And there were so many great benefits from resistance training, but to me often brain health is really overlooked.

You know, all of those things create a more confident person. And again, when you are a more confident person, you’re able to go out into the world and fulfill your purposes. Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and wellbeing. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co-hosts are Brian Saigon, co-founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence-based strength training. And now for today’s episode. Hi everyone. Today we are going to be talking about strength training and brain health.

So what do we mean by brain health? I think most of us out there, you know, want to feel good. We are mental health and a sense of well-being, confidence, peacefulness, good mood is important to us. Of course, we know there is a higher prevalence now of depression and anxiety in our culture. In fact, depression has accounted for about 15% of deaths worldwide. According to Dr. Fisher recently here, those of us who struggle with memory or have family members who are seeing that decline with their memory, maybe a family history of dementia, um, Alzheimer’s. Brain health is an important area that affects a lot of areas of our life and for those of us who are trying to stay sharp and avoid, you know, some of the mental Mental downfalls that exist especially as we get older and especially with all the life throws at us Understanding how this is related to staying strong is going to be crucial. So that is what this episode is all about. I’m here with Dr. Fischer. How are you today? I’m very well, thank you, Amy. How are you doing?

I’m doing well. I’m doing well. And this is a topic that I care a lot about. I know I have family who have some dementia as well as a couple of family members that have already passed away from Alzheimer’s. Personally, I care about staying sharp physically and cognitively, verbally. It’s just an important area, right? And also just emotionally. And so this is a topic that I’m pretty interested in, and I’m excited to dive in here with you on today. So, let’s start with talking about, I would love for you to just start us off by sharing in your estimation, what are we talking about when we say brain health?

Yeah, when I talk about brain health, I tend to think of two things. I tend to think of, first of all, kind of our actual cognitive function, whether it’s our cognitive processing speeds, our memory recall, our cognitive plasticity, so our ability to kind of take in information and be able to mold our brain and be able to be retained there. But then I also think about kind of mental health as well. I think of mental well-being, as you said, you know, scary statistic of you know nearly 15% of deaths worldwide are attributable to poor mental health or depression. And but we look at resistance training, we look at the benefits that can give us and we often think of the physical benefits whether it’s bone health or muscle quality and muscle mass to combat sarcopenia or whether it’s the strength that we get to combat dynopenia. And there were so many great benefits from resistance training that to me often brain health is really overlooked.

Well, and yeah, it is. And it’s an exciting area because if we can find improvements in this, and most people don’t expect there to be a correlation between their brain health and resistance training, participating in that. They seem like two separate things.

So why don’t you share with us, what impact does resistance training have on brain health, especially as we age?

Yeah, well, when we talk about brain health, we often think of, when we talk about sort of cognitive function, we often think of, you know, degenerative conditions like dementia or diseases like Alzheimer’s. And it’s interesting, as somebody who’s engaged in resistance training for a long time, I don’t think of my body as, you know, high-level physical function. But then the more I read about brain health, the more I’m scared that, oh my gosh, what am I doing to combat this kind of mental decline? You know, we’ve maybe seen our parents reach that stage where they walk in a room and forget why they walked in there or, you know, more severe conditions. Maybe they’re losing their vocabulary or so forth. And the reality is that actually resistance training is so closely linked to sending positive markers or increasing positive markers associated with either a decrease in the progression of Alzheimer’s, or even people who have engaged in resistance training for a prolonged period are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. So we’re thinking about like how our brain actually physically works as a product of the muscular contraction that we have from resistance training and that’s absolutely key. Uh, there’s a Canadian researcher, uh, uh, Teresa Luambrose, and she’s looked a lot at things like cognitive processing speeds, you know, how well we can perform mental tasks, how well we can recall things in memory, uh, executive function, uh, and our ability to, uh, coordinate tasks at a mental level, uh, at interventions of sort of 8, 10, 12 weeks of resistance training and how they physically improve our cognitive functioning. And it’s just phenomenal data to see that while we’re seeing these increases in kind of biomarkers that say, okay we’re maybe less likely to  suffer from Alzheimer’s or have degenerers that say okay we’re maybe less likely to suffer

Alzheimer’s or have degenerative conditions but we’re also able to positively enhance our brain function as a product of resistance training.

How are they measuring that improvement in brain function? Yeah so some of it there was a paper last year which looked at people engaging in resistance training and it looked at specific markers, biomarkers within the brain that are associated with degenerative conditions. And they said, okay, these markers decrease when people engage in resistance training. And then there are more practical measures where they simply get people to undergo things like the Stroop test is a great one. So in the Stroop test you often see a color on the screen, maybe the color blue, but the color blue is is used to write the word red and you have to either say the color or say the word. And so it’s that simple cognitive function, your ability to overlook one part of what your brain is telling you. So I’m seeing the color blue, but I’m reading the word red. And so it’s our ability to maybe do a task like that for a prolonged period and how long we can do it, how many errors we get within a given time period or so forth, or specific memory tasks as well.

That is really interesting. And so one question I have for you is I know Alzheimer’s has been called type 3 diabetes. Is that correct? Have you heard that before? Yeah, absolutely. And so it gets me thinking about blood sugar as well and how lower levels of blood sugar impact brain performance. I even know, for example, we have a program at our studios called the Metabolic Comeback. It is a combination of our twice weekly strength training workouts and whole food nutrition, a focused effort for 30 days.

And one thing we’re leaving out for those 30 days is sugar. And regulating the blood sugar levels in the body really does improve, for a lot of people, brain fog. And what is the correlation there between better blood sugar regulation and brain functionality?

Yeah, so when people talk about Alzheimer’s as type three diabetes, it’s because it’s so closely linked to type two diabetes or to diabetes, in that it has a lot of the same sort of traits. It has very high blood sugar, it has a degree of insulin resistance, uh, cellular inflammation, uh, and things like that. So when we engage in resistance training, uh, aside from all the things that we’re doing that are directly positively impacting certain organs or in this case, our brain, we’re also improving our metabolic health, as you said.

Um, so we’re improving our body’s ability to handle sugar intake, our body’s ability to release insulin, um, to store sugars appropriately within the muscles rather than, uh, to maybe have obesity or become overweight or, or have diabetes and so forth. And of course, as we said, those are linked to Alzheimer’s. So our strength training and our actual muscular contraction and our exercise in itself is certainly a key part of combating the initial decline in our physical function and metabolic function as well as brain health.

Yeah, one analogy about this that I’ve shared with people and I have found helpful. So you’re saying, you know, strength training helps us become more insulin sensitive. When we’re insulin resistant, that is going to lead us to a whole host of issues, including brain related issues and other things. And strength training makes our muscles more insulin sensitive.

Imagine a sink and there’s a sink that is plugged up, the drain is plugged, so the sink is full of water. And the sink is already full with water and the faucet is on. So there’s more water coming into a sink that’s already full.

What is going to happen to the water?

So it’s just going to overflow, right?

It’s going to overflow. Yeah. There’s nowhere else for that water already full. What is going to happen to the water? So it’s just going to overflow, right? It’s going to overflow. There’s nowhere else for that water to go. It’s going to overflow. And when that water is overflowing, that is leading to super high levels of blood sugar in the body. The sink is like our muscles. And when our muscles are already full with glycogen, that’s stored energy in there. When we never deplete that out, there’s nowhere else for that sugar to go except into our bloodstream and then eventually become stored as fat in the end, right? What can we do about that sink?

What can we do about the overflow? Well, there are two things we can do. One is we can pull the plug out of the sink. And when we do that, that water is going to flood quickly down the drain, right? And that is like a whole effort exercise session. A strength training workout can really quickly deplete a lot of that glycogen in our muscle right away. The other thing we can do about that overflowing sink is turn down the water flow from the top. And that is nutrition, right? When we eat a whole food diet, lower sugar, lower refined carbohydrates, metabolically speaking, we’re not continuing to provide that constant flow into those muscles and into our body of that sugar.

And so both of those things together really helps decrease fat storage, that constant flow into those muscles and into our body of that sugar and so both of those things together really helps decrease fat storage but also keeps those blood sugar levels in check which is where we want them to be. Absolutely. Yeah when it comes to really our brain health what is the most important thing for listeners to keep in mind then, you know, as it relates to strength training in their brain, what are the most important factors to keep in mind when people consider adding in strength training in an effort to improve their brain health? Yeah, I think that there’s not a huge amount to think about with regards to what strength training actually is. Simply knowing that if we engage in strength training with a degree of regularity over a prolonged duration, so we can’t think that if I engage in strength training for the next six months that’s going to do the job and then I never have to think about it again. It has to be a sustained lifestyle habit. But it doesn’t have to be every day, a couple times a week, which is obviously the exercise coach approach to strength training. And that’s what’s typically used within the academic research. So this is the evidence-based practice that we often talk about. And we know that that’s what’s going to positively impact brain health from that perspective and combat these degenerative conditions. We can also think about our mental wellness. This is something we touched on early on. And this is really important because resistance training or strength training can improve things like sleep quality, which obviously has a positive effect on our mental well-being anyway. It can do things like reduce anxiety, so if we have, if we’re a naturally anxious person or if we have anxiety in certain states and certain conditions, then it can serve to reduce that anxiety. It can reduce depression, which is something we mentioned earlier as a, as a hugely important condition. Uh, improve global self-esteem and physical self-worth.

So self-esteem is really the way I look at myself or the way I see myself. Uh, what do I think of myself? So some people’s depression and anxiety is a product of the way they perceive themselves. Maybe they are comparing themselves to other people, maybe they are comparing themselves to their ideal or comparing themselves to what they think other people want them to be. And actually we know that engagement and resistance training can improve you know self-esteem from that perspective. We also know that it can enhance physical self-worth. And this is really interesting because this is irrespective of actual physical changes. So a number of studies show that if you engage in strength training, you reduce body fat, you increase muscular strength, you can change your physique. And that might be thought of as the reason why we see ourself differently or the reason we maybe perhaps place more value on ourself physically, but we think, oh, I am stronger or I am leaner or I am carrying less body fat or so forth.

But actually, irrespective of those physical changes, we know that engagement in resistance training can enhance physical self-worth. So adolescents and all age groups show that if they engage in resistance training, their self-perception is improved. And then finally, the other thing that we really haven’t touched on yet is with regards to cognitive function. It’s not just in older adults, but it’s in younger children. And there was a big meta-analysis published a couple years back that looked at high school children. In fact, it wasn’t just high school children. Some were pre-high school. It looked really at children age seven to 16 years. If they engage in strength training, how does that impact their academic test scores? And unsurprisingly, as somebody who pushes resistance training at every corner and is a big fan and advocates resistance training practices, they found that scores were improved in children that engaged in resistance training across all age groups. Now we know that physical activity is good for mental wellbeing and mental health and cognitive function. And of course that might be why we maybe, you know, encourage children to play outdoors or to join the football team or the soccer team or the baseball team or hockey or whatever the sport or activity might be. But now actually we know that even engagement in resistance training is serving to further enhance our mental function and our brain function.

So there’s just so many huge benefits from engaging in resistance training for our brain health and our mental health.

Wow, that is really, really cool. And it makes so much sense because all of this is related. And so, you know, building your own self-confidence, reducing your anxiety because of a mood boost and releasing those feel-good hormones from that workout, sleeping better, proving to yourself that you can follow through on a goal that you might have, which is strength training twice a week and actually doing it. You know, all of those things create a more confident person. And again, when you are a more confident person, you’re able to go out into the world and fulfill your purposes better, right? And so we want to be able to live fully in this area and our brain really dictates our perception of our entire existence. It really is. Everything that we perceive is our life. And so we want to make that as good as we possibly can and this is a huge way we can do that.

Absolutely. Any closing thoughts on this topic?

No, I think we’ve covered everything. I think this is a hugely important topic as we said from the offset so I hope it’s been beneficial to listeners. Oh, yeah. I definitely think so.

So if you are interested in improving your well-being and need a place to strength train, I want you to check out the Exercise Coach. You can visit ExerciseCoach.com and register for two free sessions. We will see you next time on the podcast. And remember, strength changes everything. connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything.com. Join us next week for another episode. And remember, strength changes everything. connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything.com. Join us next week for another episode.

Here’s to you and your best health.