Be warned: this is a post with the kind of scientific minutiae I love to pass along, like as if I was a scientific evangelist. I can hear my parents saying “Why couldn’t you have been this interested in science when you were, say perhaps, actually doing a science degree.” All things in their time, I say.
I read some of the clearest, head-smacking arguments for exercise in a book called Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey. The sound bite is . . . regular aerobic activity raises your personal stress set-point. You know you’ve hit that set-point when you’re gnashing your teeth or maybe your mind bolts off to the negative. Now, this won’t be of interest to people who don’t feel overwhelmed by stress in their lives. Oh wait . . . . NO ONE is dealing with less stress these days.
Change Your Stress Set-Point
Working with your stress response can make you stronger, claims Dr. Ratey. In well-managed doses, stress seems to cause brain cells to overcompensate and organize themselves against future demands – stress inoculation. Assuming that the stress is not too severe and that neurons are given time to recover, the connections become stronger and our mental machinery works better.
Why bother messing with your set-point? Because a higher set-point means that you are more in control of your reactions. And your set-point seems to drop on its own as we get older. I really relate to Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun, when she said she started working with her reactions to life’s stressors because she didn’t want to become that cranky old person who reacts badly to everything.
Save Your Cells!
We’ve heard about the damaging long term effects of stress, mostly chronic disease and disability. But stress adds up on a daily basis at the cellular level. There are three main types of cell stress: oxidative, metabolic and excitotoxic. All three of them cause damage to cell functioning and lead to cell death, which leads to disease – not so good. The first type of stress is caused by the destructive by-products of normal energy production (oxidative stress). We know these as free radicals and we can help our body neutralize them by eating lots of fresh veggies – also called “getting our antioxidants”. The other types of stress are caused by the cell’s inability to convert glucose to energy (metabolic stress) or by demanding cells to keep working without providing enough energy (exitotoxic stress).
But mother nature is a clever woman, and she’s given us some powerful repair molecules – better known as growth factors – to protect our cells. Stimulating them is your best chance to keep your set-point high and you disease free. They have pesky, hard to remember names – brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), fibroblast growth factor (FGF-2), and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). And now we’re at the big reveal . . . consistent aerobic exercise ramps up production of these growth factors more than any other stimuli.
So, as your mother (nature) would say, get up and go outside. While you’re walking, think of your faithful cells and how happy they are that you’re sending in the cavalry to help them keep you healthy.