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EXERCISE = Antidote to Depression

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  • EXERCISE = Antidote to Depression

    We all know that lacing up and breaking a sweat is good for our mood, and that exercise can feel like a lifeline when the stresses of life threaten to engulf us.

    But how a pounding workout helps lift us from the encroaching gloom was a mystery — until now.

    Using mice that were stressed to the point where depression would be a predictable response, researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute in Stockholm uncovered a cascade of biochemical events that begins with exercise and ends with mice that are unusually resilient in the face of stress.

    Their findings, published Thursday in the journal Cell, not only illuminate the link between chronic stress and depression but help explain how a known anti-depressive agent — in this case exercise — works to prevent or mitigate the debilitating mental condition. That’s more than can be said for many antidepressant medications, whose mechanism of action is not all that well understood.

    The findings also point the way to a novel way to ward off depression in those under stress. Antidepressant medications seem to rely on changing brain chemistry, and they require the use of molecules that cross the barrier that protects the brain against most blood-borne toxins. But the Swedish researchers found that exercise’s therapeutic effects begin in the muscles and alter brain chemistry only indirectly.


    Here’s what new research  has uncovered:

    Within the muscles, endurance-type exercise prompts the activation of a protein called PGC-1a1. This protein does a lot already: It promotes the growth of blood vessels, increases the efficiency with which the cells use energy, ensures that fatty acids are broken down for the body’s use and guards against muscle atrophy.

    But the authors of the latest study show that activating PGC-1a1 in the muscles also increases the production of kynurenine aminotransferases inside of muscle. These enzymes catalyze a chemical change in kynurenine, converting it into kynurenic acid.

    In mice, and likely in humans, chronic stress increases  kynurenine in the brain, and high levels of kynurenine appear to induce depression. But kynurenic acid can’t get into the brain because it can’t get across the blood-brain barrier. So when PGC-1a1 levels in muscle are high, and kynurenine gets converted into kynurenic acid, levels of kynurenine in the brain drop.

    The result: mental wellness in the face of disadvantage, social setbacks and general adversity.

    
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