Wanna get big gains… in your brain? Turns out exercise is good for the muscles and the mind. As Psychology Today reports, there’s a special protein that seems to make it all work.
Dude! I’m going to eat a thousand steaks!
Easy, tiger. Not that kind of protein.
Produced in the liver, GPLD1 hits the bloodstream after you do cardio. This protein appears to trigger new neurons to form in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with memory and learning.
So scientists wondered if increasing the amount of this protein in the body could counteract the effects of aging on the brain. To find out, they gave a group of older “couch potato mice” transfusions of GPLD1.
These mice showed an improvement in cognitive function that mimicked that of mice that took a spin on an exercise wheel.
I’ll have what they’re having
Not for a while, you won’t. There’s still a lot more research that needs to happen before Big Pharma gets the go-ahead to give us magic exercise pills.
Until then, see you at the HITT studio.
