Exercise plasma boosts memory and dampens brain inflammation via clusterin, 2021, Zurien De Miguel et al

Abstract
Physical exercise is generally beneficial to all aspects of human and animal health, slowing cognitive ageing and neurodegeneration1. The cognitive benefits of physical exercise are tied to an increased plasticity and reduced inflammation within the hippocampus2,3,4, yet little is known about the factors and mechanisms that mediate these effects. Here we show that ‘runner plasma’, collected from voluntarily running mice and infused into sedentary mice, reduces baseline neuroinflammatory gene expression and experimentally induced brain inflammation. Plasma proteomic analysis revealed a concerted increase in complement cascade inhibitors including clusterin (CLU). Intravenously injected CLU binds to brain endothelial cells and reduces neuroinflammatory gene expression in a mouse model of acute brain inflammation and a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Patients with cognitive impairment who participated in structured exercise for 6 months had higher plasma levels of CLU. These findings demonstrate the existence of anti-inflammatory exercise factors that are transferrable, target the cerebrovasculature and benefit the brain, and are present in humans who engage in exercise.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04183-x

Are scientific papers in cahoots with gyms now?

 

It is plausible that humans have evolved to function optimally at a certain level of physical activity, all other things being equal.

But we can’t currently say that with certainty or say what level and forms of physical activity might be involved. In terms of human evolution do we even know what proportion of presumed optimal activity levels were made up of activities necessary for sustaining life and what proportion were not directly productive but might be described as play or sport at different periods of human development. And what point in the history of our species is most relevant, for example the Mesolithic hunter-gather may have had better life expectancy than the Medieval farm labourer or the nineteenth century urban poor, many of whom suffered from work or activity related health problems.

Similarly in contemporary life imbalanced activity in the form of exercise, be it regarded as sport or play can itself result in health problems.

Also presenting ‘exercise’ as a universal panacea ignores situations where all other things are not equal, where the threshold for activity levels becoming harmful may be lowered with such as the exercise intolerance seen in medical conditions such as ME.

 

And yet people who work physical labor all their lives tend to do far worse health-wise as they get older because injuries and repetitive strains add up, because things are far more complicated than this and no research of this type can account for all confounding factors. And because physical labor is stress, no matter how much people want stress to be borderline spiritual in nature. But let's not get facts get in the way of simple-but-wrong ideas.

People in the middle ages worked physically harder than most people today. They had horrible life expectancy for so many reasons. This is completely naïve of socioeconomic context. Hell forget it it's completely naïve of all context.

 

I know it starts off with the usual guff about exercise, but to be fair, it's about showing an effect in humans with cognitive impairment and mice with brain inflammation / a dementia equivalent, and anything that could help with that is worth researching in my book.

My elderly mum developed traumatic dementia after a head injury, and a bit of activity was beneficial for her—I've no idea whether it made any difference to her plasma components, but getting her heart rate up and some blood pumping around definitely helped with both her mental clarity and her sleep. When she wasn't up to walking around, I'd gently massage her legs, or lift her feet up and down whilst she was sitting as a sort of semi-passive exercise (she always 'helped' by engaging her muscles).

 

Could have a lot of uses including dementia, PTSD. Promising new discovery, will need a lot of research and development.

 

I was being facetious about exercise in general.

My mother also developed dementia and was unable to walk at all for the last 8 years of her life.