Latest / Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor / Forget brain training games - here's a powerful to keep your brain young and healthy: Wisdom Wednesdays

Transcript

Forget brain training games - here's a powerful to keep your brain young and healthy: Wisdom Wednesdays · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Today,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I want to wave together two important studies that, when
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: you look at them side by side, tell a really
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: powerful story about resistance training and the aging brain. The
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: first one is a recent randomized control trial published in
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the journal guro Science and the title of it was
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Randomized Control Trial of Resistance Exercise.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: And Brain Aging Clocks.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: And then the other one is something called the SMART
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: trial the Study of Mental and Resistance Training in Mild
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Cognitive Impowerment. This is a pretty famous study. It was
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a randomized, double blind, double sham control trial. That means
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: that there was a control trial that had a double
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: intervention that they thought was a useful book was actually
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a sham or just nothing. And that was in people
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: who already were diagnosed with mild cognitive and permit. And
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: when you put these two studies together, you get something
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: really compelling. So let's start with the newer study on
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: the brain aging clocks. They took three hundred and nine
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: older adults in their ages were sixty two to seventy
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: and they randomized into three different groups. One was heavy
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: resistance training where they did three supervised sessions a week
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: and the next one was moderate intensity resistance training. They
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: did one supervised session and in two home sessions per week,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: so still doing three per week. And the third were
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a non exercise control group, and they followed them for
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: one year with a two year follow up afterwards, which
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: is really tells you a lot about the enduring benefits
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of a short term in dimension. And they used resting
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: state functional MRI to estimate biological brain age and using
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: machine learning earning brain clocks, trained on over twenty four
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: hundred independent adults, so this gives us a really good picture.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: And the key metric that they talked about was the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: brain age gap, that's the difference between the predicted brain
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: age from the tests and chronological age.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: And here's what happened.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Both moderate and heavy resistance training groups showed significant reductions
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: in brain age. Those who did the heavy resistance training
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: they showed a brain age of one point four years
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: lesser reduced at one year, the moderate training pretty much
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: identical one point three nine years less at one year,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and then with the heavy training at two years out
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: they had a reduced brainage of one point at four
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: so so actulutely the improvements actually got better and modern
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: training even got even better than that. They had two
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: point twenty six years reduction in brainage at two years,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: and the control group no change at all. Now, this
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: wasn't just one brain readion lighting up. When they restricted
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: analysis to individual networks like the default mode.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: Network or the motor network.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: The effect actually disappeared. So what was clear from this
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: picture is this was a whole brain shift, a distributed
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: whole brain shift towards younger functional connectivity profile or in
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Layman's terms, a better brain. They also showed increased prefrontal
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: connectivity and improvements in leg strength really strongly correlated with
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: reductions in brain age gap, and that's not a new association.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So here's the take on here is train the muscle,
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: shift the network, and slow the clock. So let's jump
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: to the smart trial. So this is a little bit
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of an older trial, but a very famous one. They
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: looked at one hundred adults who already had mild cognitive
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: imperment right, so they are a high risk group for dementia.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: On about six to ten percent of people progress to
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: dementia each year if they have mid cognitive impermit. So
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the participants were randomized into four groups, one who did
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: progressive resistance training I adding load as they continued to train.
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Another one did cognitive training, the sort of brain training
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: stuff that you see all over the place. The next
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: one did combined resistance training and cognitive training, and then
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the fourth group had this double sham control again. Now,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: the training in this group was high intensity progressive resistance
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: training two to three days a week for six months,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: and then they had an eighteen month follow up. The
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: primary artcome that they were looking at was global cognitive
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: function using something called the ADAS COG. That's a standard
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: cognitive assessment scale for Alzheimer's disease.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Here's what they find for the resistance training group.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: They significantly improved their ADAS COG at six months, and
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: they doubled the proportion of participants scoring in the normal
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: cognitive range, going from twenty four percent to forty eight percent.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Like that's huge, and it had improved executive function. And importantly,
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: they maintained both executive and global cognitive benefits twelve months
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: after stopping the supervise training. So this didn't just slow decline,
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it actually moved the chunk of people back into the
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: normal range. And these are people with mild cognitive I permit.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: What happened to the group who did the cognitive training alone,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: very minimal effect, the mainly temporary and reductions in the
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: rate of memory decline. The group that did the combined
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: resistance and cognitive training, surprisingly, they find that adding in
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the cognitive training blunted some of the resistance training benefits,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: particularly for executive and global domains. Now, the author speculated
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: that this could reflect interference at the level of neural adaptation,
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: and that's pretty similar to how between our bodies. We
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: know that if you're doing lots of endurance training while
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: you're doing strength training, the endurance training can blunt the games,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and vice versa if you do both at the same time,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and so there seems to be specificity of adaptation in
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: the brain. Now, let's weave these two together and say
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: what does this mean for us. Well, the smart trial
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: shows that resistance training improves clinical cognitive outcomes in people
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: who are already showing in permanent and the brain clock
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: study shows that resistance training shifts biological brain aging trajectories
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: in healthy older adults. One measured one of the studies
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: meadured cognition, the other measured brain at network age, and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: together they suggest something pretty damned important. Resistance training just
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: doesn't make you feel stronger, It actually modifies the underlying
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: biology of brain aging, and this translates into measurable cognitive improvements.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: So let's have a quick chat about how these effects
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: happen across both studies and the broader research in this area,
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: which I kind of dug into a little bit in
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: my PhD. Several mechanisms likely converge, right, So it's not
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: one of these things, it's probably.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: All of them.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: The first is neurotropic signaling. Resistance training increases BDNF. You've
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: heard me talk about BDNF brain derived neurotropic factor, and
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: also IGF one. They are both important in synaptic plasticity
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: and resilience of your neurons, right, They protect them against damage,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: they help to grow connections, and the smart study authors
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: specifically report IGF one and anti inflammatory pathways as plausible
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: mediators in mild cognitive impermit. The second proposed mechanism has
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: improved insulin sensitivity. You may have heard of me talking
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: about Alzheimer's disease or dementia being called type three diabetes,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and that's because insulin resistance is very tightly linked to
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: cognitive decline. Resistance enhances peripheral eye through the body and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: likely central it's in the brain, and insulin sensitivity, so
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: you get those improvements. The third was reduced inflammation. We
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: know that chronic, low grade inflammation not only increases your
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: risk of many chronic diseases, but also accelerates neurodegeneration. Resistance
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: training reduces systemic inflammatory signaling through the release of myokines,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: which you've heard me talk about before. These molecules that
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: are produced in contracting muscle that get into your bloodstream
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: and have effects on all of your organs, and more
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: intense muscle contractions drive myokine production higher. The fourth mechanism
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: is enhanced cerebral perfusion or blood flow to the brain.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: That mechanical loading improves our vascular health and our endothelial function.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: The enditheosales are what make up your cardiovascular system or
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: it shart certainly your veins and orderies and driving increased
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: efficiency in the cardiovascar system, and it improves nutrient.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Delivery to the brain.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: And then the fifth is mitochondrial adaptation. The brain is
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: a very expensive tissue to run, uses twenty to thirty
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: percent of your total blood glucose and improved mitochondrial efficiency
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: in your neurons supports that neural network stability. And here's
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: the important conceptual link. So the brain clock study showed
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: distributed network level changes and the smart trial showed executive
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and global function improvements. These are domains heavily dependent on
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: this distributed network integrity, how your brain is actually communicating
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: and particularly your prefrontal circuits. So it's the same networks,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: but it's different measurement tools being used. So what's the
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: bigger picture here. Well, for years we've focused on brain training, games,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: supplement and pharmaceutical agents, but here we have two very
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: well designed randomized control trials showing that two to three
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: structured resistance training sessions per week of moderate high intensity
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: with progressive overload can reduce biological brainage, improved global cognition,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: enhance executive function, and potentially delayed dementia progression. So the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: practical impiginations for us all is that we don't need
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: these exotic protocols and expensive supplements. Both of these studies
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: use supervised progressive resistance training modern to heavy loads major
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: muscle groups two to three sessions a week, and importantly
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the Brian clock study showed modern intensity to be just
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: as effective as heavy intensity stuff.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: No, it was different in the smart trial.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So final thoughts here is that the trajectory of the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: aging of Ubrian is modifiable and mechanical loading of muscle
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: through resistance training appears to really influence the integrity of.
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: Your neural networks.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: And it's not crystal clear that resistance training improves cognitive
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: performance in high risk individuals and shifts biological brainage in
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: healthy adults. So it's about training the muscle, strengthen the network,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: preserve the mind.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Go lift heavy shit people. That's it for this week, folks,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: catch you next time.