Story 2 begins — exercise reduces Alzheimer’s risk (mechanism)

1:06:04>> We're going to jump now back into our main story, our second story of the day, >> which is around Alzheimer's research. >> Yes, this one's very cool. So this one is a health and medicine story about Alzheimer's disease and exercise. Yeah. >> So scientists think they figured out exactly how exercise reduces the risk of Alzheimer's. It reports a new paper uh in cell by a group out of the University of California, San Francisco uh in this BAR aging inst uh research institute. And so we've we've actually done a lot I mean we just did last episode we did something on ALS. >> Um we've talked about Alzheimer's research. I think multiple times. Yeah, multiple times.

1:06:44>> Multiple times on the pod previously. >> Um this is clearly, you know, something that impacts millions of people, families, siblings, uh co-workers, etc. >> And so there's there okay there's a link between the disease and exercise. I'm curious what that link is. >> Yeah. And I mean it's not a it's not like that surprising that exercise is good for you, >> right? This is something we've known. But what I love about this study is we've again it's about the mechanism. It's the Lego blocks that are coming together. >> There's a pathway from exercise to the biochemistry of Alzheimer's that these guys have traced. >> Okay.

1:07:24>> From the from me running >> to me not getting Alzheimer's or getting Alzheimer's later. Okay. >> And that biochemical >> string of Lego blocks is what is super interesting to me. Okay. Okay. Very we potentially have a discovery of the pathway by which this is happening. >> Yes. Because if we have a discovery of the pathway the biochemistry of what this is happening then perhaps we can get the benefits without the exercise. >> Right. Right. Right. Right. Because we understand the me the mechanistic >> Yeah. >> dynamics >> that are driving the process. And and this could be huge because then for people who maybe can't do exercise but have Alzheimer's, this could be a big thing or for those who want to do

1:08:06exercise but get added benefit, you know, a boost. It's it's huge, right? Okay. So, we're going to start with the human brain. 80 billion neurons. >> It's the most complex object in the universe >> and stuff can go wrong because it is the most recent of our organs to evolve, right? Most of the mutations that create human beings have to do with brain development. And what that necessarily means is the brain is going to have a lot of stuff go wrong because it's still in the phase of the genetics is trying stuff out. >> We're in the beta version right now. >> Yeah, we're still in the beta version even though the beta version is doing really well. Like but but the no one's turned off the the code um like edits.

1:08:47>> Yeah. Yeah. It's like no one's frozen the main, >> you know, GitHub. People are people people are still merging branches on >> main. It's like it's like no no no we're doing like can we can we stop? Yeah. We got some bug fixing to do. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so the bug fixing is what's crucial and it happens a lot later on in life. And for a long time the brain is sort of studied in isolation. There's like a you imagine like the brain is an island and we think about the mind and everything that's happening in the brain is isolated to the brain. But very recently that has