Now, typically, the amount of time scales with that,

00:07:32.620 | so the shorter intensity stuff

00:07:34.620 | tends to be quick bouts of either 30-second, 60-second,

00:07:38.980 | sometimes two-minute or even four-minute all-out effort

00:07:41.820 | with some period of rest afterwards,

00:07:44.300 | or longer duration, 20, 30, 45,

00:07:47.580 | or even 60 minutes of cardiovascular training

00:07:50.100 | at a more steady state, lower intensity.

00:07:52.820 | And I should mention that within the tens of thousands

00:07:54.860 | of studies that are out there exploring the relationship

00:07:57.340 | between exercise and brain health and longevity,

00:08:00.340 | you will mostly see studies

00:08:02.140 | focused on cardiovascular exercise.

00:08:04.220 | And most of those studies early on

00:08:06.660 | were focused on the longer duration, lower intensity stuff.

00:08:09.780 | So typically, 30 to 60 minutes of lower intensity,

00:08:13.620 | yet still elevating the heart rate exercise.

00:08:17.020 | Nowadays, there's more of a focus

00:08:18.580 | on the high-intensity interval training.

00:08:20.500 | And today, we're even going to hear about some studies

00:08:22.460 | that involve very, very short bursts,

00:08:24.860 | so-called sprints of activity, a short of six seconds long,

00:08:27.700 | followed by a period of rest,

00:08:29.180 | repeated for a number of times,

00:08:30.980 | and exploring what the effect of that sort of,

00:08:34.700 | I should say, very, very short intensity exercise

00:08:37.220 | is on immediate and long-term brain health and performance.

00:08:41.220 | Okay, so cardiovascular training

00:08:42.640 | of different durations and intensities

00:08:44.940 | involving different durations of rest

00:08:47.220 | are one category that we're going to talk about today.

00:08:49.500 | The other category of exercise

00:08:50.780 | we're going to talk about today is resistance training.

00:08:53.620 | Now, most of the studies involving resistance training

00:08:56.700 | and their effects on the brain,

00:08:58.940 | both brain longevity and brain performance,

00:09:01.380 | focus on either compound, so multi-joint movements,

00:09:04.920 | so think squats, deadlifts, bench press, shoulder press,

00:09:07.160 | dips, et cetera.

00:09:08.860 | But very often, and this is just a by-product

00:09:11.580 | of how studies are done in the laboratory,

00:09:14.140 | very often, the exploration of the relationship

00:09:17.300 | between resistance training and brain health and longevity

00:09:20.580 | are single-joint isolation exercises,

00:09:23.660 | like a single-leg leg extension, even.

00:09:26.240 | You might be thinking,

00:09:27.080 | "Wait, just one leg doing the leg extension?"

00:09:28.780 | Yes, the reason for that,

00:09:31.340 | and I spoke to some of the scientists

00:09:32.580 | that do this sort of work,

00:09:33.620 | is that when they have subjects do a, say,

00:09:37.060 | seated single-leg leg extension

00:09:39.360 | as the form of resistance training,

00:09:40.900 | I know I and some of you are probably chuckling like,

00:09:43.480 | "Really? Of all the things you could select

00:09:45.080 | to see if it impacts brain health,

00:09:46.360 | you're going to have people kick up one knee?"

00:09:48.240 | Yep, you do that. Why?

00:09:49.460 | Well, most people can do that type of movement.

00:09:51.440 | It doesn't take any training,

00:09:52.860 | or it just takes a little bit of direction

00:09:54.360 | as to how to do it,

00:09:55.200 | so it can be done reasonably safely by many people,

00:09:57.600 | including people that are non-athletes,

00:09:59.360 | often older than 65 years old,

00:10:01.960 | not that there aren't some very fit 65-year-olds,

00:10:04.300 | but just people who are older than 65

00:10:06.260 | but don't have a lot of athletic background,

00:10:08.220 | can sit down in a chair,

00:10:09.720 | put the pin at the appropriate weight,

00:10:11.180 | and move their knee,

00:10:13.220 | or rather elevate their foot while seated in a chair,

00:10:17.220 | so-called single-leg leg extension,

00:10:18.780 | and also it gives the benefit of the opposite leg

00:10:21.880 | within subject control for comparison

00:10:24.700 | in terms of strength increases.

00:10:26.280 | Okay, so set aside any kind of, you know,

00:10:29.300 | like eye rolls or chuckles that you might have

00:10:31.140 | about single-leg leg extensions

00:10:32.780 | as the total form of resistance training

00:10:35.040 | that's being explored,

00:10:36.300 | because yes, those studies are still informative.

00:10:38.580 | In fact, they perhaps even identified the lower threshold

00:10:41.980 | for the amount of resistance training

00:10:43.680 | and type of resistance training

00:10:44.860 | that could benefit the brain,

00:10:46.220 | but we also see studies that involve compound exercises,

00:10:48.900 | so having people do free weight squats,

00:10:51.300 | or even weighted squats, or deadlifts,

00:10:54.140 | or, you know, bench-press-dip-deadlift-type combinations.

00:10:57.180 | Again, when you look at the literature

00:10:58.480 | exploring exercise and brain health,

00:11:01.020 | you're looking at studies that, in the best cases,

00:11:03.420 | are very tightly controlled.

00:11:05.100 | That typically means having people do them

00:11:07.380 | in the laboratory in a very specific way,

00:11:10.380 | sometimes using untrained subjects,

00:11:12.460 | meaning when the subjects arrive at the study,

00:11:14.340 | they haven't done much exercise of that sort.

00:11:16.740 | Sometimes it's involving trained subjects.

00:11:18.700 | Both have their caveats, of course,

00:11:20.800 | but keep in mind that during today's discussion,

00:11:23.500 | I'm going to be pooling at many times

00:11:26.060 | across all these studies

00:11:27.300 | exploring cardiovascular exercise

00:11:29.600 | of different duration and intensities,

00:11:31.500 | resistance training of different types,

00:11:34.380 | and sometimes different intensities as well,

00:11:36.660 | but where there is a specific piece of knowledge

00:11:39.400 | that can be gleaned from understanding

00:11:40.900 | the exact type of exercise that was done

00:11:43.460 | and a specific type of brain change,

00:11:45.820 | especially in cases where it's been shown

00:11:47.640 | to be especially beneficial,

00:11:49.420 | I will be sure to highlight that.

00:11:51.420 | So, as we proceed in today's discussion,

00:11:53.900 | keep in mind, exercise is many things,

00:11:56.160 | two general categories.

00:11:57.460 | Most of the studies focus on high intensity

00:12:00.000 | or low intensity cardio.

00:12:01.860 | Most of the studies involve

00:12:03.180 | either single joint isolation exercises,

00:12:07.060 | sometimes even single joint, single leg isolation exercises

00:12:10.720 | or compound exercises.

00:12:12.540 | And keep in mind that most of the studies

00:12:14.920 | exploring the relationship between exercise

00:12:17.120 | and brain health and performance

00:12:18.860 | are done to explore two types of changes,

00:12:22.100 | either what are called acute changes,

00:12:24.340 | meaning immediate changes,

00:12:25.620 | so they have people do the exercise,

00:12:27.200 | and then they have them take a cognitive test

00:12:29.100 | or some other form of test

00:12:30.320 | that analyzes brain health and performance,

00:12:32.660 | or they look at chronic effects,

00:12:34.220 | which are what are the changes in brain performance

00:12:36.860 | and health over long periods of time,

00:12:39.120 | meaning having people do a particular type of exercise

00:12:41.900 | anywhere from two to four times per week,

00:12:44.500 | although typically it's three times per week,

00:12:46.580 | and doing that for anywhere from four weeks to six months.

00:12:50.620 | Again, all of this relates to the practical aspects

00:12:52.940 | of running controlled studies in the laboratory.

00:12:55.300 | So if by now you're thinking this is really complicated,

00:12:57.840 | how is it that we're supposed to tease out

00:12:59.840 | the best things to do given this huge ball of barbed wire

00:13:02.520 | of different types of studies, variables, et cetera?

00:13:05.080 | Well, I assure you,

00:13:05.920 | we are going to make this very clear and very actionable.

00:13:08.380 | And the thing to keep in mind

00:13:09.680 | is that fortunately, most all of the studies,

00:13:13.080 | yes, most all of the studies

00:13:14.720 | that have explored the relationship between exercise,

00:13:17.140 | brain health, and longevity and performance

00:13:19.040 | find positive effects.

00:13:21.240 | Now, for some of you who are skeptics,

00:13:23.300 | you might be thinking, well, great,

00:13:24.720 | so you can do any form of exercise.

00:13:26.640 | Well, in some sense, yes,

00:13:28.440 | I'll actually tell you this right off the bat.

00:13:30.840 | There are good data showing

00:13:32.520 | that if people do six second sprints,

00:13:35.040 | max all out sprints on a stationary bicycle,

00:13:39.100 | followed by one minute rest,

00:13:42.120 | and repeat that six times,

00:13:44.620 | you see significant acute effects on brain performance.

00:13:49.620 | So the brain performance could be a memory task.

00:13:52.140 | Sometimes it is a memory task.

00:13:53.580 | It could be what's called a Stroop task,

00:13:54.980 | which is a cognitive flexibility task

00:13:56.500 | where you have to distinguish

00:13:57.340 | between the colors that words are written in

00:14:00.060 | and the content of the words.

00:14:01.460 | Okay, so-called Stroop task.

00:14:02.620 | I've talked about this on previous podcasts.

00:14:03.980 | I'll talk about it a little bit more later.

00:14:05.380 | Regardless of the cognitive test that's used,

00:14:07.460 | that very short duration, high intensity training

00:14:10.360 | increases performance significantly.

00:14:13.380 | As well, 20 or 30 minutes of so-called steady state cardio,

00:14:17.800 | you know, figuring out how fast you can run,

00:14:19.660 | or row, or swim, or stationary bike.

00:14:23.100 | For 20 to 30 minutes at a steady state,

00:14:25.840 | and then you analyze people's cognitive performance

00:14:28.900 | on a memory task.

00:14:29.740 | It can be a working memory task,

00:14:30.860 | so remembering a short string of numbers,

00:14:32.880 | or it could be math problems.

00:14:34.040 | It could be the Stroop task.

00:14:34.960 | Any number of different tasks reveal the same thing,

00:14:37.700 | which is that the longer duration, lower intensity cardio

00:14:40.420 | also significantly improves performance.

00:14:43.460 | Now, does that mean that you can do six rounds

00:14:47.240 | of six seconds of sprinting with a minute in between,

00:14:49.580 | or 20 minutes of cardiovascular exercise

00:14:52.380 | and get the same effect on brain performance?

00:14:54.880 | Well, if you're just looking at overall improvements

00:14:57.540 | in performance.

00:14:58.380 | So for instance, the percentage of information

00:15:00.340 | that you learn if you do, or you don't do the exercise,

00:15:02.940 | or if you compare those two forms of exercise

00:15:04.900 | that I just mentioned.

00:15:06.220 | In that sense, yes, it really doesn't make a difference,

00:15:08.960 | which may have you scratching your head,

00:15:10.320 | but in a few moments, I'll explain why that is.

00:15:12.980 | On the other hand, different forms of exercise,

00:15:15.500 | of course, impact our bodily health differently.

00:15:18.720 | Higher intensity, shorter duration exercise,

00:15:20.780 | of course, impacts things like VO2 max

00:15:22.820 | and which circulating hormones and neuromodulators

00:15:25.580 | are going to be present very differently

00:15:27.100 | than longer duration, lower intensity exercise.

00:15:29.780 | So too, if you have people do

00:15:31.800 | single joint isolation resistance training exercises,

00:15:35.740 | like a single leg leg extension,

00:15:37.120 | or both legs leg extension,

00:15:39.240 | versus 10 sets of 10 in a squat exercise,

00:15:42.780 | you're going to see very different specific adaptations

00:15:45.380 | at the physical level, at the bodily level.

00:15:48.180 | But in every case where you explore the acute,

00:15:51.880 | the immediate changes that occur in brain output

00:15:55.060 | and function, after people do that sort of exercise,

00:15:58.680 | you're going to see significant increases.

00:16:00.780 | When one does physical exercise,

00:16:02.740 | short duration, high intensity, cardio,

00:16:05.160 | or higher intensity resistance training,

00:16:08.520 | single joint training, compound training,

00:16:10.940 | single joint isolation exercises, compound exercises,

00:16:13.740 | one sees these increases in brain performance,

00:16:16.660 | at least acutely in the immediate stage after the training.

00:16:19.860 | So we have to ask ourselves, why is it, how is it,

00:16:23.620 | that all these different forms of exercise

00:16:25.740 | are positively impacting brain performance?

00:16:29.380 | And the answer is very simple and fortunately,

00:16:32.700 | gives us tremendous leverage over our exercise

00:16:36.020 | and how to impact our brain health.

00:16:38.300 | And the answer is arousal.

00:16:41.260 | However, the answer isn't entirely arousal,

00:16:44.420 | meaning not all of the positive effects of exercise

00:16:47.060 | on brain health, longevity, and performance

00:16:49.180 | can be explained by arousal.

00:16:50.940 | But when I step back from the literature,

00:16:52.460 | again, an enormous literature,

00:16:54.040 | tens of thousands of peer-reviewed papers,

00:16:55.900 | many of which are done exceptionally well, by the way,

00:16:58.220 | as well as meta-analyses and reviews,

00:17:01.020 | I think it's fair to say that probably 60 to 70%

00:17:05.100 | of the effects of exercise on brain health,

00:17:07.860 | performance, and longevity can be explained

00:17:10.260 | by the specific shifts in our physiology,

00:17:12.220 | both bodily physiology

00:17:14.140 | and directly within the brain's physiology

00:17:17.260 | during those bouts of exercise,

00:17:19.180 | which is this increase in so-called autonomic arousal,

00:17:22.380 | which occurs during the exercise,

00:17:24.500 | but also extends into a window

00:17:26.940 | after the exercise is completed.

00:17:29.100 | So we have to talk about this relationship

00:17:30.900 | between exercise, arousal, and acute brain performance,

00:17:34.380 | meaning the improvements in brain performance

00:17:36.880 | that happen immediately after the exercise.

00:17:39.460 | And then we'll shift our focus to the effects of exercise

00:17:42.140 | that occur more chronically,

00:17:43.740 | that is the effects of exercise

00:17:45.500 | on brain health and performance that occur

00:17:47.540 | in the hours, days, weeks, and years after we exercise,

00:17:51.300 | even if we are continuing to exercise every day

00:17:54.180 | or three times a week or whatever the frequency might be.

00:17:57.840 | But this issue of arousal is extremely important,

00:18:00.420 | and I assure you, it's not trivial.

00:18:01.900 | In fact, it will help you understand a number of things

00:18:04.660 | in the domains of deliberate cold exposure, stress, trauma,

00:18:08.540 | and most importantly for today's discussion,

00:18:10.300 | it will help you design an exercise program

00:18:12.900 | that's geared towards giving you

00:18:14.380 | the maximum bodily health effects

00:18:16.860 | and the maximum brain health effects.

00:18:19.940 | Okay, in order to understand the relationship

00:18:21.820 | between exercise, arousal, and learning,

00:18:24.680 | we have to really clarify the relationship

00:18:26.680 | between arousal and learning.

00:18:28.400 | That's going to set the stage

00:18:29.340 | for pretty much everything else we're going to talk about

00:18:31.040 | for the next 10 minutes or so.

00:18:33.120 | And it's oh so cool.

00:18:34.620 | It also gives me the opportunity to review a paper

00:18:37.740 | that I've long loved,

00:18:39.820 | which comes from Larry Cahill's group down at UC Irvine

00:18:42.540 | entitled Enhanced Memory Consolidation

00:18:44.540 | with Post-Learning Stress,

00:18:45.820 | Interaction with the Degree of Arousal at Encoding.

00:18:48.500 | This is just one of several papers from the Cahill group,

00:18:51.300 | which essentially identified the following.

00:18:53.780 | There are a couple of different ways

00:18:54.980 | you can increase so-called autonomic arousal

00:18:57.360 | or levels of alertness.

00:18:58.340 | Sometimes it's called stress,

00:18:59.460 | but autonomic arousal is simply an increase

00:19:02.160 | in the amount of activity in the so-called sympathetic arm

00:19:04.480 | or the autonomic nervous system,

00:19:05.620 | which is nerd speak for more alert, more aroused,

00:19:08.060 | wide-eyed, ready to move, higher heart rate,

00:19:11.760 | higher blood pressure, more alertness.

00:19:13.700 | This is a great state to be in for learning material

00:19:16.220 | provided it's not too much alertness, too much arousal.

00:19:19.720 | Turns out this paper shows it's also a great state to be in

00:19:24.640 | after you've been exposed to material

00:19:27.220 | that you want to learn.

00:19:28.260 | And it's also the case that in this paper

00:19:29.940 | and in many, many other papers

00:19:31.280 | from this and other laboratories

00:19:33.860 | that you can increase levels of autonomic arousal

00:19:36.420 | by having people put their arm into ice water

00:19:38.880 | for one to three minutes, the so-called cold presser test.

00:19:42.300 | It's a very commonly used standard test.

00:19:44.900 | This paper and many other papers show

00:19:46.680 | that it leads to very rapid and significant increases

00:19:50.180 | in circulating levels of cortisol,

00:19:51.960 | which yes, sometimes it's called a stress hormone,

00:19:53.980 | but it's really just a hormone involved

00:19:55.460 | in the stress response,

00:19:56.320 | but does a bunch of other things too.

00:19:58.160 | So they use that as a tool

00:20:00.740 | after people have been exposed

00:20:02.300 | to certain types of information to ask,

00:20:05.540 | does elevation in cortisol,

00:20:06.980 | AKA autonomic arousal,

00:20:08.660 | improve one's ability to remember information?

00:20:11.460 | And the answer is yes.

00:20:13.400 | This study shows that,

00:20:14.800 | several other studies from the Cahill

00:20:16.380 | and other laboratories show that

00:20:17.800 | sometimes those studies use people

00:20:20.380 | putting their arm into ice cold water.

00:20:21.900 | Other times they'll inject them with a drug

00:20:24.060 | that increases adrenaline, also called epinephrine,

00:20:27.700 | sometimes also increases cortisol.

00:20:30.180 | The point being that elevations in autonomic arousal

00:20:34.580 | after one is exposed to information

00:20:37.340 | increases one's memory for that information

00:20:40.220 | and one's memory for the details of that information.

00:20:43.060 | Now, in this particular study,

00:20:44.380 | they compared emotionally laden

00:20:46.220 | versus non-emotionally laden information

00:20:47.940 | and a bunch of other details,

00:20:48.980 | which are interesting if you choose to peruse the study,

00:20:51.460 | but I should mention that other studies from this

00:20:53.140 | and other laboratories have shown time and time again,

00:20:56.020 | increases in autonomic arousal

00:20:57.660 | measured by increases in cortisol

00:21:00.140 | or adrenaline also called epinephrine or norepinephrine,

00:21:04.300 | which is the sort of analog within the brain

00:21:06.980 | that consistently leads to better memory

00:21:09.420 | for information that one has been exposed to,

00:21:12.300 | better memory for the details of that information,

00:21:14.580 | and oftentimes better ability to work with that information,

00:21:18.080 | to come up with new ideas with that information

00:21:20.160 | or to think logically about that information in new ways.

00:21:23.600 | In other words, increasing autonomic arousal

00:21:25.780 | improves learning and memory.

00:21:27.920 | Now, it's also very important to understand

00:21:30.440 | that that increase in autonomic arousal

00:21:32.620 | can improve learning and memory

00:21:34.360 | if the autonomic arousal occurs

00:21:36.440 | after the exposure to the material.

00:21:38.340 | Most people find that a bit surprising.

00:21:39.820 | I certainly did when I first read this paper.

00:21:41.760 | It makes sense if you start to think about

00:21:43.180 | the persistence of memories for things like traumas

00:21:45.960 | or bad events, right?

00:21:46.960 | Bad event happens and there's this big spike

00:21:48.840 | in cortisol and adrenaline

00:21:50.440 | and those memories are hard to eradicate.

00:21:52.360 | They're certainly hard to remove the emotional content from.

00:21:55.240 | And if you think about it, in those instances,

00:21:57.740 | the event happens and then comes the big increase

00:22:00.240 | in cortisol and adrenaline.

00:22:01.560 | So that maps very well onto the study

00:22:03.360 | that I'm describing here.

00:22:05.040 | In addition, however, lots of studies have shown

00:22:08.080 | that increasing autonomic arousal

00:22:10.040 | as measured by increases in adrenaline or cortisol or both

00:22:14.020 | or any number of different measures of autonomic arousal

00:22:17.040 | that occurs during the exposure to the new material, okay?

00:22:22.320 | So this isn't trauma.

00:22:23.260 | This is like new math material, new history material,

00:22:26.760 | new music material, new motor skill material

00:22:29.900 | that you're trying to learn.

00:22:31.800 | Increases in autonomic arousal that occur

00:22:33.900 | as you're trying to so-called encode the information,

00:22:36.340 | you're being exposed to that new information

00:22:38.300 | also significantly improve learning.

00:22:41.260 | And it's always through increases in arousal.

00:22:44.540 | In other words, whether or not

00:22:46.460 | you're measuring cortisol, adrenaline,

00:22:48.340 | heart rate, blood pressure, galvanic skin response,

00:22:51.120 | how wide someone's pupils are

00:22:53.060 | or small someone's pupils are

00:22:55.140 | or any combination of those things

00:22:56.960 | or any other measures of autonomic arousal,

00:22:59.040 | the consistent takeaway is increases in arousal

00:23:02.600 | during or after, in particular after

00:23:06.800 | trying to learn a certain material

00:23:09.360 | is going to improve significantly

00:23:11.480 | the amount of material that one learns,

00:23:13.620 | the details of that material

00:23:15.640 | and the persistence of that learning over time.

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00:26:01.040 | Okay, so now we've established the elevated levels

00:26:03.180 | of autonomic arousal either during or after,

00:26:07.220 | and indeed also before about of learning,

00:26:10.420 | the so-called encoding phase of learning

00:26:12.140 | when we're exposed to the new material

00:26:13.780 | that we want to learn and remember are all beneficial.

00:26:17.540 | This is wonderful news.

00:26:18.940 | When we look out on the whole of the literature

00:26:21.420 | on the relationship between exercise

00:26:23.540 | and brain health and performance,

00:26:25.180 | we see studies that incorporate exercise

00:26:27.140 | either before or after about of learning.

00:26:30.320 | And we also find studies, believe it or not,

00:26:32.620 | that combine exercise with learning in real time,

00:26:35.700 | literally exposing people to new material

00:26:37.900 | that they're expected to learn or trying to learn

00:26:40.540 | while they're walking on a treadmill

00:26:42.020 | or running on a treadmill or cycling or rowing.

00:26:44.380 | Yes, those studies have also been done,

00:26:46.100 | although for practical reasons,

00:26:47.980 | they're not as numerous as the studies

00:26:50.280 | exploring the relationship between exercise and learning

00:26:53.140 | where the exercise is done before

00:26:54.900 | or after the bout of learning.

00:26:56.820 | Okay, so what this means is wonderful.

00:26:58.780 | What this means is that if you want to use exercise,

00:27:01.580 | not just for enhancing your bodily health,

00:27:03.800 | but also for brain health and performance,

00:27:05.900 | you can do that exercise before, during,

00:27:08.640 | or after bouts of learning.

00:27:10.920 | That allows you to look at the constraints of your life.

00:27:13.180 | For instance, are you one of these people

00:27:15.040 | that can get up at five or six or 7 a.m.

00:27:17.580 | and exercise before everyone else gets up

00:27:19.780 | or before your workday starts or your school day starts,

00:27:23.600 | do a round of exercise

00:27:24.900 | and then get into your bouts of learning,

00:27:26.760 | whatever that material may be?

00:27:28.460 | Or are you somebody who has to dive into the workday,

00:27:30.460 | school day, family obligations, et cetera,

00:27:32.860 | in which case you might only be able to exercise

00:27:34.860 | later in the day,

00:27:36.100 | but you're probably still somebody

00:27:37.260 | who would like to enhance their brain health and performance.

00:27:39.860 | So in that case, you might organize

00:27:41.520 | the thing that you're trying to learn,

00:27:42.700 | the encoding or the exposure

00:27:44.220 | to the thing that you're trying to learn,

00:27:45.500 | either in written form,

00:27:46.740 | so you're reading or you're listening to it,

00:27:48.780 | or you're attending a class or classes,

00:27:51.020 | and then exercising after you're exposed to that material

00:27:54.460 | in order to get that elevated levels of arousal,

00:27:56.600 | not unlike the arrangement of the studies

00:27:58.560 | that I was talking about earlier,

00:28:00.260 | which used the ice exposure

00:28:03.180 | in order to generate increases in arousal

00:28:05.460 | and thereby to improve learning and memory.

00:28:08.380 | So in the show note captions for this episode,

00:28:10.740 | we've batched a number of different references

00:28:12.820 | that have explored the relationship

00:28:14.060 | between exercise and cognitive performance.

00:28:17.260 | And across those studies

00:28:18.900 | and the ones that are referenced therein,

00:28:21.060 | you'll find studies

00:28:21.900 | where the exercise bout was done before,

00:28:24.340 | where the exercise bout was done during,

00:28:26.740 | where the exercise bout was done after

00:28:29.100 | a round of learning or encoding of information.

00:28:32.140 | And I should mention that different studies

00:28:33.540 | focus on different cognitive tasks.

00:28:35.980 | So exercise and the arousal associated with exercise

00:28:38.940 | has been shown to acutely improve recall.

00:28:42.540 | So just raw recall of material, the details in material.

00:28:46.820 | It's been shown to improve cognitive flexibility

00:28:49.300 | through things like the Stroop task.

00:28:50.740 | And so in a very convenient way,

00:28:52.740 | exercise has been shown to acutely improve performance

00:28:56.140 | on all those sorts of brain and memory tasks,

00:28:59.900 | which is greatly reassuring to all of us

00:29:02.180 | because what it means is that

00:29:04.380 | it probably doesn't matter so much

00:29:05.620 | when you do your exercise

00:29:06.980 | or what it is that you're trying to learn.

00:29:08.700 | It's going to be beneficial

00:29:10.020 | as long as the thing that you're trying to learn

00:29:12.180 | and the exercise are positioned fairly closely in time.

00:29:15.700 | Now, the one caveat to that

00:29:17.480 | is that several studies have explored the relationship

00:29:19.740 | between short duration, high intensity interval training

00:29:23.380 | and cognitive performance.

00:29:24.540 | In particular, executive function,

00:29:26.420 | that cognitive prefrontal flexibility

00:29:28.280 | that we were talking about a few moments ago.

00:29:30.700 | And on the whole, all of those studies

00:29:34.620 | point to improvements in executive control and function.

00:29:38.340 | So that context dependent switching of knowledge

00:29:40.620 | and your ability to think about things

00:29:41.940 | in a very agile way, if you will.

00:29:44.760 | If people did a high intensity interval training session

00:29:47.620 | just before they do that bout

00:29:49.740 | of cognitive flexibility learning.

00:29:52.360 | However, several studies have also looked at the effect

00:29:54.540 | of repeated bouts of high intensity interval training.

00:29:57.620 | And in some cases, looking at the mechanisms

00:29:59.720 | by which high intensity interval training

00:30:01.580 | improve cognitive performance.

00:30:03.340 | And the basic takeaway is the following.

00:30:05.900 | And again, I'll provide references to these

00:30:07.580 | in the show note captions.

00:30:09.160 | The high intensity interval training done before

00:30:11.820 | or believe it or not even during

00:30:14.060 | cognitive flexibility tasks.

00:30:15.860 | A couple of studies have actually explored that.

00:30:17.980 | Significantly improves performance on those tasks.

00:30:21.220 | Again, we believe this is likely

00:30:23.780 | through enhanced levels of arousal.

00:30:25.500 | Although some data also point to the fact

00:30:27.660 | that it's also likely through enhanced cerebral blood flow.

00:30:31.280 | Simply more blood being delivered to the brain

00:30:33.900 | during or in particular

00:30:35.100 | after high intensity interval training.

00:30:37.380 | More blood, more fuel and other molecules

00:30:39.860 | being delivered to the brain during a cognitive task

00:30:42.220 | or cognitive flexibility task.

00:30:43.900 | Makes sense why that would improve cognitive function.

00:30:46.660 | And yet when studies have explored the consequence

00:30:49.700 | of doing multiple high intensity interval training sessions.

00:30:53.100 | And when I say high intensity, I mean high intensity.

00:30:55.460 | These are studies where lactate is elevated.

00:30:57.540 | We'll talk more about lactate in a few minutes.

00:30:59.820 | Where typically people's heart rate

00:31:01.540 | is either close to or at their maximum heart rate

00:31:04.040 | for some period of time, either 30 seconds, 60 seconds,

00:31:07.220 | two minutes, or in some cases,

00:31:08.740 | people are pushing really, really hard for four minutes,

00:31:11.180 | then resting for four minutes,

00:31:12.380 | then pushing really hard for four minutes,

00:31:13.820 | then resting for four minutes.

00:31:15.140 | Four times over the so-called four by four program

00:31:18.700 | that I know a number of you have heard about.

00:31:20.260 | If you haven't, it's very intense.

00:31:21.820 | So you can imagine all out for four minutes, then rest,

00:31:23.800 | all out for four minutes, then rest.

00:31:25.340 | Doing that several times in a day.

00:31:27.700 | Okay, so two bouts of four by four

00:31:29.620 | or two high intensity interval training sessions of any kind

00:31:33.680 | has been shown to diminish cognitive performance

00:31:37.060 | if the cognitive task comes

00:31:38.700 | after the second high intensity interval training session.

00:31:42.100 | Now, for most of us, including me, that makes sense.

00:31:44.660 | You think, well, they're tired.

00:31:46.740 | People aren't able to focus as much

00:31:48.260 | because they're devoting all this energy to the exercise.

00:31:51.060 | And indeed that's true,

00:31:52.700 | although the mechanism is interesting.

00:31:54.820 | The studies that have looked at this

00:31:55.900 | have actually found that cerebral blood flow

00:31:58.020 | during the two bouts of high intensity interval training

00:32:00.920 | are more or less equal.

00:32:02.060 | So it's not that the first session

00:32:03.420 | necessarily precludes high performance

00:32:06.420 | in the high intensity interval training session

00:32:08.300 | in the second session.

00:32:09.700 | But then when you go on to try and do a cognitive task

00:32:12.180 | that's demanding and also requires elevated levels

00:32:15.500 | of cerebral blood flow, you find that performance drops.

00:32:18.820 | And this is correlated with reductions

00:32:20.740 | in cerebral blood flow that come from doing

00:32:23.060 | too much high intensity interval training.

00:32:25.460 | Now, I have to acknowledge

00:32:26.300 | that most people aren't doing multiple

00:32:28.100 | high intensity interval training sessions per day.

00:32:30.460 | But this is a reminder, an important reminder, in fact,

00:32:33.580 | that if you're using exercise

00:32:35.500 | to try and improve brain health and function,

00:32:38.380 | or even if you're just somebody who's exercising

00:32:40.420 | but is also expected to use their brain

00:32:42.140 | to learn things throughout the day, as most of us are,

00:32:44.340 | and to attend to things throughout the day,

00:32:46.200 | you need to be cautious about not overdoing

00:32:48.620 | the high intensity interval training sessions.

00:32:50.260 | This is also true for resistance training.

00:32:53.040 | You need to be aware that very high intensity exercise,

00:32:55.300 | yes, increases cerebral blood flow

00:32:57.340 | and the delivery of all these fuels

00:32:59.180 | and other compounds to your brain during the exercise.

00:33:02.080 | If you do that correctly and you don't overdo it,

00:33:05.220 | you can capture some of that wave of blood flow,

00:33:08.380 | fuel, et cetera, as you enter the learning session.

00:33:11.380 | But if you quote unquote overdo it,

00:33:13.900 | then you're going to arrive to that bout of learning

00:33:16.740 | with reduced cerebral blood flow,

00:33:18.900 | and you're going to be in a state

00:33:20.100 | that it's very difficult to focus and learn new information.

00:33:23.780 | So there is such a thing as too much arousal from exercise

00:33:27.300 | that leads to troughs in arousal

00:33:29.260 | that diminish cognitive performance and learning.

00:33:31.880 | Now, all of this is focused, of course,

00:33:33.380 | on the relationship between exercise and brain function

00:33:36.540 | at the acute level, the immediate level.

00:33:38.440 | It's fair to say that all high intensity exercise

00:33:40.820 | and resistance training is going to support brain function

00:33:43.900 | in the chronic sense, in the long-term sense.

00:33:46.020 | In fact, the literature points to that.

00:33:47.780 | And once again, I've batched the references

00:33:49.780 | for this episode so that they're grouped together

00:33:51.780 | according to the specific topics and timestamps.

00:33:54.420 | And the two studies that I recommend you look at

00:33:56.340 | if you're interested in this relationship

00:33:57.900 | between high intensity training and cognitive function,

00:34:00.700 | in particular, executive function,

00:34:02.020 | that cognitive flexibility I was talking about earlier,

00:34:04.340 | such as in the Stroop task,

00:34:06.060 | there's a wonderful article entitled

00:34:07.740 | "Executive Function After Exhaustive Exercise."

00:34:10.780 | That's one to look at.

00:34:11.860 | And the other one, which I think is really nice,

00:34:13.540 | and therefore I've placed there,

00:34:15.140 | really points to the way that a single bout of exercise

00:34:18.320 | can acutely improve brain function,

00:34:20.820 | in particular, executive function.

00:34:22.140 | And the title of that paper, not surprisingly,

00:34:24.340 | is "A Single Bout of Resistance Exercise

00:34:26.580 | Can Enhance Episodic Memory Performance."

00:34:29.580 | Here's a fun one.

00:34:30.700 | As I continue to hammer on this thesis

00:34:32.680 | that so many of the positive effects of exercise

00:34:35.900 | on brain health and performance,

00:34:37.800 | at least in the acute sense, immediately after the exercise,

00:34:41.140 | in some cases during the exercise, are due to arousal,

00:34:44.500 | well, then it should make sense

00:34:45.660 | why things like so-called exercise snacks,

00:34:47.980 | this idea that throughout the day,

00:34:49.540 | you suddenly do 25 quick jumping jacks,

00:34:52.580 | or you jump up and down five times,

00:34:54.740 | or you do 20 air squats.

00:34:56.260 | We've heard about exercise snacks in different contexts,

00:34:58.740 | such as adjusting blood glucose levels.

00:35:01.860 | You hear a lot about that.

00:35:02.860 | After meals, take a walk,

00:35:04.300 | or do some jumping jacks really quick,

00:35:06.220 | or do 20 air squats throughout the day.

00:35:08.580 | And people talk about

00:35:09.540 | the sort of outsized positive effects of those.

00:35:12.260 | Well, check this out.

00:35:13.100 | When it comes to high-intensity interval training

00:35:14.740 | and positive effects on cognitive performance,

00:35:17.280 | there's a study entitled,

00:35:18.740 | "The Influence of Acute Sprint Interval Training

00:35:21.020 | on Cognitive Performance in Healthy Younger Adults."

00:35:24.260 | And this study has people do six-second all-out efforts.

00:35:28.460 | You heard that right, six seconds, okay?

00:35:31.380 | So six, six seconds.

00:35:33.900 | It always is tricky.

00:35:34.900 | They always use the same numbers,

00:35:36.060 | the four by four by four.

00:35:38.380 | Okay, six.

00:35:39.540 | Yes, the number six.

00:35:41.140 | Six-second all-out efforts,

00:35:43.780 | sprinting on basically a stationary bike,

00:35:46.980 | and then a period of rest of one minute

00:35:49.060 | between those six-second all-out efforts.

00:35:52.820 | And they see a significant improvement

00:35:55.540 | in cognitive performance.

00:35:57.060 | So yes, it's true that you can do very brief,

00:36:00.660 | very intense bouts of exercise.

00:36:02.500 | I mean, just think about six seconds of sprinting,

00:36:04.580 | one minute of just cruise or rest, six seconds,

00:36:07.660 | and then just repeat for six sprints total

00:36:10.300 | of six seconds each, and experience an enhancement.

00:36:13.740 | That is an acute or immediate enhancement

00:36:16.940 | in cognitive function.

00:36:18.740 | And I can imagine no other mechanistic explanation

00:36:21.140 | for that aside from increased levels of autonomic arousal.

00:36:25.660 | Any other mechanism that you could envision,

00:36:27.580 | you know, IGF-1, irisin, BDNF,

00:36:30.380 | things that we'll talk about in a few minutes.

00:36:33.060 | Yes, those might be deployed as well.

00:36:35.780 | But in terms of seeing something so brief,

00:36:38.980 | having such a fast action on cognitive performance,

00:36:41.980 | and given what you now know about the relationship

00:36:44.280 | between arousal, focus, and cognitive performance,

00:36:47.780 | I'd be willing to stake, let's say six of my 10 fingers

00:36:52.100 | on the idea that it's all due to enhanced autonomic arousal.

00:36:57.100 | Okay, let's talk for a few minutes about the mechanisms

00:36:59.700 | by which exercise improves brain health and performance.

00:37:03.420 | And I realize when I say mechanism,

00:37:04.980 | some of you may say, okay,

00:37:06.220 | well, I just wanna know what to do.

00:37:08.300 | I don't need to hear about the mechanisms.

00:37:09.600 | But in this case, understanding just a little bit

00:37:12.620 | about the pathways by which exercise impacts the brain

00:37:16.180 | can give you a ton of leverage

00:37:18.100 | in designing the best exercise schedule

00:37:20.180 | for your brain health and performance.

00:37:21.820 | And frankly, for your exercise schedule generally,

00:37:24.780 | to generate things like fat loss, improvements in strength,

00:37:27.500 | hypertrophy, endurance, and so on.

00:37:30.320 | In fact, let's do this mental experiment together.

00:37:33.280 | If we were to ask ourselves,

00:37:34.700 | how is it that exercise improves brain health

00:37:37.900 | and performance, based on what you know now,

00:37:40.460 | you'd probably say, well, it increases arousal,

00:37:43.460 | the catecholamines, so dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine.

00:37:47.100 | It probably increases heart rate,

00:37:48.820 | so more blood pumping to the brain and so on and so forth.

00:37:52.060 | And you would be correct about all of that.

00:37:54.220 | But let's just think a little bit more deeply

00:37:55.880 | about how exercise actually impacts the brain

00:37:58.380 | in the short and long-term and ask ourselves,

00:38:00.740 | what are the different physical pathways?

00:38:02.420 | What are the different chemical pathways

00:38:04.360 | by which the movement of our body changes the way

00:38:07.180 | that our brain works in the short and long-term?

00:38:10.240 | So if we were to draw a stick figure of a human

00:38:12.620 | and orient ourselves to the different locations

00:38:15.940 | or organs in the body that contain potential sources

00:38:19.940 | of information for the brain,

00:38:22.100 | one place that we could start would be, of course, the heart.

00:38:24.420 | When you do cardiovascular exercise of any kind,

00:38:26.680 | intense or not so intense, short or long,

00:38:30.020 | your heart rate increases, your blood pressure increases.

00:38:32.820 | Likewise, if you do resistance training,

00:38:34.640 | there will be heart rate increases.

00:38:36.200 | Those heart rate increases will come down between sets,

00:38:39.120 | but your heart rate tends to increase when you exercise.

00:38:42.040 | That's sort of a duh.

00:38:43.740 | Well, when your heart rate increases,

00:38:46.220 | there's actually both increased blood flow to the brain

00:38:49.600 | and the delivery of all the things that that blood carries,

00:38:52.240 | but there are also neural pathways that carry signals

00:38:54.860 | about that heart rate, about those blood pressure changes

00:38:58.000 | to the brain in order to increase our levels of alertness

00:39:00.800 | and focus that we can leverage toward learning.

00:39:03.760 | So the first location in the body

00:39:06.200 | that we know can communicate with the brain is the heart.

00:39:09.160 | When our heart beats faster,

00:39:10.600 | that's communicated to our autonomic nervous system,

00:39:13.080 | which resides in a number of different brain areas.

00:39:15.000 | In fact, it's a network of brain areas that act in concert

00:39:18.440 | to create what we call autonomic arousal.

00:39:20.760 | We also have another pathway that goes back from the brain

00:39:23.400 | to the heart and other organs that we call the vagus nerve,

00:39:25.680 | which is a two-directional pathway,

00:39:27.400 | you know, up from the body to the brain

00:39:28.980 | and from the brain back to the body.

00:39:30.700 | We're going to talk a lot about the vagus.

00:39:32.980 | In fact, let's talk about the vagus now.

00:39:35.260 | When we exercise, we release adrenaline,

00:39:38.580 | which is also called epinephrine from our adrenal glands,

00:39:41.440 | which are small glands that reside atop both of our kidneys.

00:39:45.520 | That adrenaline or epinephrine, as it's also called,

00:39:48.300 | does many things in our body.

00:39:49.780 | It's responsible for increasing our heart rate further.

00:39:52.580 | It's responsible for a number of effects

00:39:54.220 | on the so-called endothelial cells

00:39:55.920 | that make up the vessels and capillaries.

00:39:58.620 | And it has impacts on the neurons in our body

00:40:01.540 | that create all sorts of changes

00:40:02.740 | in the way that blood flows,

00:40:04.060 | how fast it flows, and so on and so forth.

00:40:06.580 | Now, here's a key thing to understand.

00:40:08.100 | Adrenaline, epinephrine,

00:40:09.560 | does not cross the blood-brain barrier.

00:40:12.060 | So the adrenaline from our adrenals

00:40:14.540 | doesn't actually get into the brain

00:40:16.020 | to stimulate elevated levels of alertness.

00:40:18.100 | Rather, it acts on receptors on the vagus nerve.

00:40:21.400 | Again, the vagus nerve communicates with the brain,

00:40:23.380 | and also in the vagus nerve,

00:40:24.860 | certain brain areas communicate with the body.

00:40:27.540 | So adrenaline has a lot of effects within the body,

00:40:30.420 | but when it's released,

00:40:31.320 | it also acts on so-called adrenergic receptors

00:40:33.820 | on the vagus nerve.

00:40:35.340 | Then the vagus nerve is activated in a way

00:40:37.780 | that stimulates the activity of a brain area,

00:40:40.260 | because remember, the vagus goes from the body

00:40:42.140 | into the brain,

00:40:43.340 | stimulates the so-called NST,

00:40:45.660 | and because neuroanatomists like to argue about naming,

00:40:48.240 | sometimes it'll also be called the NTS,

00:40:51.060 | the nucleus of the solitary tract,

00:40:53.100 | or the nucleus tractus solitaris.

00:40:55.660 | Super annoying, I know.

00:40:57.200 | Forget the acronym unless you want to know

00:40:59.140 | that it's sometimes NST and sometimes it's NTS.

00:41:02.120 | Don't ask me why neuroanatomists do this.

00:41:04.060 | In any case, the NST can then communicate

00:41:06.220 | with a really important brain area

00:41:07.660 | whose name you should remember,

00:41:09.300 | which is the locus coeruleus.

00:41:11.580 | The locus coeruleus contains neurons

00:41:13.380 | that release, among other things, norepinephrine,

00:41:16.360 | which is similar in action to epinephrine, but different.

00:41:19.780 | Neurons in the locus coeruleus send those little wires

00:41:22.240 | that we call axons into the brain

00:41:24.260 | in a very widespread manner.

00:41:25.980 | It's almost as if they're positioned to sprinkler the brain

00:41:28.340 | with a neurochemical,

00:41:29.260 | and that neurochemical is norepinephrine.

00:41:31.940 | They also have the capacity to release other neurochemicals,

00:41:34.300 | but right now we're concentrating on norepinephrine.

00:41:36.600 | When norepinephrine is released from the locus coeruleus,

00:41:39.500 | it has this tendency to elevate the levels of activity

00:41:42.580 | in other brain areas

00:41:43.660 | through this sort of sprinklering-like mechanism.

00:41:46.660 | What that means is that other areas of the brain,

00:41:49.340 | such as your prefrontal cortex, such as your hippocampus,

00:41:52.380 | such as different areas of the hypothalamus,

00:41:54.540 | and indeed lots of brain circuits,

00:41:56.700 | all have a greater capacity to be engaged.

00:41:59.460 | This is what we're talking about

00:42:00.980 | when we talk about autonomic arousal,

00:42:03.220 | release of adrenaline from the adrenals

00:42:04.940 | that has action within the body,

00:42:06.420 | elevated heart rate, blood pressure, et cetera,

00:42:08.460 | and then adrenaline also from the adrenals to the vagus,

00:42:11.200 | from the vagus to the NST,

00:42:12.780 | NST to locus coeruleus,

00:42:14.340 | and then locus coeruleus sprinklers the brain

00:42:16.860 | with this norepinephrine,

00:42:18.120 | raising the levels of baseline activity

00:42:20.180 | in all those brain areas

00:42:21.460 | and making them more likely to be engaged

00:42:24.540 | by things that we're trying to attend to,

00:42:26.460 | more likely to engage, say,

00:42:28.060 | the neurons of the prefrontal cortex

00:42:29.940 | that can learn context-dependent strategy switching,

00:42:32.760 | such as in a stroop task,

00:42:34.300 | or when we're trying to attend to information

00:42:36.420 | and we go, "Okay, here's something important.

00:42:38.020 | "I need to pay attention to this."

00:42:39.620 | We're able to do that

00:42:40.580 | because of that elevated level of norepinephrine.

00:42:42.980 | It facilitates, it's permissive

00:42:44.940 | for elevating our levels of attention and focus.

00:42:47.160 | It's also permissive for our hippocampus

00:42:49.380 | to encode new memories

00:42:50.700 | and for a bunch of other brain areas

00:42:52.200 | to do their thing, so to speak.

00:42:54.540 | So knowing these mechanisms is actually worthwhile.

00:42:56.760 | If you've ever heard that exercise can give you energy,

00:43:00.620 | this is the basis of that statement, right?

00:43:03.060 | Many people, in fact, myself for many years thought,

00:43:05.260 | "Okay, I definitely have to sleep well

00:43:07.220 | "in order to have energy and focus."

00:43:08.980 | That's absolutely true.

00:43:09.940 | Still true, will always be true.

00:43:11.780 | "I should maybe have some caffeine,

00:43:13.260 | "be hydrated, well-nourished, all this stuff

00:43:15.840 | "in order to have the energy to exercise."

00:43:18.700 | But it's also true that exercise gives us energy,

00:43:21.860 | and this is how it gives us energy.

00:43:24.000 | When we move our body, the adrenals release adrenaline,

00:43:27.380 | and the adrenaline acts through two different

00:43:29.780 | so-called parallel pathways within the body,

00:43:32.620 | but again, it doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier,

00:43:34.640 | so then there's a series of what we call signaling relays

00:43:37.280 | or circuit relays up to the locus coeruleus,

00:43:39.380 | and then a sort of analog, it's different,

00:43:41.820 | but an analog to epinephrine, norepinephrine,

00:43:44.500 | is released within the brain,

00:43:45.820 | and lo and behold, we have elevated levels

00:43:47.700 | of both bodily energy and brain energy and focus

00:43:51.340 | that we can devote to that exercise,

00:43:53.100 | but also to the learning that comes after that exercise,

00:43:56.800 | which explains pretty much everything

00:43:58.220 | that we've talked about up until now

00:44:00.060 | during the course of this podcast.

00:44:01.560 | So the next time you're feeling a little tired

00:44:03.100 | and you don't want to work out,

00:44:04.060 | remember, exercise gives you energy

00:44:06.460 | through the pathways that I just described.

00:44:08.760 | Now, anytime I talk about the adrenals,

00:44:10.620 | people start talking about adrenal burnout.

00:44:12.740 | They say, "Oh, you burn out your adrenals."

00:44:14.180 | You know, there are these crazy theories

00:44:15.460 | that you'll hear out there.

00:44:16.620 | You know, "Coffee burns out your adrenals."

00:44:18.700 | Not true.

00:44:19.580 | You'll hear that if you exercise too much,

00:44:21.620 | it might burn out your energy or your adrenals.

00:44:24.060 | Look, you have enough capacity within your adrenals

00:44:26.460 | to survive relatively long famines,

00:44:29.660 | to survive long bouts of challenge,

00:44:32.700 | stress of many, many different kinds,

00:44:34.540 | short challenges, and so on.

00:44:36.340 | You're not gonna burn out your adrenals.

00:44:38.540 | There is something called adrenal insufficiency syndrome,

00:44:41.300 | which is a real syndrome.

00:44:42.220 | There are diseases of the adrenals,

00:44:43.620 | but that's not what we're referring to here.

00:44:45.600 | You have plenty of adrenaline in your adrenals

00:44:48.060 | that you can deploy through movement, through exercise,

00:44:52.180 | to get the elevation and arousal, attention, and so forth

00:44:55.100 | that we've been talking about.

00:44:56.460 | In fact, there's a set of biological pathways

00:44:58.460 | that were just recently discovered

00:45:00.340 | that will allow you to understand how to use movement

00:45:02.860 | in order to engage your adrenals

00:45:05.020 | so that then those adrenals can release adrenaline,

00:45:07.980 | impact your vagus, impact the organs of your body,

00:45:10.460 | the locus coeruleus,

00:45:11.500 | and elevate your levels of attention and focus.

00:45:15.100 | And a lot of the core components of these pathways

00:45:17.780 | are highlighted in a paper that I absolutely love,

00:45:20.340 | another paper I absolutely love.

00:45:22.480 | This is from Peter Strick's laboratory

00:45:23.920 | at University of Pittsburgh,

00:45:26.120 | which is entitled "The Mind-Body Problem,

00:45:28.340 | Circuits that Link the Cerebral Cortex

00:45:30.440 | to the Adrenal Medulla."

00:45:31.480 | The adrenal medulla are those adrenals

00:45:33.320 | that I've been referring to in the body.

00:45:35.140 | And the question that Peter Strick and colleagues asked

00:45:37.340 | was how is it that movement actually gets the adrenals

00:45:40.920 | to release adrenaline?

00:45:42.080 | Like, what's the signal?

00:45:42.960 | Does it come from the muscles?

00:45:44.480 | Does it come from the skeleton?

00:45:46.820 | It's perfectly reasonable to assume

00:45:49.400 | that there are signals that come from the muscles

00:45:51.320 | and from the skeleton that cause the adrenals

00:45:53.520 | to release adrenaline when we exercise.

00:45:56.300 | But what Strick and colleagues did

00:45:58.360 | was actually super clever.

00:45:59.580 | They took some new tools that had just become available.

00:46:02.760 | These are tools that allow the tracing of neural circuits

00:46:05.580 | from organs in the body all the way back up to the brain,

00:46:08.720 | or from one brain structure to another brain structure,

00:46:11.360 | and then to yet another brain structure.

00:46:13.780 | We don't have time to go into all the technical details,

00:46:16.280 | but this is a technique

00:46:17.960 | that perhaps I'll talk about on a future podcast.

00:46:19.760 | It's one that my laboratory used for a number of years

00:46:21.760 | to trace other neural pathways.

00:46:24.000 | What they discovered is that there are essentially

00:46:26.160 | three categories of brain areas,

00:46:28.560 | all of which communicate with the adrenals

00:46:30.560 | and can cause them to release adrenaline

00:46:32.920 | to create this elevation and arousal and attention.

00:46:35.660 | Those three brain areas include areas of the brain

00:46:39.400 | that are involved in thinking, what we call cognition,

00:46:42.320 | areas of the brain that are related

00:46:44.280 | to what are called affective states,

00:46:45.920 | which is just kind of a more general category

00:46:48.120 | that includes emotions.

00:46:49.560 | Okay, if you saw the Huberman Lab podcast episode

00:46:51.760 | that I did with Lisa Feldman Barrett,

00:46:53.600 | she explains beautifully the distinction

00:46:55.960 | between affective states and emotions.

00:46:58.120 | But these are brain areas that basically relate

00:47:00.240 | to what we are feeling, or how we're perceiving

00:47:03.200 | our environment and how we're reacting to it,

00:47:05.120 | these sorts of things.

00:47:06.080 | And then there's a third category of brain areas

00:47:08.920 | that most robustly communicates with the adrenals.

00:47:12.000 | And these are a collection of brain areas

00:47:14.040 | that are all involved with movement

00:47:16.360 | of particular areas of our body.

00:47:18.880 | These areas are broadly referred to as the motor network.

00:47:21.600 | So these are areas of the so-called cerebral cortex,

00:47:24.000 | which are on the outer portion of the brain.

00:47:25.840 | And they send these wires down the spinal cord.

00:47:29.480 | There's a little relay in the spinal cord,

00:47:31.760 | it's called the IML.

00:47:33.280 | If you're interested in the anatomical details,

00:47:35.720 | I'll put the link to this paper in the show note captions.

00:47:39.120 | In any case, these brain areas that are involved

00:47:41.600 | in motor movement, send axons, those wires,

00:47:44.600 | down to the spinal cord.

00:47:46.080 | Then from the spinal cord, they send a relay out

00:47:50.120 | via what's called the cholinergic preganglionic neurons.

00:47:52.800 | Basically what ends up happening is that acetylcholine,

00:47:55.120 | which is a neuromodulator, is released from these neurons

00:47:58.520 | that originate in the spinal cord onto the adrenal medulla.

00:48:02.600 | And then the adrenal medulla, the so-called adrenals,

00:48:04.920 | same thing, adrenal medulla, adrenals, releases adrenaline.

00:48:08.320 | That creates these effects in the body, on the heart,

00:48:10.560 | the muscles and other tissues.

00:48:12.120 | And then as described before,

00:48:14.440 | that adrenaline also acts on the vagus,

00:48:16.160 | the vagus up to the NST, the locus coeruleus,

00:48:18.160 | and we have this elevation in alertness.

00:48:20.400 | So this paper and papers that came subsequent to it,

00:48:24.340 | really explain how it is that the movement of our body,

00:48:27.720 | AKA exercise, allows us to have this elevation

00:48:31.680 | in arousal and alertness.

00:48:33.480 | It's a loop, okay?

00:48:34.760 | The adrenals release adrenaline.

00:48:36.480 | They do these things by these two parallel pathways

00:48:38.160 | I've been talking about.

00:48:39.400 | But your decision to engage these motor areas,

00:48:43.180 | to move particular areas of your body,

00:48:45.540 | is what deploys that adrenaline.

00:48:47.720 | Now you might be thinking, well, duh, okay?

00:48:50.120 | When I exercise, there's adrenaline release.

00:48:51.800 | In order to exercise, I need to move my body.

00:48:53.960 | And these brain areas control the movement of my body.

00:48:56.720 | But it's not a duh.

00:48:58.200 | It's actually very profound because it turns out

00:49:00.920 | that the specific brain areas

00:49:03.200 | that best activate the adrenals,

00:49:05.560 | are the brain areas that control the muscles closest

00:49:08.840 | to the midline, the core musculature,

00:49:11.560 | and the brain areas that are involved in generating

00:49:13.680 | the sorts of movements that we would call

00:49:15.240 | compound movements,

00:49:16.720 | at least in the context of resistance training,

00:49:18.880 | or that are responsible for moving multiple joints

00:49:21.820 | at the same time.

00:49:23.380 | So what this means in the practical sense is,

00:49:25.560 | if you are feeling sluggish, you want energy,

00:49:29.360 | or you're simply exercising both for bodily effects

00:49:32.720 | and for brain effects,

00:49:33.560 | you need the deployment of adrenaline, of epinephrine.

00:49:36.200 | You need the deployment of norepinephrine in the brain.

00:49:39.120 | And by the way, anytime you have a deployment

00:49:41.160 | of norepinephrine in the brain,

00:49:42.720 | almost always there's a coordinated action

00:49:45.520 | of release of dopamine,

00:49:47.120 | which most people have heard of by now.

00:49:48.760 | Dopamine is involved in motivation

00:49:50.360 | as well as movement, et cetera.

00:49:52.320 | So the simple takeaway here is,

00:49:55.220 | if you want to get the arousal that comes from exercise

00:49:58.400 | in order to use that arousal,

00:50:00.080 | to leverage it towards better cognition,

00:50:02.400 | brain health, et cetera,

00:50:04.040 | the key thing is to make sure that you're doing exercises

00:50:06.680 | that are compound exercises.

00:50:07.920 | So that these would be the movements.

00:50:09.620 | You can look these up, just say compound exercises.

00:50:11.780 | You can put that anywhere,

00:50:12.620 | and you'll see that that includes things like squats,

00:50:15.180 | deadlifts, bench presses, dips, pull-ups, rows.

00:50:19.000 | And yes, of course, you want to train your whole body

00:50:20.800 | so that you have symmetry of a function of strength,

00:50:24.440 | and you want to offset any injuries

00:50:25.880 | and things of that sort, or aesthetic reasons, perhaps.

00:50:29.700 | But the idea here is, if you want energy from exercise,

00:50:32.680 | you want focus, you need the deployment

00:50:34.400 | of the neurochemicals that we've been discussing,

00:50:36.040 | most notably epinephrine and norepinephrine.

00:50:38.480 | And through the identification of this motor network,

00:50:40.980 | as well as the affective and cognitive networks

00:50:43.300 | that converge on this area of the spinal cord

00:50:46.720 | and then send communication to the adrenal medulla,

00:50:50.620 | you can essentially control the levels of arousal

00:50:54.260 | that your body and brain produces.

00:50:56.980 | So in describing this,

00:50:58.120 | my hope is that you'll no longer think about exercise

00:51:00.200 | as just elevating your heart rate,

00:51:01.920 | or you no longer think about exercise

00:51:03.600 | just as moving your body,

00:51:04.680 | but rather that the movement of your body

00:51:06.440 | is creating specific neurochemical outcomes,

00:51:09.600 | both in the body and the brain that create the arousal

00:51:12.840 | that initiates the improvements in focus and attention

00:51:15.960 | that allow you to learn better,

00:51:17.480 | and that contribute generally to brain health and longevity.

00:51:20.440 | And of course, you aficionados out there will remind me,

00:51:23.520 | I'm sure, but I'm going to beat you to the punch here.

00:51:26.280 | Yes, your hypothalamus is also talking to your pituitary,

00:51:29.960 | which releases certain chemicals into your bloodstream,

00:51:32.440 | which also go to your adrenals

00:51:34.480 | to cause your adrenals to deploy

00:51:36.680 | both adrenaline, epinephrine, as well as cortisol.

00:51:39.520 | That pathway is still intact, okay?

00:51:41.680 | But that's a slightly slower pathway.

00:51:43.880 | Here, I'm focusing on the neural pathways,

00:51:45.960 | some of which have only recently been discovered

00:51:47.880 | in the last five or 10 years,

00:51:50.080 | that work very, very fast to generate the sorts of arousal

00:51:53.900 | that are relevant to brain function and brain longevity.

00:51:57.440 | Okay, nothing has changed in terms of the old story

00:52:00.000 | about how the brain impacts the adrenals,

00:52:01.560 | that's all still there,

00:52:02.720 | but here we're into the modern stuff.

00:52:05.120 | And by the way, for those of you that are interested

00:52:07.120 | in things like psychosomatic disorders, trauma,

00:52:10.880 | and how trauma can, quote unquote, be stored in the body,

00:52:13.480 | and not so much stored in the body,

00:52:15.040 | but how it can impact the body,

00:52:16.440 | and then how the body itself can impact the brain,

00:52:20.080 | this paper has also been used as support for the idea

00:52:22.800 | that indeed, those affective areas, those emotional areas,

00:52:26.060 | those cognitive areas have a route

00:52:28.360 | by which they can communicate with the adrenal medulla

00:52:31.120 | to cause the release of adrenaline

00:52:32.620 | when we have specific thoughts.

00:52:34.280 | It was always known that if we have specific thoughts,

00:52:36.160 | it can, quote unquote, stress us out,

00:52:37.560 | our heart rate can go up, et cetera.

00:52:39.320 | This paper also provides a reasonable anatomical substrate

00:52:43.080 | for that phenomenon.

00:52:44.420 | You know, I never want to make too much

00:52:45.600 | of any one single paper or finding,

00:52:48.020 | but I will say that after I read that paper

00:52:50.160 | from Strick and colleagues,

00:52:51.340 | and through some of the subsequent discussions

00:52:53.300 | about that paper that I overheard at meetings and so forth,

00:52:56.280 | it really made me think differently about exercise.

00:52:58.520 | And now, anytime that I'm feeling tired,

00:53:00.320 | provided that I'm not chronically sleep-deprived

00:53:03.000 | or something of that sort,

00:53:04.400 | I remind myself that if I start moving my body,

00:53:07.320 | in particular, if I engage core muscles,

00:53:09.400 | that was one of the key findings in that paper,

00:53:11.000 | that the areas of the brain that control the core muscles,

00:53:14.280 | as well as do compound movements, I move multiple joints,

00:53:17.600 | I start, you know, warming up in a way

00:53:19.280 | that includes some, you know, maybe even just air squats,

00:53:21.680 | or some running in place, or jumping jacks,

00:53:23.540 | things of that sort,

00:53:25.140 | that the increase in energy that I'm perceiving is real.

00:53:28.420 | It's based on the same neurochemical outputs

00:53:31.020 | that would occur had I gone into the gym,

00:53:32.940 | or to the run, or whatever workout with tons of energy,

00:53:36.060 | it would just have increased

00:53:37.140 | the level of adrenaline further.

00:53:38.900 | So this idea that we can actually control our body

00:53:41.580 | with our mind, and to some extent, our mind with our body,

00:53:44.860 | that's absolutely true.

00:53:46.580 | And this is one of the tools

00:53:47.500 | that I find particularly useful

00:53:49.500 | anytime I want to overcome that wall of kind of resistance

00:53:53.140 | to not doing the physical exercise that I know I,

00:53:55.700 | and basically all of us, should be doing.

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00:55:45.200 | Okay, so let's think just a little bit more

00:55:46.860 | about how the body communicates

00:55:48.140 | with the brain during exercise,

00:55:50.140 | both in order to understand the mechanisms

00:55:52.540 | by which exercise improves brain health and function,

00:55:56.140 | but also ways that we can leverage that

00:55:58.480 | to improve brain health and function by using exercise.

00:56:02.620 | One of the more interesting and powerful

00:56:04.260 | and indeed surprising ways

00:56:05.740 | that the body communicates with the brain during exercise

00:56:07.900 | to improve brain health,

00:56:09.220 | and indeed our ability to remember things and to learn,

00:56:12.460 | is the way that our bones, our skeleton,

00:56:15.240 | when they're under loads, okay,

00:56:17.280 | when they experience mechanical stress,

00:56:19.340 | not severe mechanical stress that would break them,

00:56:21.720 | but mechanical stress, they release hormones,

00:56:25.080 | in particular, something called osteocalcin.

00:56:28.080 | You might be thinking, wait, the bones release hormones?

00:56:31.000 | Yes, your bones release hormones,

00:56:32.840 | one of which is called osteocalcin.

00:56:34.960 | Osteocalcin is an incredible molecule.

00:56:37.120 | Animal studies that were done

00:56:38.480 | mainly at Columbia School of Medicine,

00:56:40.400 | but later also at Columbia and elsewhere in humans

00:56:44.060 | have shown that osteocalcin

00:56:45.420 | is released from the bones during exercise,

00:56:47.500 | both in mice and in humans,

00:56:49.500 | travels to the brain

00:56:50.500 | so it can cross the blood-brain barrier,

00:56:52.660 | and there it can encourage the growth of neurons

00:56:54.940 | and their connections within the hippocampus,

00:56:57.020 | an area of the brain that's vitally important

00:56:59.140 | for the encoding of new memories,

00:57:01.260 | and there are some data, not a ton,

00:57:03.460 | but there's some data which suggests that perhaps,

00:57:06.320 | I want to highlight, underscore, and boldface,

00:57:09.540 | perhaps, can increase the number of neurons

00:57:12.100 | in the so-called dentate gyrus of the hippocampus

00:57:14.500 | to allow even better capacity for memory.

00:57:17.100 | Now, osteocalcin is therefore

00:57:18.820 | a really interesting molecule, right?

00:57:20.160 | Comes from bones, travels to the brain,

00:57:22.380 | improves functioning of the hippocampus,

00:57:24.340 | which is important for learning and memory.

00:57:26.620 | That's amazing, and it does so in part

00:57:30.340 | through the actions of something

00:57:31.620 | that most of you perhaps have heard of,

00:57:33.460 | which is called BDNF, or brain-derived nootrophic factor.

00:57:37.520 | Now, it's very important for us to understand

00:57:40.160 | that any time we hear about exercise

00:57:42.080 | increases a growth factor, and by the way,

00:57:44.200 | exercise increases brain-derived nootrophic factor,

00:57:46.680 | it increases growth factors

00:57:47.880 | that cause the growth of endothelial cells,

00:57:49.720 | so blood vessels, we'll talk more about that in a moment,

00:57:52.080 | and it increases nerve growth factors.

00:57:53.800 | It's not just BDNF.

00:57:55.020 | There are lots of different growth factors,

00:57:57.020 | a few of which, NGF and BDNF, act on neurons,

00:58:00.840 | and other growth factors that act

00:58:02.520 | on endothelial cells, vasculature.

00:58:04.540 | It seems that a lot of the effects of BDNF on the brain

00:58:08.920 | that are caused by doing exercise and that benefit us

00:58:12.120 | in terms of short and long-term memory,

00:58:13.800 | our ability to encode new things

00:58:15.360 | and remember them for long periods of time,

00:58:17.160 | to resist age-related degeneration,

00:58:20.480 | because that's the case, indeed,

00:58:22.040 | that our hippocampus decreases in volume over time

00:58:24.960 | as we age, just naturally, even in somebody

00:58:27.000 | that doesn't have Alzheimer's, dementia,

00:58:29.560 | and exercise can adjust the slope

00:58:32.080 | of that decline significantly,

00:58:35.040 | provided there's enough exercise

00:58:36.400 | and the appropriate exercise.

00:58:38.400 | I don't think all, but many of the effects of BDNF

00:58:41.160 | appear to be mediated by osteocalcin.

00:58:44.360 | What this means is that any exercise program

00:58:47.000 | that's designed not just to benefit our body,

00:58:49.160 | but also our brain health and performance,

00:58:52.600 | should do something to load the skeleton

00:58:55.720 | in some sort of impactful way

00:58:57.800 | that causes the release of osteocalcin.

00:59:00.400 | Now, unfortunately, there has not been

00:59:02.100 | a systematic exploration of the specific types of exercise

00:59:05.820 | that best cause the release of osteocalcin in humans,

00:59:10.160 | but based on what we understand

00:59:11.640 | about how osteocalcin is made and released,

00:59:14.560 | it seems reasonable to assume and reasonable to employ

00:59:18.680 | some exercise within your weekly exercise

00:59:21.040 | that involves jumping of some sort,

00:59:23.640 | in particular, jumping where you have to control

00:59:25.900 | the eccentric or landing portion of that jump.

00:59:28.720 | Now, I'm certainly not the first to talk about this.

00:59:30.920 | It's been discussed in a different context,

00:59:33.080 | that is jumping and landing has been discussed

00:59:35.580 | in a different context,

00:59:36.800 | namely by Peter Atiyah and others,

00:59:39.240 | who have talked about the fact that as people age,

00:59:41.600 | one of the primary causes of mortality are the infections

00:59:45.720 | and the lack of mobility caused by falls

00:59:49.920 | that people generally have when they're going downstairs

00:59:53.000 | or down things, stepping down is a common source of falls,

00:59:55.640 | falls are a common source of breaking things,

00:59:57.800 | breaking things is a common source of inactivity

00:59:59.620 | and inactivity is a common source of infections

01:00:02.080 | and other things that lead to earlier mortality.

01:00:04.480 | What this means for all of us, young, middle-aged, and old,

01:00:10.600 | is that we should include some form of jumping

01:00:12.840 | in our weekly exercise.

01:00:13.840 | Now, you could imagine doing that

01:00:15.580 | within your high-intensity interval training,

01:00:17.440 | provided you can do it safely and not get injured,

01:00:19.960 | but this is also a call for all of us to think about,

01:00:22.600 | including, say, some jumping rope,

01:00:24.880 | and if you're going to jump rope,

01:00:25.920 | maybe not just jumping a centimeter off the ground

01:00:28.880 | to be able to just consistently skip, skip, skip, skip along,

01:00:31.720 | but maybe doing some high knees,

01:00:32.860 | maybe doing some double-unders if you can do those,

01:00:35.900 | perhaps doing some box jumps,

01:00:37.640 | so jumping off boxes at different heights,

01:00:39.280 | again, what you can do safely without getting injured,

01:00:41.780 | no doubt is going to provide load to the skeleton,

01:00:44.880 | I guess, unless you're doing it underwater in outer space,

01:00:47.320 | it's hard to imagine how it wouldn't,

01:00:48.840 | and that seems to me like the most direct way

01:00:52.240 | to employ this osteocalcin pathway.

01:00:54.820 | This pathway from the bones to the brain

01:00:58.360 | and neurogenesis in the hippocampus,

01:01:00.080 | I do believe is likely to underlie

01:01:03.540 | a lot of the enhancement of learning and memory

01:01:06.280 | that's seen in terms of the chronic effects of exercise

01:01:09.560 | on brain health and brain function over time,

01:01:13.120 | that is, not just the things that exercise does via arousal

01:01:17.160 | in the minutes and hours after exercise,

01:01:19.620 | but the way that exercise can improve, literally,

01:01:23.140 | the size and structure of one

01:01:25.240 | of the most critical structures in our brain

01:01:26.920 | that's responsible for learning and memory, the hippocampus.

01:01:30.040 | And of course, there are a lot of other ways

01:01:31.520 | that the body communicates with the brain,

01:01:33.060 | we definitely don't have time to go through all of them,

01:01:35.320 | but it's worth thinking about a few of them logically,

01:01:38.320 | just in terms of listing them off

01:01:40.160 | and thinking about how they might communicate with the brain

01:01:41.960 | to improve brain health and longevity.

01:01:44.260 | When you exercise, you utilize fuel differently,

01:01:47.600 | depending on whether or not you're relying on glycogen

01:01:49.880 | or fatty acids, and of course,

01:01:51.240 | it's going to depend on how long you've been exercising

01:01:53.380 | and the type of exercise and what you're using for fuel,

01:01:56.420 | literally the foods you eat, et cetera.

01:01:58.180 | We don't have time to go into all of that, but get this,

01:02:01.100 | turns out that there are liver to brain neural pathways.

01:02:05.100 | So your liver can communicate with neurons

01:02:08.420 | and other cells in your brain, including the glial cells,

01:02:11.340 | the cells that are important for regulating

01:02:13.940 | energy metabolism and a bunch of other things too.

01:02:16.460 | Your liver can communicate to your brain,

01:02:19.060 | both through neural pathways

01:02:21.360 | and by releasing things into your bloodstream

01:02:23.280 | that then communicate to your brain,

01:02:24.640 | oh, the body is using a different source of fuel.

01:02:26.760 | It's been using different sources

01:02:28.120 | or combinations of fuels for the last 20 minutes.

01:02:30.440 | Maybe you should adjust your brain state

01:02:32.040 | in order to be able to cope with that

01:02:34.800 | or in response to that.

01:02:36.520 | And of course, there are other organs in the body

01:02:39.320 | that are communicating with the brain also.

01:02:41.000 | Your diaphragm, for instance,

01:02:42.520 | is communicating with your brain through indirect pathways

01:02:45.440 | about how you're breathing during exercise.

01:02:47.160 | And of course, your brain is controlling your diaphragm too

01:02:50.040 | via a number of stations,

01:02:51.300 | including the pathway that includes the phrenic nerve,

01:02:54.780 | which controls the diaphragm.

01:02:57.060 | The point here is that once you start exercising,

01:02:59.780 | of course it has an impact on the organs in your body.

01:03:02.100 | They change the way that they're functioning,

01:03:03.820 | your heart, your liver, your adrenals, your skeleton,

01:03:06.900 | literally your bones, and of course your muscles.

01:03:09.600 | And they're releasing things that impact brain function

01:03:13.660 | either directly or indirectly.

01:03:16.220 | Once you start thinking about exercise in that context,

01:03:19.460 | even if we don't parse each and every one

01:03:21.340 | of those pathways individually,

01:03:23.180 | you can start thinking about exercise

01:03:25.180 | as a multifactorial way of enhancing

01:03:28.300 | and changing brain activity

01:03:30.060 | so that it positions it to learn better

01:03:32.300 | in the subsequent hours and days,

01:03:34.020 | as well as modifying areas of the brain

01:03:36.100 | like the hippocampus by making certain brain areas

01:03:39.040 | literally bigger, more powerful

01:03:41.340 | at engaging the sorts of things that they do

01:03:43.860 | in the case of the hippocampus,

01:03:45.160 | learning, in the case of the prefrontal cortex,

01:03:47.080 | context-dependent decision-making,

01:03:49.320 | updating strategies, these sorts of things.

01:03:51.740 | And generally speaking, exercise causes the release

01:03:54.540 | of things like BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor,

01:03:57.060 | and nerve growth factor that enhance the health

01:04:00.340 | and stability of existing neuron connections.

01:04:03.260 | And something that is very rarely,

01:04:05.660 | if ever, discussed publicly,

01:04:07.420 | not because it's some sort of secret

01:04:09.460 | that people want to keep,

01:04:10.300 | but I just don't hear it discussed,

01:04:11.400 | is that BDNF is an activity-dependent molecule.

01:04:15.820 | It's a molecule that can serve to stabilize

01:04:18.340 | and enhance the growth of neurons,

01:04:20.360 | keep their connections in place, grow new connections,

01:04:24.340 | and it does so when neurons are active.

01:04:27.100 | So the point is that BDNF has to be released

01:04:29.220 | in order for that to happen,

01:04:30.900 | but the release of BDNF itself is activity-dependent,

01:04:34.700 | and it acts best on neurons that are already active.

01:04:38.140 | So if ever there was a mechanism

01:04:39.540 | that could explain why it is that people

01:04:41.500 | that exercise regularly seem to maintain healthier brains

01:04:44.740 | into later life, it's that one.

01:04:47.020 | It's that BDNF is activity-dependent.

01:04:49.480 | And when I say activity-dependent,

01:04:50.700 | I mean the electrical activity of neurons

01:04:52.700 | is what causes the release of BDNF.

01:04:55.420 | And then once BDNF is released,

01:04:57.620 | it has the best opportunity to stabilize

01:05:00.900 | and enhance the growth of existing neurons

01:05:03.020 | if those other neurons are already active.

01:05:06.060 | Now, if we were to list off all the different pathways

01:05:08.940 | and mechanisms by which exercise improves brain health

01:05:12.900 | and performance, it would be a list of probably,

01:05:16.300 | I don't know, somewhere between 40

01:05:19.020 | and 100 different molecular pathways,

01:05:21.260 | and probably, I don't know, somewhere between 12

01:05:24.700 | and 20 different anatomical pathways.

01:05:26.840 | And we certainly don't have time for all that.

01:05:28.340 | I don't think that's what you're interested in.

01:05:29.700 | I've tried to just highlight some of the key ones today.

01:05:32.100 | One additional one that I'd like to highlight

01:05:35.140 | is the lactate pathway,

01:05:36.780 | or the impact of lactate when we exercise.

01:05:39.060 | This is getting discussed more and more these days

01:05:41.180 | on podcasts and elsewhere.

01:05:42.600 | One interesting finding, for instance,

01:05:45.220 | is that lactate is what's produced

01:05:47.420 | when we exercise intensely.

01:05:48.940 | Our muscles produce lactate,

01:05:50.300 | and lactate is a very powerful appetite suppressant.

01:05:53.760 | Now, some of you may be saying,

01:05:55.420 | "When I exercise hard, I get really, really hungry."

01:05:58.340 | Well, that may be true,

01:05:59.720 | but it's also true that if you exercise really, really hard,

01:06:03.540 | and then you hydrate well, and you wait a little while,

01:06:06.380 | oftentimes that hunger will subside.

01:06:08.820 | I'm not saying that you should starve yourself

01:06:10.220 | after exercise, fuel as needed for you.

01:06:12.180 | If you're an intermittent faster, do that thing.

01:06:14.300 | If you like to eat right after you exercise, do that.

01:06:16.620 | Do what's best for you,

01:06:17.540 | but understand that lactate has powerful effects

01:06:20.520 | on our appetite, because why?

01:06:22.740 | Because lactate has powerful effects,

01:06:24.560 | not just on our body, but on our brain.

01:06:27.100 | And it is able to impact the activity of neurons

01:06:29.820 | in our so-called hypothalamus,

01:06:31.700 | little marble-sized region above the roof of our mouth,

01:06:34.520 | that contains some of the neurons

01:06:36.340 | that control our appetite and our degree of satiety.

01:06:40.500 | So the point here is that lactate

01:06:41.740 | is a molecule produced in the body

01:06:43.180 | that can actually signal to the brain.

01:06:44.740 | Most of you perhaps have heard

01:06:46.680 | that lactate can be used as a fuel for neurons.

01:06:49.260 | During exercise, lactate is the preferred fuel for neurons

01:06:53.540 | under most circumstances,

01:06:54.740 | especially under circumstances of intense exercise,

01:06:57.660 | that spares glucose for other things,

01:07:00.140 | including for cognitive work later on.

01:07:02.860 | This is perhaps one of the reasons

01:07:04.620 | why when people do intense exercise,

01:07:06.980 | provided it's not too long and too intense,

01:07:09.420 | and then you go to learn something,

01:07:10.980 | you have enhanced focus.

01:07:12.060 | It's because of the arousal

01:07:13.420 | we've been talking about all along today,

01:07:14.900 | but it's also because we believe that there's glucose,

01:07:18.580 | there's fuel that's been spared

01:07:20.120 | that then can be used by the neurons

01:07:21.580 | because during the exercise,

01:07:23.180 | you weren't using quite as much glucose,

01:07:24.820 | you were using lactate.

01:07:26.340 | Now, lactate is also a stimulus

01:07:28.900 | for something called the blood-brain barrier,

01:07:31.500 | which is made up of endothelial cells,

01:07:33.140 | specialized endothelial cells that act as a barrier

01:07:35.540 | so that certain things, in particular large molecules,

01:07:37.700 | can't cross from the body into the brain.

01:07:40.620 | Lactate stimulates the release

01:07:42.180 | of something called VEGF, V-G-E-F,

01:07:44.420 | which is basically an endothelial growth factor

01:07:47.300 | that promotes the stability and growth

01:07:49.380 | of the blood-brain barrier.

01:07:50.700 | This is very important in the context

01:07:52.340 | of brain health and longevity,

01:07:53.820 | and longevity in particular,

01:07:55.460 | because one of the major features

01:07:57.620 | of age-related cognitive decline,

01:07:59.740 | and one that's greatly exacerbated in Alzheimer's,

01:08:02.620 | is a breakdown of the blood-brain barrier.

01:08:04.660 | So the integrity, the structure and function

01:08:06.860 | of the blood-brain barrier

01:08:08.180 | is something that's very important

01:08:09.420 | and related to brain health.

01:08:11.100 | An exercise that's intense enough to produce lactate

01:08:14.940 | causes the increase in VEGF

01:08:17.260 | that acts on and within the endothelial cells

01:08:20.220 | to improve the integrity of the blood-brain barrier.

01:08:23.220 | And because I mentioned the astrocytes earlier,

01:08:25.300 | and because I did my postdoc with somebody

01:08:27.000 | that was sort of famous

01:08:29.220 | for popularizing the study of astrocytes

01:08:31.380 | when no one else wanted to study the astrocytes,

01:08:33.020 | now everybody studies the astrocytes.

01:08:34.520 | But I have to mention something about astrocytes,

01:08:36.780 | which, no, they're not just a support cell.

01:08:39.140 | Certain types of cells in the brain are called glia.

01:08:41.620 | The glia come in multiple forms, oligodendrocytes,

01:08:43.980 | in the periphery, they're called Schwann cells,

01:08:46.260 | but then you also have astrocytes.

01:08:47.620 | And astrocytes sit around the synapse,

01:08:49.360 | they ensheathe synapses.

01:08:50.720 | Remember, synapses are the communication points

01:08:52.440 | between neurons.

01:08:53.280 | And the astrocytes are beautifully positioned

01:08:55.900 | to read out the amount of activity

01:08:57.760 | that's occurring between neurons

01:08:59.300 | and produce fuel for those neurons.

01:09:01.400 | So the astrocytes mainly use glucose for fuel,

01:09:04.200 | but they can produce lactate.

01:09:06.220 | So again, we have this activity-dependent phenomenon.

01:09:09.040 | That is, when certain neurons are very, very active,

01:09:12.240 | the astrocytes are able to produce more lactate,

01:09:14.460 | the neurons can use lactate, spares glucose,

01:09:17.060 | and a bunch of great things happen.

01:09:18.400 | When I say great things happen,

01:09:19.340 | I mean in the context of the ways

01:09:20.920 | that exercise can improve brain function,

01:09:23.040 | because those elevated levels of lactate

01:09:24.820 | in turn also increase BDNF.

01:09:27.540 | We already talked about the blood-brain barrier.

01:09:29.880 | Basically, the muscles producing lactate is terrific,

01:09:32.520 | but the astrocytes producing lactate

01:09:35.020 | for the neurons to feed on is also terrific

01:09:37.560 | because lactate can be used as a fuel

01:09:39.880 | and it triggers all these downstream

01:09:42.200 | or subsequent mechanisms, including BDNF.

01:09:44.640 | So basically what we're talking about

01:09:46.520 | is the lots and lots of ways

01:09:47.840 | that exercise improves brain health

01:09:50.200 | in the long-term, BDNF, brain plasticity,

01:09:53.480 | stability of synapses, and so forth.

01:09:55.440 | Maybe even new neurons.

01:09:56.680 | Maybe.

01:09:57.520 | Not a lot of evidence for that in humans yet, frankly,

01:09:59.900 | but maybe.

01:10:01.640 | And exercise can improve brain function in the short-term

01:10:05.060 | through mechanisms of arousal,

01:10:07.040 | but also through alternate fuel usage,

01:10:10.280 | such as lactate from the body

01:10:12.000 | and from cells within the brain

01:10:14.040 | that we call the astrocytes,

01:10:15.740 | and the release of all sorts of other things.

01:10:18.160 | IGF-1 to promote more vasculature,

01:10:20.440 | and on and on and on.

01:10:22.180 | It's really quite beautiful.

01:10:23.840 | The sort of wavefront of molecules and neural pathways

01:10:27.080 | that's initiated when we exercise,

01:10:29.480 | provided we exercise intensely enough.

01:10:31.920 | So this is a double and triple call

01:10:34.200 | for including at least some high-intensity interval training,

01:10:36.860 | VO2 max-type training each week,

01:10:38.680 | as well as doing resistance training.

01:10:40.760 | And of course, the long-duration cardiovascular training,

01:10:44.920 | the sort of 30 or 45 or 60-minute

01:10:48.560 | or maybe even two-hour zone two type stuff.

01:10:50.520 | You can look up zone two,

01:10:51.360 | but it's basically a level of cardiovascular training

01:10:53.480 | that still allows you to talk,

01:10:55.200 | but were you to go any more intensely,

01:10:56.760 | you wouldn't be able to complete sentences.

01:10:58.920 | That zone two training, of course,

01:11:01.720 | is going to be very powerful for the health and integrity

01:11:04.680 | of the cardiovascular system

01:11:06.440 | that's going to allow for the delivery

01:11:08.440 | of all these molecules.

01:11:09.920 | And of course, the delivery of blood flow itself

01:11:12.360 | to the brain, because cerebral blood flow

01:11:14.620 | is central to brain function.

01:11:16.680 | Okay, so if you're right at the threshold

01:11:18.720 | of about to be overwhelmed

01:11:19.820 | by the number of different mechanisms

01:11:21.340 | by which exercise improves brain function

01:11:23.400 | and health, we're not going to add any more mechanisms.

01:11:27.960 | We are, however, going to talk about the practical steps

01:11:30.900 | that you can take to make sure

01:11:32.320 | that you're getting the most brain benefits

01:11:35.240 | from your exercise.

01:11:37.520 | Based on what we've talked about so far,

01:11:39.320 | as well as a broad survey of the literature,

01:11:41.720 | and again, it is a big literature,

01:11:45.560 | here are the four things that I believe everyone

01:11:47.840 | should be doing every single week

01:11:50.360 | in terms of their exercise program.

01:11:52.520 | Now, we've talked a lot about exercise

01:11:54.160 | on this podcast before.

01:11:55.840 | I can summarize the very, very top contour

01:11:58.520 | of what my takeaway is from the literature

01:12:00.720 | and from discussions with experts

01:12:02.320 | such as Dr. Andy Galpin and others,

01:12:05.140 | which is, I believe that everybody should include

01:12:07.800 | both resistance training, could be body weight,

01:12:10.760 | free weights, machines, some combination of those,

01:12:13.360 | as well as cardiovascular training each week.

01:12:16.080 | And that the cardiovascular training

01:12:17.520 | should include both high intensity interval training

01:12:20.120 | at least once per week and some so-called

01:12:22.360 | long, slow distance training

01:12:23.720 | or zone two type training each week.

01:12:25.720 | So presumably most of you are doing some form of that.

01:12:28.440 | So maybe you're doing more cardio than resistance training.

01:12:30.680 | Maybe you're doing more resistance training than cardio.

01:12:33.100 | If you're interested in a zero cost program

01:12:35.960 | where you can start to sculpt out a idealized program

01:12:39.460 | for you, but you want to start

01:12:40.560 | with a kind of general template,

01:12:42.200 | we have a newsletter that you can access

01:12:43.840 | at hubermanlab.com, zero cost.

01:12:45.680 | You don't even have to sign up to access it.

01:12:47.260 | Although if you want to sign up for the newsletter,

01:12:49.200 | that could be valuable to you too.

01:12:51.200 | Completely zero cost.

01:12:52.340 | You can go to hubermanlab.com, go to newsletter,

01:12:56.000 | scroll down to foundational fitness protocol.

01:12:57.880 | It describes the program that I've been following

01:13:00.080 | essentially for 30 plus years.

01:13:01.840 | And again, it's about three cardiovascular training sessions

01:13:04.360 | per week, three resistance training sessions per week.

01:13:07.960 | The cardiovascular training ranges in time

01:13:10.160 | from about 12 minutes and then a longer 60 minute session.

01:13:15.840 | The resistance training is generally 45 to 75 minutes.

01:13:20.200 | So on average, about an hour.

01:13:21.760 | And it might sound like a lot,

01:13:25.040 | but when you look at that foundational fitness protocol,

01:13:27.840 | what you realize is that some of the workouts

01:13:29.360 | are really, really short.

01:13:30.240 | Some of them are a little bit longer.

01:13:31.720 | None of them are longer than an hour.

01:13:33.520 | So it's pretty reasonable to do.

01:13:35.040 | And I certainly did it while working, well, to be frank,

01:13:38.560 | extremely long hours for many, many years.

01:13:41.080 | So provided your sleep is intact

01:13:42.660 | and other areas of your life are dialed in with stress,

01:13:45.200 | et cetera, it should be doable for most everybody,

01:13:47.560 | but modify it according to what you need.

01:13:49.280 | Or if you're doing something completely different,

01:13:51.080 | more power to you.

01:13:52.400 | I just want you to know that's available

01:13:53.760 | as a zero cost resource if you want to check it out.

01:13:56.900 | With all of that said,

01:13:58.040 | whatever exercise you happen to be doing

01:14:00.800 | or you happen to be planning,

01:14:02.240 | I do believe it should include four things specifically

01:14:06.840 | to improve brain health and performance.

01:14:09.000 | Although these four things will also benefit you

01:14:10.820 | at the level of your bodily health.

01:14:12.540 | No doubt.

01:14:13.800 | The first thing is to include at least one workout per week

01:14:17.520 | that is of a long, slow distance nature.

01:14:20.340 | So zone two type cardio,

01:14:21.640 | maybe you get a little bit up into zone three,

01:14:23.840 | but basically jogging, swimming, rowing,

01:14:28.060 | any activity that you can carry out consistently

01:14:31.600 | for 45 to 75 minutes without getting injured, right?

01:14:36.020 | People always say, well, do I have to run?

01:14:37.380 | No, if you don't like running

01:14:38.680 | and running's too hard on your body,

01:14:40.240 | or you'll get injured, then do something else.

01:14:41.700 | Maybe you do the rower, maybe you ride a stationary bike,

01:14:43.900 | maybe you ride a road bike.

01:14:44.960 | For me, it's jogging generally,

01:14:46.660 | or hiking with a weight vest.

01:14:48.280 | Those are the things that I enjoy

01:14:49.540 | and that I can do without getting injured.

01:14:51.260 | But for other people, it's a different exercise.

01:14:54.200 | But at least one long, slow distance training session

01:14:57.460 | per week is going to be very beneficial for brain health

01:15:00.140 | because of the way that it impacts cerebral blood flow

01:15:02.560 | and to filial health and basically the way

01:15:05.140 | that cardiovascular health improves brain function

01:15:08.220 | at the level of blood flow, fuel delivery, et cetera.

01:15:11.800 | The second thing is to include

01:15:13.300 | at least one workout per week

01:15:14.900 | that's of the so-called high-intensity interval training type.

01:15:19.020 | Now, there are a lot of different types

01:15:20.780 | of high-intensity interval training out there.

01:15:22.320 | In fact, Dr. Andy Galpin says, you know,

01:15:26.260 | we'll hear about say like the four-by-four-by-four protocol,

01:15:29.420 | right, four minutes of going as hard as you can

01:15:31.500 | for four minutes, basically where there's no variation

01:15:35.180 | in the intensity through that whole four minutes.

01:15:36.940 | You're going hard the whole four minutes,

01:15:38.480 | but only as hard as you can for the entire four minutes,

01:15:40.720 | then resting four minutes,

01:15:41.940 | and then repeating that four-by-four cycle four times.

01:15:45.940 | Okay, so that's one way to do it.

01:15:46.940 | But Dr. Andy Galpin would be the first to tell you

01:15:48.900 | that you probably also get great results

01:15:50.960 | from a three-by-three-by-four type of workout

01:15:54.480 | or a six-by-six-by-six type of workout.

01:15:57.900 | Although for many people,

01:15:58.740 | that's going to be too much and too intense.

01:16:00.780 | Or if you're me and you prefer

01:16:02.940 | a high-intensity interval training session

01:16:04.580 | that is more like a two minutes on,

01:16:06.720 | as hard as you can go for two minutes,

01:16:08.500 | and then rest for say three to four minutes,

01:16:10.740 | and then repeat maybe four times, maybe five times,

01:16:14.380 | well, then do that.

01:16:15.700 | I have a high-intensity interval training session

01:16:17.420 | that I do when I'm very limited on time,

01:16:19.840 | which involves getting on the Airdyne bike.

01:16:21.700 | They sometimes call it the assault bike.

01:16:23.100 | There's a lot of resistance, has that fan,

01:16:24.720 | which I always thought was to cool me off.

01:16:26.260 | But then, you know, once I actually got on one

01:16:28.900 | and started riding,

01:16:30.500 | I realized that that's to provide resistance.

01:16:32.180 | So, but basically, if I'm limited on time,

01:16:34.920 | I'll hop on there.

01:16:36.060 | I'll pedal for about a minute or two, just kind of warm up.

01:16:38.200 | And then I'll go all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds,

01:16:41.580 | all out for a minute, rest for 30 seconds.

01:16:44.080 | The first three or four of those cycles,

01:16:46.500 | feeling pretty good.

01:16:47.660 | By the seventh and eighth one, I'm, you know, I'm praying.

01:16:51.580 | And generally, when one finishes that type of workout,

01:16:54.340 | your heart rate is very, very elevated.

01:16:56.740 | Now, I don't tend to track my heart rate during exercise.

01:16:59.360 | Perhaps I should, but I don't like to get, you know,

01:17:01.660 | too weighed down with technology when I exercise.

01:17:04.120 | I like to go more on feel, that's just me.

01:17:06.220 | I find that my heart rate is extremely high

01:17:12.080 | right as I get off that thing.

01:17:13.820 | But, you know, five minutes later, it's back to baseline.

01:17:17.420 | And I certainly feel energized after doing that

01:17:19.700 | to go do some cognitive work, to shower up

01:17:21.340 | and to head to work, that sort of thing.

01:17:22.600 | So, pick a high-intensity interval training session

01:17:24.980 | that you can do at least once per week,

01:17:26.980 | and that works for you.

01:17:28.260 | And again, it's really important to pick a form

01:17:31.160 | of exercise for the high-intensity interval training

01:17:33.620 | that you can do without getting injured.

01:17:35.540 | This is so important.

01:17:36.780 | You know, one way to really limit your brain health

01:17:38.860 | and bodily health is to get injured

01:17:40.540 | and to not be able to exercise.

01:17:42.540 | In a few minutes, I'll tell you about what happens

01:17:44.180 | when you don't exercise for a certain duration

01:17:47.240 | and how that negatively impacts your brain health.

01:17:49.240 | And it's not that long before that starts to happen.

01:17:51.860 | But in the meantime, the first was long, slow distance,

01:17:56.860 | or so-called zone two.

01:17:58.660 | So, we could call that LSD, not the psychedelic,

01:18:01.200 | but long, slow distance exercise.

01:18:03.080 | Second was high-intensity interval training,

01:18:05.700 | or H-I-I-T, or HIT.

01:18:08.240 | The third would be TUT, T-U-T, time under tension.

01:18:11.200 | If you're doing resistance training,

01:18:12.600 | and I do believe everybody should be doing

01:18:14.040 | resistance training, there are a near infinite number

01:18:17.240 | of different ways to do resistance training,

01:18:18.840 | as you well know.

01:18:20.160 | You can move the weight ballistically,

01:18:21.760 | you can control the eccentric,

01:18:23.200 | you can do any number of different things.

01:18:25.000 | But some proportion of the exercises that you do

01:18:27.100 | during your resistance training, during the week,

01:18:29.480 | should include time under tension training,

01:18:32.380 | where you're really emphasizing the contraction

01:18:34.480 | of the muscles, the slow lowering of the weight,

01:18:37.040 | as well as the lifting of the weight,

01:18:38.840 | contracting the muscles as hard as you can.

01:18:40.520 | And this is really to emphasize

01:18:41.880 | the nerve to muscle pathways and the way

01:18:44.040 | that time under tension promotes the release of things

01:18:46.920 | from muscles into the bloodstream

01:18:49.180 | that can positively impact the brain,

01:18:51.280 | as well as the way that focusing your brain on exercises

01:18:55.760 | such that you're isolating muscles,

01:18:57.800 | or even if you're not doing a so-called isolation exercise,

01:19:00.360 | maybe you're doing a compound exercise,

01:19:01.820 | like a dip or a squat or a deadlift,

01:19:04.800 | but that really concentrating on the muscles

01:19:06.680 | that are supposed to be managing the work

01:19:08.600 | and not just moving the weight,

01:19:09.780 | but challenging the muscles, this is a very important thing,

01:19:12.040 | challenging the muscles, using the weight,

01:19:14.120 | not lifting weights or moving weights.

01:19:16.440 | By focusing on time under tension,

01:19:18.480 | you will of course get benefits as it relates

01:19:20.960 | to hypertrophy and strength increases,

01:19:23.360 | in particular hypertrophy.

01:19:25.100 | Doing time under tension requires you to engage the,

01:19:28.440 | what we call the upper motor neuron to lower motor neuron,

01:19:32.160 | you have motor neurons in your cortex,

01:19:33.560 | you also have motor neurons in your spinal cord,

01:19:36.360 | those pathways that then go out to the muscles

01:19:38.480 | and control the muscles in very deliberate ways.

01:19:41.320 | And time under tension training is very beneficial

01:19:43.760 | for the deployment of the molecules

01:19:45.800 | that work both within the body,

01:19:47.480 | but also within the brain to support brain health

01:19:50.080 | and function both in the short-term

01:19:51.940 | and most particularly in the long-term.

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01:21:37.240 | Okay, so we have long, slow distance,

01:21:38.680 | high intensity interval training,

01:21:40.360 | and some degree of time under tension training

01:21:43.920 | with resistance training.

01:21:45.160 | You might be asking how many sets, what proportion?

01:21:48.700 | That depends on your goals, right?

01:21:50.780 | If you're a power lifter and you're trying

01:21:52.120 | to lift bigger weights,

01:21:53.640 | or you simply want to get stronger,

01:21:55.560 | not going to devote a lot of your training

01:21:57.480 | to time under tension, most likely.

01:21:58.880 | You're going to be focusing mostly on the performance

01:22:00.520 | of those lifts to move more weight.

01:22:02.200 | But in my case, what I do, just for sake of example,

01:22:05.160 | again, this is just what I happen to do,

01:22:07.160 | is I tend to make a full third of my resistance training

01:22:12.060 | just focused on time under tension.

01:22:13.580 | So if I do two exercises,

01:22:14.900 | typically the first exercise is a compound exercise.

01:22:17.220 | So if it's a shoulder press, for instance,

01:22:19.040 | I'll do a couple of warmup sets, and then the work sets.

01:22:21.100 | I try and move the weight.

01:22:22.860 | And generally I tend to work pretty heavy in the,

01:22:25.340 | for me, heavy for me, in the four to eight repetition range.

01:22:28.380 | I'll try and move the weight as quickly as I can

01:22:30.720 | on the concentric phase, the lifting phase,

01:22:33.200 | and then at least twice as slow on the lowering phase.

01:22:35.940 | And then I pause while keeping the muscles under tension.

01:22:38.460 | I never really set the weight down at all during a set,

01:22:41.060 | if I'm doing my job, that is.

01:22:42.700 | And then the second exercise that I do,

01:22:46.340 | I really focus even more on time under tension.

01:22:48.980 | So whether or not it's a compound exercise

01:22:50.960 | or an isolation exercise, again, compound exercise,

01:22:53.660 | multiple joints moving, isolation exercise,

01:22:55.860 | single joints moving, I'll really concentrate

01:22:58.500 | on keeping the muscle under tension the entire time.

01:23:00.840 | In fact, I'll lift the weight off the stack

01:23:03.220 | if it's a machine, or if it's a free weight,

01:23:05.100 | just a little bit, engage the muscles

01:23:07.260 | that I'm trying to activate or train,

01:23:10.340 | and then keep it under tension throughout the concentric,

01:23:13.520 | the contraction, and the lowering of that weight,

01:23:16.980 | and then never actually set it down

01:23:18.660 | until the end of the set,

01:23:20.180 | AKA increasing the time under tension.

01:23:23.380 | And then the fourth category of exercise

01:23:25.100 | that I believe everybody should include

01:23:26.720 | in their existing workouts, or add

01:23:28.380 | if you're not currently working out,

01:23:30.460 | is some sort of explosive jumping and/or eccentric landing.

01:23:36.700 | Now, the explosive jumping with eccentric landing,

01:23:40.920 | you could do on a mat, right?

01:23:42.620 | Most people won't do it on concrete

01:23:43.900 | because they're worried about impact, that sort of thing.

01:23:46.420 | But let's say you have some mats,

01:23:48.700 | or you're on a lawn, or you're on dirt,

01:23:50.540 | or you're jumping up onto a box as high as you can,

01:23:53.260 | and then jumping down and controlling the eccentric portion.

01:23:55.460 | Again, pick something that you can do safely,

01:23:57.900 | progress slowly, right?

01:23:59.140 | If you're going to jump up and off boxes,

01:24:01.060 | you want to start with low boxes.

01:24:02.500 | I know that many of you can jump quite high,

01:24:05.940 | and I'm not one of those people,

01:24:07.700 | but if you can jump quite high,

01:24:09.340 | and then you're going to jump off that box,

01:24:10.720 | and you're going to do this as a new thing,

01:24:12.020 | you'll notice that anytime you add eccentric training

01:24:15.180 | to your workout regimen,

01:24:16.940 | it tends to increase soreness a lot.

01:24:18.780 | And often people get injured

01:24:20.100 | by including a new form of movement,

01:24:21.980 | in particular, a form of movement that you can fall,

01:24:24.540 | and/or not just falling,

01:24:27.140 | but by including a lot of eccentric movements

01:24:29.500 | that they hadn't been doing previously.

01:24:31.460 | Again, be really safe about this,

01:24:33.240 | but that loading of the skeleton through eccentric movement

01:24:36.260 | and controlling the descent, super important,

01:24:39.240 | not just for your body, not just to avoid falls,

01:24:41.740 | not just to improve coordination

01:24:43.620 | and a bunch of other great things,

01:24:45.020 | but also to get that release of osteocalcin,

01:24:48.180 | the improvements in BDNF,

01:24:49.820 | brain performance, brain health, and so on.

01:24:52.360 | And I'm guessing that most of you

01:24:53.520 | can probably incorporate these four things,

01:24:55.340 | long, slow distance, high-intensity interval training,

01:24:58.080 | some deliberate time under tension training

01:24:59.900 | during your resistance training,

01:25:01.060 | again, could be done with body weight,

01:25:02.240 | doesn't have to even be done with machines or free weights,

01:25:04.460 | as well as some explosive and eccentric control training

01:25:08.400 | without adding any time to your existing workout regimen,

01:25:12.060 | simply by incorporating it

01:25:13.380 | into whatever workouts you happen to already be doing.

01:25:16.600 | And the explosive eccentric control training

01:25:19.300 | could be done, frankly, at the end of a run,

01:25:22.020 | you could do it at the end of your zone two day,

01:25:23.580 | you could do it on the end of a hit day,

01:25:26.020 | whenever you do it and however you do it,

01:25:27.980 | just try not to get injured,

01:25:29.060 | that's the most important thing.

01:25:30.560 | Why?

01:25:31.400 | Well, it turns out if you get injured, you can't exercise.

01:25:34.020 | Sometimes you can, and it's good to continue exercising

01:25:36.980 | provided you're not aggravating that injury,

01:25:38.980 | but a lot of times you can't.

01:25:40.540 | And there are actually studies

01:25:41.720 | of how quickly your brain starts to suffer

01:25:44.780 | if you don't exercise.

01:25:45.920 | Now, most of these studies have been done

01:25:47.580 | on very experienced athletes,

01:25:50.620 | or people that are exercising a lot

01:25:52.140 | and then are forced to detrain or stop training completely.

01:25:55.420 | And in some of these studies,

01:25:56.420 | they've done this independent of anything else.

01:25:58.140 | It's not like these people got sick from a cold or flu

01:26:01.300 | and then had to stop training.

01:26:02.420 | They'll just have them train a lot and then stop training

01:26:04.780 | and then start to look at some of the effects

01:26:06.420 | that occur within the brain.

01:26:07.740 | And the major thing that I was able to extract

01:26:09.660 | from that literature is that after about 10 days

01:26:13.120 | of not doing any training,

01:26:14.880 | that is no cardiovascular training, no resistance training,

01:26:17.800 | you start to see significant decrements

01:26:20.080 | in brain oxygenation levels,

01:26:22.200 | as well as some other markers

01:26:23.480 | that are indicative of brain health,

01:26:24.720 | or that would be indicative of brain health

01:26:27.000 | if they were to continue.

01:26:28.640 | So if you haven't been training at all

01:26:30.280 | for a long period of time, your brain is suffering.

01:26:32.640 | The good news is you can start benefiting your brain

01:26:35.120 | very quickly by exercising.

01:26:37.720 | Check out the foundational fitness protocol

01:26:39.560 | that involves a ramp up or warming kind of phase,

01:26:42.260 | 'cause you don't want to jump into something whole hog

01:26:44.140 | if you haven't been doing it at all,

01:26:45.700 | if you haven't been exercising at all.

01:26:47.260 | You know, forget what you did in high school.

01:26:48.900 | By the way, folks, anytime people tell you,

01:26:50.940 | "Back in the day I was so fit,"

01:26:52.980 | that's not the way to think about it.

01:26:54.620 | It's about today and what you're going to do today

01:26:56.460 | and forward, okay?

01:26:57.660 | The past is great, it tells you you had a capacity,

01:27:00.060 | but you really just want to take where you are now

01:27:02.220 | and try and improve where you are now going forward, okay?

01:27:05.580 | The past is the past.

01:27:07.300 | So how fit you were in high school or in junior high school

01:27:09.920 | or when you were in the kindergarten class,

01:27:12.040 | you were the first one to make it around

01:27:13.360 | to get the blocks and the cookie in the milk first,

01:27:15.220 | like, awesome.

01:27:16.400 | But if you're going to start up having not exercised

01:27:18.840 | in a long, long time, think about what you can do now

01:27:20.920 | so you don't get injured.

01:27:21.800 | Because when you get injured, you can't exercise.

01:27:24.160 | And when you don't exercise for 10 days or more,

01:27:27.420 | that's when you start to see decrements in brain health.

01:27:29.960 | So if you're not exercising now,

01:27:31.680 | it's a great time to get to it.

01:27:33.320 | If you are exercising now and you have to take a week off

01:27:35.980 | because of some sort of illness or injury

01:27:38.000 | or family event or stress, look, don't obsess over that.

01:27:42.000 | Don't miss out on some of the key things of life

01:27:43.760 | or make yourself sicker by exercising.

01:27:45.520 | Please, please, please don't come to the gym sick, okay?

01:27:48.360 | I did a whole episode on colds and flus.

01:27:50.120 | And anytime people are coughing and sneezing

01:27:52.200 | and they tell you they're not contagious,

01:27:53.640 | that's completely unsubstantiated by the scientific data.

01:27:56.500 | Please don't come to the gym sick.

01:27:57.640 | So if you had to take a week off, you'll be fine.

01:27:59.820 | You'll be fine.

01:28:00.800 | You'll probably come back stronger in the end.

01:28:02.800 | Take a couple of days and ramp back up.

01:28:04.560 | But after about 10 days, your brain health starts to suffer.

01:28:07.100 | So that's an important number to keep in mind.

01:28:09.780 | Okay, so multiple times throughout today's discussion,

01:28:12.020 | we've been talking about how exercise increases arousal,

01:28:14.940 | arousal improves brain function.

01:28:17.260 | That's true.

01:28:18.140 | You know what's also true?

01:28:19.140 | What's also true is that exercise improves brain health

01:28:22.580 | in the long-term.

01:28:23.820 | Yes, through the deployment of things like BDNF.

01:28:26.060 | Yes, through the deployment of things like osteocalcin

01:28:28.500 | and on and on.

01:28:30.060 | But it also does so by improving your sleep.

01:28:34.100 | There are now many, many studies showing

01:28:36.680 | that sleep is the thing that mediates many, not all,

01:28:39.880 | but many of the positive effects of exercise

01:28:42.400 | on brain performance and long-term brain health.

01:28:45.920 | So what this means is that you have to make sure

01:28:48.020 | that you're getting adequate amounts of sleep.

01:28:49.740 | It's not sufficient just to exercise.

01:28:52.120 | You need to get proper sleep.

01:28:53.260 | And I've done multiple episodes

01:28:55.200 | on how to optimize your sleep, how to improve your sleep,

01:28:57.840 | how to deal with insomnia, shift work.

01:29:00.280 | If you want to learn about any and all of that,

01:29:02.160 | either from podcasts or from our newsletter,

01:29:04.320 | go to hubermanlab.com, put sleep into the search function,

01:29:08.280 | and it will take you to the episodes

01:29:10.240 | and the newsletters that discuss that.

01:29:12.820 | In addition, if you have a specific issue with sleep,

01:29:15.720 | like you're doing shift work or you're jet lagged,

01:29:18.700 | or you are suffering from middle of the night waking

01:29:21.320 | or trouble shifting your schedule

01:29:22.700 | because you want to become an early riser,

01:29:24.760 | put those terms into the search function.

01:29:27.880 | It will take you to the specific timestamps

01:29:30.480 | in those episodes so that you don't have to listen

01:29:32.880 | to the entire episodes,

01:29:34.240 | because I realized that some of them are quite long.

01:29:36.560 | And of course, there's the newsletter on sleep

01:29:39.040 | that lists off the various things that you should

01:29:41.580 | and can be doing to improve your sleep,

01:29:43.320 | no matter how well you happen to be sleeping now.

01:29:45.760 | But tons and tons of zero cost resources there

01:29:48.200 | in PDF form, in podcast form, and on and on.

01:29:51.300 | We also did the six episode series on sleep

01:29:53.880 | with Dr. Matthew Walker, one of the world's experts in sleep.

01:29:56.680 | So that's also there.

01:29:57.620 | So you can find all that there.

01:30:00.160 | One question I get a lot is,

01:30:02.560 | let's say I don't sleep that well, should I exercise?

01:30:06.660 | Well, the short answer is yes,

01:30:09.000 | provided that it was just one night of poor sleep.

01:30:12.200 | In fact, there are studies showing

01:30:13.500 | that if you're slightly sleep deprived,

01:30:15.120 | meaning one night's poor sleep.

01:30:17.440 | So most people need somewhere between six

01:30:19.200 | and nine hours of sleep, varies by person,

01:30:20.960 | varies by age, varies by time of year, and so on,

01:30:23.200 | all discussed in that series with Matt Walker.

01:30:27.920 | Most people need six to nine hours,

01:30:29.440 | but let's say you normally get eight

01:30:31.920 | or you normally get seven,

01:30:33.460 | but you're down two hours on sleep for whatever reason.

01:30:36.240 | Should you exercise the next morning?

01:30:38.120 | The short answer is yes,

01:30:40.040 | provided it was just one night of poor sleep.

01:30:42.280 | It turns out that exercising after a poor night's sleep

01:30:45.520 | can help offset some of the negative effects

01:30:47.760 | of sleep deprivation on what?

01:30:50.200 | On brain performance and health.

01:30:52.320 | Now, you don't wanna get into a habit of this.

01:30:53.940 | You don't wanna get into a habit of using exercise

01:30:56.640 | as a way to compensate for sleep loss.

01:30:58.920 | So if you don't sleep well for one night,

01:31:01.240 | exercise is a great way to offset

01:31:03.520 | that sleep loss effect on the brain

01:31:05.560 | or that would otherwise affect the brain.

01:31:07.500 | You can compensate for it by doing some exercise.

01:31:09.600 | Keep in mind, you want to exercise in a way

01:31:11.640 | that's not too intense

01:31:12.720 | because you can drive your immune system down

01:31:14.280 | and be more vulnerable to infections.

01:31:16.160 | That's certainly the case after a poor night's sleep.

01:31:19.000 | You also wanna be really careful

01:31:20.320 | with what you do for that exercise

01:31:21.980 | in terms of your coordinated movement.

01:31:23.880 | It's much easier to get injured

01:31:25.760 | when you're sleep deprived.

01:31:26.760 | In fact, there's a really nice set of studies.

01:31:29.360 | Lane Norton's talked about this elsewhere,

01:31:31.400 | that the relationship between sleep

01:31:33.280 | or I should say sleep deprivation and injury

01:31:35.400 | is a strong one.

01:31:36.400 | And the relationship between sleep loss and pain

01:31:39.440 | and failure to recover from injury is also a strong one.

01:31:42.960 | The direct point being, if you're slightly sleep deprived,

01:31:45.960 | sure, go ahead and exercise.

01:31:47.160 | That will actually help you offset

01:31:48.360 | some of the negative effects of that sleep deprivation,

01:31:50.880 | but you wanna be careful how you exercise

01:31:52.440 | so you don't get sick and you don't get injured.

01:31:54.560 | So you can keep in mind that if you're having trouble

01:31:56.240 | sleeping or even if you're a great sleeper already,

01:31:58.740 | getting exercise will further improve

01:32:00.700 | the architecture of your sleep.

01:32:02.120 | In fact, there's some evidence

01:32:03.560 | that doing high intensity interval training

01:32:05.280 | can improve the amount of deep slow wave sleep that you get.

01:32:08.320 | And there's some additional data showing

01:32:10.600 | that if you do high intensity training early in the day,

01:32:14.360 | and that's combined with a bunch of other things

01:32:16.080 | that stimulate autonomic arousal.

01:32:17.760 | So here we are again at autonomic arousal.

01:32:19.720 | Things like caffeine, if that's in your program,

01:32:21.760 | you don't have to drink caffeine.

01:32:23.400 | Things like getting bright light in your eyes

01:32:24.920 | early in the day, definitely do that.

01:32:26.520 | Don't stare at the sun or any light so bright

01:32:28.120 | that it's dangerous or painful to look at,

01:32:29.800 | but certainly get bright light in your eyes.

01:32:31.160 | All those things that increase autonomic arousal

01:32:33.360 | early in the day can also help improve the amount

01:32:36.600 | and the quality of sleep that you get at night,

01:32:38.600 | in particular, rapid eye movement sleep,

01:32:40.880 | which is so critical for learning and memory.

01:32:43.140 | In fact, there's something called the first night effect,

01:32:44.880 | which is the amount and quality of rapid eye movement sleep

01:32:48.200 | that you get on the first night

01:32:49.400 | after trying to learn something,

01:32:50.920 | powerfully dictates whether or not you actually learn

01:32:53.000 | and remember that thing.

01:32:53.960 | Because as you recall, learning and memory,

01:32:56.400 | neuroplasticity is a two-step process.

01:32:58.800 | You need to be focused and alert

01:33:00.480 | during the encoding phase, during the learning,

01:33:02.600 | but it's in states of deep rest, sleep in particular,

01:33:05.440 | but also non-sleep deep rest.

01:33:07.000 | But rapid eye movement sleep is the kind of king

01:33:10.320 | of reshaping your brain connections for the better,

01:33:13.440 | unloading the emotional load of experiences

01:33:15.480 | that were troubling.

01:33:16.480 | That happens during rapid eye movement sleep.

01:33:18.640 | Just a little bit of REM deprivation,

01:33:20.200 | rapid eye movement sleep deprivation

01:33:22.080 | will make you more emotional

01:33:23.600 | and will make the painful experiences

01:33:25.280 | of recent and distant past also more painful.

01:33:28.000 | Get more rapid eye movement sleep if you can.

01:33:30.240 | It also consolidates learning of things

01:33:31.760 | that you want to remember.

01:33:33.400 | Again, exercise early in the day,

01:33:35.680 | in particular, high intensity exercise

01:33:37.620 | combined with some of the other things we just discussed,

01:33:39.480 | terrific way to improve the amount and quality of sleep

01:33:43.160 | that you get at night.

01:33:44.440 | And of course, all of that geysers up to what?

01:33:47.280 | Better brain health and performance in the short-term

01:33:50.040 | and in the long-term.

01:33:51.160 | Okay, so I listed off the four types of training

01:33:53.060 | that you absolutely want to include

01:33:54.500 | in your exercise regimen

01:33:55.920 | if improving your brain health and performance

01:33:58.180 | is one of your goals.

01:33:59.060 | And obviously that should be one of your goals.

01:34:01.360 | Your brain is your central command center

01:34:03.580 | for your entire brain, but also your body.

01:34:06.840 | There's a fifth category of exercise

01:34:09.680 | that everyone should include

01:34:11.780 | if one's goal is to have a better and more resilient

01:34:15.480 | and indeed a better performing brain

01:34:18.920 | compared to your age match controls.

01:34:20.760 | And to be direct, that fifth category

01:34:23.040 | is the one that you absolutely don't want to do.

01:34:26.840 | What do I mean by that?

01:34:27.920 | Well, there's an absolutely beautiful literature

01:34:31.640 | about a brain area.

01:34:32.640 | I've talked a little bit about this before

01:34:34.320 | in our episode about tenacity and willpower.

01:34:36.720 | I've talked about it on a few other podcasts as well.

01:34:39.020 | It came up during the podcast episode

01:34:41.500 | that I did with the one and only David Goggins.

01:34:44.800 | And that brain area is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:34:48.360 | The anterior mid-cingulate cortex very briefly

01:34:51.240 | is a brain area that is powerfully engaged

01:34:54.520 | when we lean into challenges, including physical challenges,

01:34:58.800 | but also mental challenges, emotional challenges.

01:35:01.980 | And we get that, I'm going to push through tenacity

01:35:06.200 | and engaging our willpower.

01:35:08.080 | Now it's remarkable to think about this brain area.

01:35:10.000 | This is a brain area, mind you,

01:35:11.800 | that when my colleague at Stanford, Joe Parvizzi,

01:35:14.400 | putting a little electrode into,

01:35:15.720 | he was doing this for other reasons

01:35:17.000 | related to important neurosurgeries that patients needed

01:35:19.320 | and stimulated that particular brain area,

01:35:21.920 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:35:23.680 | People reported immediately feeling

01:35:25.880 | as if there was some impending challenge,

01:35:28.160 | but that they were going to lean into that challenge.

01:35:30.480 | Remarkable.

01:35:31.520 | This brain area has intense connectivity

01:35:34.000 | with many, many other brain areas.

01:35:35.880 | The dopaminergic system, the so-called arousal system.

01:35:39.000 | So multiple brain areas involved in arousal.

01:35:41.520 | Areas of the brain that are involved in learning.

01:35:44.200 | Areas of the brain that are involved in stress.

01:35:46.400 | Areas of the brain that are involved in

01:35:47.720 | lots and lots of different things.

01:35:49.120 | It's a major hub for inputs from other brain areas

01:35:52.040 | and outputs to other brain areas.

01:35:54.520 | But here's what's most remarkable

01:35:56.080 | about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:35:58.660 | There's a category of humans referred to as super-agers.

01:36:01.200 | Super-agers are people that defy the aging process,

01:36:04.560 | at least at the level of cognition.

01:36:06.320 | They maintain the volume of certain brain areas

01:36:09.200 | well into older age when their age match counterparts

01:36:12.880 | are losing the same brain areas.

01:36:15.660 | Meaning people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s

01:36:18.760 | have brain areas that are shrinking.

01:36:20.600 | Even in cases where people don't have Alzheimer's dementia,

01:36:23.160 | areas of the brain are shrinking.

01:36:25.520 | Super-agers are people that maintain the healthy

01:36:27.920 | full volume of these brain areas.

01:36:29.760 | And indeed, in some cases, the volume,

01:36:32.160 | the size of these brain areas

01:36:33.360 | continues to increase into their later years.

01:36:36.360 | One of the brain areas that maintains

01:36:38.160 | or increases volume in these super-agers

01:36:40.480 | is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:36:42.680 | And there aren't many other brain areas that do that.

01:36:44.720 | The anterior mid-cingulate cortex is the main site

01:36:48.080 | that can be tacked to this phenomenon of super-aging.

01:36:51.640 | Now, super-aging and super-agers is a bit of a misnomer

01:36:54.200 | because what's happening in these people is

01:36:56.300 | they're not just holding onto the volume

01:36:57.820 | of their anterior mid-cingulate cortex,

01:36:59.720 | they're also maintaining healthy cognition,

01:37:02.280 | which is flexible strategy, context-dependent learning,

01:37:06.160 | their memory, their working memory.

01:37:08.460 | They're doing phenomenally well, not just for their age,

01:37:10.840 | but even compared to some much younger people.

01:37:14.200 | So these super-agers are really interesting,

01:37:15.980 | both for sake of what they can do into their later years

01:37:18.720 | and because their anterior mid-cingulate cortex

01:37:20.680 | is holding onto its size

01:37:22.000 | and in some cases, increasing its size.

01:37:24.180 | What can allow you to activate and increase the size

01:37:28.840 | of your anterior mid-cingulate cortex?

01:37:30.920 | Well, it's very simple,

01:37:31.920 | to do things that you don't want to do.

01:37:34.640 | I should be very clear,

01:37:35.480 | we're talking about things that can be done safely

01:37:37.480 | that aren't going to damage you physically

01:37:39.580 | or psychologically, but we are talking about exercise

01:37:43.400 | or in some cases, cognitive exercise,

01:37:44.960 | but today we're talking about physical exercise

01:37:47.520 | that you would much rather not do.

01:37:50.040 | So if you're like me and you love resistance training,

01:37:52.420 | it can be hard, right?

01:37:53.760 | Some days I want to do it more than others

01:37:55.720 | and sometimes the workouts are much harder than others,

01:37:58.400 | but I love it.

01:37:59.240 | But if I want to maintain and increase the size

01:38:01.360 | of my anterior mid-cingulate cortex,

01:38:03.900 | I absolutely have to find some form of physical exercise

01:38:07.360 | that I would much rather not do.

01:38:09.320 | But as I mentioned before, that's also safe physically

01:38:12.360 | and it's not going to damage me emotionally.

01:38:13.880 | I don't know what kind of physical exercise

01:38:15.200 | would damage me emotionally, but you get the point.

01:38:18.080 | This brain area has been explored

01:38:19.620 | in a number of different studies.

01:38:20.820 | So successful dieters increase the size

01:38:23.160 | of their anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:38:24.900 | People that fail to reach a goal,

01:38:26.760 | a diet goal or other goal,

01:38:28.280 | experience a shrinking of their anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:38:31.560 | There's also examples of physical exercise

01:38:34.720 | increasing anterior mid-cingulate cortex,

01:38:36.760 | skill challenges and on and on.

01:38:39.600 | The important point is that the anterior mid-cingulate cortex

01:38:42.080 | is agnostic with respect to what you do,

01:38:45.020 | except that it has to be something that you don't want to do

01:38:48.120 | if you want to build and maintain its size.

01:38:50.360 | And that building and maintaining

01:38:51.900 | of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex size

01:38:54.200 | is strongly correlated.

01:38:55.320 | It's not necessarily causal,

01:38:57.100 | but it's strongly correlated with this super aging phenomenon.

01:39:00.560 | There's a wonderful review

01:39:02.800 | about the anterior mid-cingulate cortex

01:39:05.240 | that was authored by none other than Lisa Feldman Barrett.

01:39:08.320 | She came up earlier in this episode.

01:39:09.640 | She's a world-class researcher

01:39:11.440 | on the topic of emotions and the basis of emotions, et cetera.

01:39:14.960 | The title of this paper is "The Tenacious Brain,

01:39:17.920 | How the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex

01:39:19.640 | Contributes to Achieving Goals."

01:39:21.680 | And there's one figure in this paper.

01:39:23.480 | I just want to summarize a couple of things from,

01:39:25.800 | because it's just like a wow figure.

01:39:28.340 | There aren't many figures like this.

01:39:29.560 | I mean, this is a review article.

01:39:30.720 | So this figure includes panels

01:39:32.440 | pooling from a bunch of different studies,

01:39:34.480 | but I'm going to just highlight a few of these

01:39:37.560 | by paraphrasing what's in the figure legend, okay?

01:39:40.600 | So bear with me here.

01:39:41.480 | I think you'll find this very interesting.

01:39:43.640 | Okay, so you can't see the pictures

01:39:45.580 | because many people are listening to this on audio,

01:39:48.240 | but you can certainly look up the paper.

01:39:49.440 | We provide a link to it in the show note captions,

01:39:51.240 | but these points are worth paying attention to.

01:39:53.280 | Spontaneous anterior mid-cingulate cortex activity

01:39:57.080 | predicts grit,

01:39:58.600 | this psychological phenomenon that we refer to as grit.

01:40:00.980 | Now this was teased out in a study of grit.

01:40:03.480 | Grit is this ability to lean into challenge

01:40:06.160 | and the mere spontaneous activity, right?

01:40:09.420 | Not evoked activity.

01:40:10.480 | There's spontaneous activity,

01:40:11.500 | which is the activity that occurs sort of naturally

01:40:13.760 | as a consequence of engaging

01:40:14.960 | in a particular thought pattern or behavior.

01:40:16.960 | And then there's evoked activity

01:40:18.400 | when you stimulate a brain area.

01:40:19.640 | This is spontaneous activity.

01:40:21.340 | Spontaneous anterior mid-cingulate activity

01:40:24.320 | is associated with the psychological phenomenon,

01:40:27.680 | the verb that we call grit.

01:40:29.800 | And grit can be thought of as an adjective, right?

01:40:32.400 | Somebody who's really gritty,

01:40:33.960 | but it should best be thought of as a verb.

01:40:36.320 | It's the leaning into challenge.

01:40:38.680 | Greater anterior mid-cingulate cortex activity

01:40:41.440 | is associated with higher levels of persistence.

01:40:44.320 | This again was teased out in a study of persistence.

01:40:46.880 | So these aren't just philosophical statements

01:40:48.800 | or theoretical statements.

01:40:49.760 | These are based on brain imaging studies

01:40:51.580 | where people are being challenged

01:40:52.960 | with a particular set of challenges

01:40:55.720 | while they're in a so-called fMRI,

01:40:58.040 | functional magnetic resonance imaging machine.

01:41:01.320 | Activation of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex

01:41:03.600 | is associated with grit and with persistence.

01:41:06.760 | And anterior mid-cingulate signal

01:41:08.760 | is associated with willingness to exert more effort.

01:41:11.800 | If people have to exert more effort

01:41:14.000 | and they're willing to do that, boom,

01:41:15.880 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex activity goes up.

01:41:18.240 | Also anterior mid-cingulate activity increases, get this,

01:41:22.280 | during effort magnitude estimation.

01:41:24.920 | Even when people are just trying to gauge

01:41:26.640 | how much effort something's going to take,

01:41:28.600 | that starts to initiate activity

01:41:30.240 | of the anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:41:32.360 | Oh boy, this is going to be a big one.

01:41:33.600 | I got to do this.

01:41:34.600 | And I'll explain how I engage my anterior mid-cingulate

01:41:36.840 | cortex, you'll have to decide

01:41:38.200 | if that's something that you hate enough

01:41:39.240 | so that you can use it too.

01:41:40.600 | Almost done here, folks.

01:41:43.320 | Anterior mid-cingulate signal tracks

01:41:45.080 | the subjective value of effort exerted.

01:41:47.480 | As people start to track how much effort they're exerting,

01:41:51.160 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex activity goes up.

01:41:53.840 | And last but not least,

01:41:56.080 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex stimulation,

01:41:58.320 | so this is no longer spontaneous activity,

01:41:59.960 | but stimulation increases the will to persevere.

01:42:04.220 | Incredible.

01:42:05.320 | Never before, meaning never before reading this article

01:42:09.560 | and learning about anterior mid-cingulate cortex,

01:42:11.360 | which again is largely the consequence of work done

01:42:14.240 | somewhere between the years of 2010 and now, 2025,

01:42:17.740 | did we even understand what the anterior mid-cingulate

01:42:20.560 | cortex is there for and is doing.

01:42:22.680 | It could do other things too,

01:42:23.760 | but this is an extraordinary set of findings

01:42:25.880 | and an extraordinary brain structure

01:42:28.040 | that everyone should know about.

01:42:29.960 | And that's why number five on that list,

01:42:31.560 | if you want to improve brain function

01:42:34.000 | and brain health over time,

01:42:35.900 | is to do something you really don't want to do,

01:42:38.100 | something really challenging,

01:42:40.060 | both psychologically challenging and physically challenging,

01:42:43.080 | at least once per week.

01:42:44.540 | Make sure it's safe psychologically and physically,

01:42:47.540 | but do that thing.

01:42:48.380 | For me, I must confess, it's deliberate cold exposure,

01:42:53.040 | but it's deliberate cold exposure

01:42:54.800 | under particular conditions.

01:42:56.460 | I'll be the first to say that I love getting

01:42:59.240 | into the ice bath or the cold plunge

01:43:01.060 | or taking a cold shower after I've been in a hot sauna

01:43:03.720 | for 20 or 30 minutes,

01:43:05.120 | or after a long run where I'm sweating

01:43:07.160 | and I want to cool off, or on a hot summer day.

01:43:10.520 | But most of the time, that's not the case,

01:43:13.200 | meaning most of the time when I do deliberate cold exposure,

01:43:16.200 | and sometimes I'll do it by cold shower,

01:43:17.680 | which by the way, is zero cost.

01:43:19.000 | It'll even save you on your heating bill,

01:43:20.840 | so you don't need to buy any equipment,

01:43:22.200 | or you could do a cold plunge or an ice bath,

01:43:23.880 | but you don't need one.

01:43:25.780 | Most of the time,

01:43:27.240 | when I even think about getting into the cold plunge

01:43:29.500 | or taking a cold shower,

01:43:31.180 | that is very likely increasing

01:43:32.700 | my anterior mid-cingulate cortex activity,

01:43:34.500 | because I love, love, love the heat.

01:43:36.280 | I love sauna.

01:43:37.280 | I'm very heat adapted.

01:43:38.260 | I'm comfortable at very high temperatures in the sauna.

01:43:40.960 | I don't hate the cold, but I close to hate the cold.

01:43:45.480 | So for me, the first wall to get over,

01:43:47.140 | the first bit of resistance that's really hard

01:43:49.100 | for me to get over is to walk towards the cold plunge.

01:43:51.660 | Then it's to take the lid off.

01:43:53.180 | Then it's to look at the thing.

01:43:54.660 | Then it's to get in.

01:43:55.820 | But I force myself to do it.

01:43:57.940 | I make sure that I do it safely,

01:43:59.300 | and I make sure that I do it

01:44:00.300 | for about one to three minutes, sometimes longer.

01:44:02.800 | But I do it because yes,

01:44:05.020 | deliberate cold exposure increases release

01:44:06.760 | of the so-called catecholamines,

01:44:08.420 | dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine.

01:44:10.100 | Also, yes, I know that those catecholamines

01:44:12.440 | are going to make me feel much better

01:44:13.800 | after I get out of the cold plunge for many, many hours.

01:44:16.340 | That's been established.

01:44:17.540 | But I also do deliberate cold exposure by cold shower

01:44:21.420 | or by cold immersion because I hate it.

01:44:23.940 | And because I know that by doing it,

01:44:25.680 | I'm going to be activating my will to persevere,

01:44:28.340 | my grit, my willpower.

01:44:30.660 | Now, today's discussion is not

01:44:32.140 | about deliberate cold exposure.

01:44:33.340 | It's about exercise.

01:44:35.200 | So what I've started doing in recent months,

01:44:37.340 | and I'm certainly going to continue into 2025,

01:44:40.640 | is to start adding some form of exercise

01:44:43.220 | that I absolutely don't want to do

01:44:45.540 | in order to activate my anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:44:48.620 | Now, for me, because my schedule is very full,

01:44:50.440 | I'm already doing six workouts per week.

01:44:52.120 | Again, some of them are shorter.

01:44:53.140 | Some of them are longer.

01:44:54.260 | I don't have a lot of extra time to exercise.

01:44:56.740 | I don't have a lot of time to start rolling jujitsu

01:44:59.660 | for a couple hours a week, which I wouldn't loathe,

01:45:01.660 | but there's a big barrier for me to do that sort of thing.

01:45:03.840 | So maybe it's perfect for activating AMCC,

01:45:06.340 | anterior mid-cingulate cortex.

01:45:08.300 | Rather, what I've decided to do is to include

01:45:11.460 | the one thing that I've been putting off for years

01:45:13.840 | that frankly, I may enjoy down the line,

01:45:16.540 | but that I don't enjoy currently.

01:45:18.980 | And that's to do some sort of really coordinated,

01:45:22.380 | specific motor activity that has to be done precisely

01:45:26.580 | or very precisely before you can say

01:45:28.760 | that you've quote unquote, done it right.

01:45:31.060 | And for me, the thing that I'm selecting,

01:45:33.180 | because I already like to jump rope

01:45:35.180 | and I can do a few different things with a jump rope.

01:45:37.100 | I'm not super skilled, but I can already jump rope,

01:45:39.520 | is something that my friend, Mark Bell exposed me to,

01:45:43.980 | which is this rope flow thing.

01:45:45.900 | Feel free to laugh if you want,

01:45:47.100 | but this stuff is hard and it's really, really cool.

01:45:49.180 | The rope flow involves just taking a rope, okay?

01:45:51.780 | There may be specific commercial brands of these,

01:45:53.620 | but I was told I can just use a kind of thick rope

01:45:55.900 | that you buy at the hardware store

01:45:56.940 | or like a dog leash type rope.

01:45:58.740 | And you can look this up online.

01:45:59.980 | We'll provide a link to it.

01:46:00.860 | There's a specific pattern of moving the rope

01:46:03.780 | where you're not actually jumping through it.

01:46:05.140 | So it's not jumping rope,

01:46:06.660 | but you're actually moving it in front of

01:46:08.760 | and behind your body and from side to side

01:46:10.540 | and involves a lot of different shifting

01:46:12.340 | from one limb to the other in very deliberate ways.

01:46:14.260 | And as I'm discussing this,

01:46:15.380 | I realized that I really don't want to do this,

01:46:17.020 | but I know it's going to be very useful for me,

01:46:18.940 | which is exactly why I'm going to use it in 2025

01:46:22.420 | to enhance my anterior mid cingulate cortex activity.

01:46:25.000 | The only fear being that I'm going to start to like it,

01:46:28.260 | and then I'll have to find something else

01:46:29.620 | to engage my anterior mid cingulate cortex.

01:46:31.940 | And perhaps at that point,

01:46:33.420 | I'll look to you guys in the comment sections

01:46:35.100 | to figure out what sorts of exercise I would hate the most

01:46:38.380 | in order to make sure

01:46:39.200 | that I'm getting my anterior mid cingulate cortex activation

01:46:41.980 | because yes, increased coordination is great.

01:46:46.420 | Who wouldn't want that?

01:46:47.980 | But mainly because I want to improve my brain performance

01:46:50.860 | and brain function, both in the short term and over time.

01:46:55.120 | So if you want in the comment section on YouTube,

01:46:57.560 | because that's where I can see the comments best

01:46:58.960 | or perhaps on Spotify as well,

01:47:00.240 | where they now have a comment section,

01:47:01.720 | I guess Apple has a comment section too.

01:47:03.640 | YouTube, Apple, or Spotify put in the comment section,

01:47:06.660 | the form of exercise that's both psychologically

01:47:09.760 | and physically safe for you to embrace,

01:47:12.520 | but that you would loathe to do

01:47:14.360 | and that you're going to perhaps, no, not perhaps,

01:47:17.000 | that you're going to commit to doing in 2025.

01:47:19.840 | And then we can compare and contrast

01:47:21.540 | and we can all see which ones we hate the most.

01:47:23.860 | And then we can exchange which exercises we hate the most.

01:47:26.660 | And everyone can laugh at us

01:47:27.960 | for doing these things that we hate.

01:47:29.200 | And yet we'll be the ones laughing

01:47:30.620 | because our anterior mid cingulate cortices

01:47:33.380 | will be nice and plump well into our old ages.

01:47:35.860 | And everybody else will be wondering

01:47:37.460 | where the comment section is.

01:47:38.860 | Thank you everybody for joining me for today's discussion,

01:47:41.420 | all about how exercise can be leveraged

01:47:43.780 | to improve brain health and brain performance.

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01:49:17.060 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

01:49:19.620 | all about exercise, brain health, and performance.

01:49:22.860 | And last, but certainly not least,

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How to Use Exercise to Improve Your Brain’s Health, Longevity & Performance

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