Dr. Rhonda Patrick On Why Exercise Fuels The Brain, How Microplastics Poison The Body, & The Science Of Fitness

So the brain-derived neurotrophic factor is growing new neurons, can increase the size of the hippocampus, but also, it's really important for something called neuroplasticity ... So really neuroplasticity allows our brains to adapt to a changing environment—and this is important for aging, but it's also important for mental health...

I think almost everyone by now knows that exercise is one of the best things you can do for mental health ... You can't deny it ... Even just even doing like a 10-minute high intensity workout, you feel better.

There have been studies that have shown that even people that are meeting the two and a half hours of moderate intensity exercise per week, if they're only doing this sort of zone 2 training... up to 40% of people have a hard time improving their VO2 max, and they're called non-responders.

So cardiorespiratory fitness is... usually measured in terms of VO2 max, as you know, and it's the maximum amount of oxygen that you can take in during maximal exercise... Emerging data over the last five years or so has proven that it's probably the strongest marker we have of longevity today.

There have been a variety of studies that have shown even older adults that are engaging in moderate-intensity activity for about a year can increase the size of their hippocampus by like 2%, which is amazing because typically older adults... their hippocampus atrophies with time. So not only were they fighting and staving off the atrophying, but they were also increasing it.

If your neurons don't need to use glucose, if they're using lactate instead, this allows glucose to be spared. And why is that important? It's important because glucose is used to make something called NADPH, which is a precursor to form glutathione, which is the brains major, major antioxidant system.

But what's even more interesting is that lactate is also increasing the expression of other genes, and this is happening in the brain ... In the brain, it increases a very important one called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and this is basically one of the best things that you could do for your brain...