A Surprising Extra Way Exercise Fights Dementia

We often say “what’s good for your heart is good for your brain”, because the former feeds the latter (with oxygen and nutrients) and helps clear away detritus. It can’t do that without good circulation.

For that reason, we have written such articles as: What’s Your Vascular Dementia Risk? ← includes actual numbers and a risk calculator tool and things like that 😎

And it’s not just cardio! It’s been established that doing strength-training (for example, lifting weights or doing calisthenics) can improve brain health too; see: Can Strength Training Fight Dementia?

For more on how each approach offers different benefits, see: Cardio vs Strength Training: Which Is Better For Brain Health? ← it depends on which aspect(s) of brain health!

But today, we’ll be looking at some new science shining light on a newly-discovered mechanism of action:

Mitochondrial migration

When your body moves, so do your mitochondria! Not just in the sense of “your body is made of cells, and those cells contain mitochondria, so they move with everything else”, but in the sense of “they migrate from cell to cell”.

Researchers (Dr. Toshiki Inaba et al.) examined how low-intensity exercise protects the brain after stroke and in dementia by triggering the transfer of mitochondria from muscle to brain cells via platelets.

How this happens: exercise increases mitochondrial production in muscle and blood, with platelets acting as carriers that deliver these mitochondria to neurons, oligodendrocytes, and astrocytes in the brain.

In mouse models (because the ethics board wouldn’t let the researchers dissect human participants’ brains after a study) they found that mice that performed treadmill exercise showed less white matter and myelin damage, better movement and memory, and fewer post-stroke complications than non-exercising mice.

This happened, the researchers discovered, because the transferred mitochondria helped brain cells survive low-oxygen conditions in damaged areas and the surrounding penumbra, facilitating repair and reducing neuroinflammation-related injury.

They also found that the migration of muscle-derived mitochondria improved the survival of neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes under oxygen–glucose deprivation and hypoxia (so, it improves the body’s defences against the threat in stroke and/or vascular dementia).

You can read the paper itself in full, here: Mitochondrial Intercellular Transfer via Platelets After Physical Training Exerts Neuro-Glial Protection Against Cerebral Ischemia

Can it be done without exercise? Maybe! The researchers hypothesize that mitochondrial transfer via platelet transfusion could allow frail or otherwise relevantly disabled patients to enjoy exercise-like neuroprotection without physical exertion.

But for now, exercise seems to be the best way.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be a lot! This is consistent with what we wrote previously on the topic of light exercise and Alzheimer’s, here:

How Many Steps Per Day To Beat Alzheimer’s? (A Lot Fewer Than You Might Think)

However, if you do want to supplement your exercise with other methods of improving your mitochondrial mobility and thus general good health, then do check out:

7 Ways To Boost Mitochondrial Health To Fight Disease

Want to learn more?

For a much deeper dive, you might like this book that we reviewed a little while back:

Healthy Heart, Healthy Brain: The Personalized Path to Protect Your Memory, Prevent Heart Attacks and Strokes, and Avoid Chronic Illness – by Dr. Amy Doneen & Dr. Bradley Bale

Take care!