It is common to spend a lot of money on anti-ageing treatments, but the truth is that the only scientifically proven treatment is exercise.
I have seen some people after six months and found them aged due to lack of exercise.
The exercise has many beneficial effects on brain health, helping to reduce the risks of dementia, depression and stress, as well as playing an important role in restoring and maintaining cognitive function and whole-body metabolic control.
The brain perceives exercise from muscle-induced peripheral factors, allowing direct communication via substances from the muscle and the brain itself.
The muscle secretes myokines that contribute to the regulation of the function of the hippocampus, the central seat of memory, especially spatial memory. This is why it is often a first sign of dementia, that the person gets lost and cannot find their way back.
Exercise contributes to the production of new neurons in three places in the brain:
One of the myokines, cathepsin B, crosses the blood-brain barrier to enhance the production of brain-derived neurotrophic factors and thus, as we have said, contribute to neurogenesis, memory and learning. In this respect, emotional attachment to mobiles and tablets is a promoter of lack of exercise and school failure.
The brain can indirectly detect exercise via adipose tissue (adiponectin) or from the liver (fibroblast growth factor 21 and insulin-like growth factor).
Promotes good brain and heart health
Exercise increases the expression of the gene that increases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and is therefore a major promoter of brain fitness at any age. IL-6 myokine levels increase with exercise and may contribute to the suppression of the central mechanisms of bulimia and hunger anxiety states. Exercise also reduces depression-like symptoms.
The myokines produced by exercising muscles trigger the exchange, communication, tuning between muscles and organs such as the liver, intestine, pancreas, adipose tissue, bones, vascular bed, skin and brain. People leave the gym with younger faces, because exercise improves the health of the skin.
Exercise may have anti-atherogenic effects on the vasculature, improve autonomic balance between the sympathetic and vagus systems (thus reducing the risk of malignant arrhythmias) and induce cardioprotection against ischaemia-reperfusion injury.
Prevents ageing
In turn, it promotes a healthy anti-inflammatory environment (largely through the release of muscle-derived myokines). We know that we are aged by the inflammation that occurs after a certain age, so we extend the years of life with daily sport. It stimulates myocardial regeneration and improves age-related loss of muscle mass and strength, a little-known risk factor.
Regular exercise can promote a healthy gut microbiota while protecting the permeability and function of the intestinal barrier that routinely prevents the entry of pathogenic bacteria.
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José Antonio Rodríguez Piedrabuena
Specialist in psychiatry, management training, group and couple therapies.