If you are one of the sixty percent of Americans who is taking prescription drugs, do you wish you could avoid those drugs? Do you believe those drugs are helpful? Do you feel trapped because you don’t want to be taking them, but feel you have no choice?
There are alternatives to drugs. The only reason you take drugs is to deal with some health condition which is somehow threatening your way of life, if not your life itself. Your doctor identified a health condition, or you complained about a condition, and the result was a set of prescriptions. We have bought into the notion that our bodies are prone to getting out of whack and that drugs can fix or at least greatly improve our conditions, making our lives more normal.
However, we are then often disappointed, as the drugs don’t help as much as we expected, or they give off side effects which are hurting our health in unexpected ways. Sometimes drugs are necessary, but for over half of us they are becoming routine.
If someone offered you an alternative to taking your drugs that would be just as effective without the side effects, would you choose the alternative? Before you say, “of course I would”, what if the alternative required effort — much more effort than simply taking some pills? Would you make the effort?
Why not natural?
This is where a lot of us stumble: we know that alternative medicine can help avoid or reverse health conditions, but we don’t want to make the sustained effort, finding pill popping to be a lot easier. Plus, we consider our doctors to be the experts, and if they prescribe drugs, we feel that we should comply. Some of us have made half-hearted attempts at a better lifestyle, failed in the process, and given up on trying harder. Others may just not have much faith in alternative, natural methods over drugs.
You have probably heard many of the advantages of hydration, diet, proper rest, and exercise in staying healthy. Hydration is needed to flush out toxins and keep kidneys tuned up, diet is critical to provide the array of nutrients your body requires, sleep is your rebuild period to compensate for the day’s activity, and exercise builds strength, endurance, and promotes oxygenation of your body. If we are truly healthy, we don’t need drugs, except perhaps in short term emergencies. Staying healthy is the best anti-drug.
But this list is missing something — the brain. More than any single factor, your brain is signaling either health or disease to your entire body. Hydration, diet, rest, and exercise are vital supports to your brain. But your brain is both ultra complex and ultra sensitive. It can be its own worst enemy when stress, fear, or anxiety build up. Mental stress can damage your brain as your neurons get overactive and overexcited, resulting in burnout over time. Most stress to the brain is caused largely by subconscious thoughts that you can’t directly control or even know are there, but you can support the brain in physical ways which help even the subconscious worry-filled brain avoid some of the stress damage. Let’s take a closer look at exercise, which has benefits that might not be obvious.
Focusing on the workout
There are two categories of exercise: aerobic and resistance (or weight) training. The effects of aerobic exercise on the brain are very direct: you are building up the cardiovascular system and providing the brain with better circulation of oxygenated blood to remove metabolic waste and provide oxygen and nutrients. Aerobic exercise provides circulation immediately, but over time builds up the cardiovascular system to provide better circulation even when not exercising. It isn’t a surprise that aerobic exercise supports the brain directly through circulation, which supports the neurons, resists neuron die off, and promotes growth of new neurons.
The impact of non-impact training
How about resistance training (RT for short)? Does building your muscles help your brain? Research says that it does. Published in Psychiatry Research is a review study where the researchers came to three important conclusions:
- RT is an effective drug-free way to reduce depressive and anxiety symptoms in older adults.
- RT is able to improve mental health for both those with mental disorders and those without.
- RT programs (frequency, number of sets, duration, variety) can be tuned to maximize mental benefits for each individual. (1)
As a review study, the researchers did not conduct their own experiments but rather compared findings in multiple existing studies. 488 search results were compared, and 21 were deemed of sufficient data quality and availability. Multiple study agreement gave credibility to their findings. But how does muscle building actually help the brain?
The researchers found various mechanisms in their studies. Inflammation was reduced — this is important for the whole body, but especially important for the brain which is very sensitive to inflammation levels. Neuroendocrine activity (release of hormones in response to the nervous system) was better regulated. Oxidative stress was reduced. Perhaps most importantly, neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to form and organize synaptic connections — was improved by the weight training.
The brain is “plastic”, meaning that it can change and learn. Learning requires memory, and one of the benefits of RT found in the study was increase in hippocampus volume where memories are formed. Also, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) increases with RT, which leads to greater neuron growth.
Try to remember this
In extreme cases, the effect of a therapy is usually the most pronounced and easiest to observe. Another review study, published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, considers the effect of RT on Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disorder where cognitive function and memory progressively declines due to synaptic loss, neuroinflammation, and deposition of amyloid-? peptide protein plaques in the cortex and hippocampus. The World Health Organization projects the number of AD cases will exceed 150 million by 2050. And there are no drug cures for Alzheimer’s, and only a few drugs that have some effect in slowing the progression of the disease. RT is the best strategy to improve muscle strength, bone density, and physical function — particularly for the elderly. (2) While drug success is paltry, reviewed studies show that RT can recover cognitive function in elderly patients, and that 6 months of an RT program significantly improves memory performance, attention, and executive functions. RT protects the hippocampus from AD degeneration. These studies showed that the benefits of the 6 month program persisted for the next 12 months. They confirmed that RT leads to the formation of new hippocampal neurons, and suggest that “different exercise modalities”, or variety of exercises, is more efficient in neurogenesis than single type exercises. Further, RT and aerobic exercise work together for even better results. And their studies confirmed that higher levels of BDNF prevents neuron loss (or promotes replacement) and improves cognitive performance.
Exercise is one part of a healthy lifestyle, where all parts are needed to really develop and maintain health. You may have considered weight training to only be worthwhile in gaining muscle strength, but it also strengthens your brain. Your body is highly interconnected, and science is still discovering new aspects to this interconnection. Weight training strengthens your “brain muscles” in addition to your body muscles.
Drugs have side effects, often which are quite dangerous and damaging to overall health. When it comes to mental sharpness, and especially avoiding Alzheimers disease or other cognitive decline, drugs are still not very effective. Exercise has no side effects beyond temporarily sore muscles, and resistance training can be more effective than drugs. Which do you prefer?
Dr. Nemec’s Review
What does subconscious and conscious stress do to the brain?
They act as excitotoxins, meaning they overstimulate the brain cells to death. This leads to a progressive cognitive decline which you know as brain fog and then memory loss. This continual overstimulation of neurons also damages the hippocampus which is the memory center of the brain.
What is stress?
There are two types: mental–emotional stress and physical stress.
In the mental emotional category, we can subdivide into four categories
- Subconscious
- Unconscious
- Conscious chronic
- Conscious acute
Subconscious
The majority of these stress programs were written in the brain from age 0 to 6 with early environmental stressors. These are usually the people around you in this age group. (Vague or misplaced reference. Which age group?)
Unconscious
This is your hereditary, your family line things that were passed to you mentally–emotionally.
Conscious chronic
This is stress that has been with you a long time — some prior events in your life that was traumatic, that you still remember and they still keeps playing over and over, controlling your actions, your thoughts, and your brain cells.
Conscious acute
This is the stress of the present life, the stress of the job, of the family, of the finances, of life in general. This is what you’re putting your conscious mind on.
All four of these stress categories secrete inflammatory molecules, which if continually secreted will damage neurons. So the key is to calm down the overactive, overthinking mind. Or another way to look at it is, give it a release of this energy.
When stressed, run and lift
When we have all these stress areas in the brain building up, we must release the stress. Look at the stress like energy. Look at it like a fire. Now, fire serves a tremendous amount of useful purposes: one of the most important being providing heat for our homes — but the same fire out of control can burn down the house. So what does this research show? Stress will burn up the brain cells, especially the hippocampus memory center.
So what puts out the fire?
Exercise does! So if you want to protect your brain, you need to move it and lift it, or you will lose it.
The gold medal rewards
People train for the Olympics for a chance to get a gold medal. They do an intense amount of exercise daily every day for many years just to try to get a gold metal. Combined resistance training and aerobic training guarantee you nine gold medals that last the rest of your life, so that you can thrive when you’re 105.
Resistive training can be either body weight training, or resistance weight training. The benefits of resistance training are quite impressive:
- Inflammation decreased in the whole body, but especially the brain.
- Neurotransmitters and hormones were much better regulated.
- Oxidative stress was reduced.
- Neuroplasticity — the ability of the brain to form and organize synaptic connections — was improved
- Increase in hippocampus volume where memories are formed.
- Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) increases which leads to greater neuron growth.
- RT can recover cognitive function in elderly patients, and that 6 months of an RT program significantly improves memory performance, attention, and executive functions.
- RT protects the hippocampus from AD degeneration. RT leads to the formation of new hippocampal neurons.
- Aerobic training along with resistance training multiplies the effects.
All of this by either body weight training or by weight training.
To sum this all up: when you combine cardiovascular exercise with resistance exercise, you have the best of both worlds. You get the most gold medals, and the beauty of this is that everyone who does it gets the gold medal rewards. It’s not for a select few. It’s for everyone, so if you do the exercise, you get the reward 100% of the time. Only one issue: you must continually exercise. This is not a temporary fad. This is a permanent lifestyle change that takes discipline, but once you’ve done it for three months, it’s subconsciously programmed and it’s second nature — you don’t think about it anymore.
There is another training, another exercise, that exercises a higher place than your mind or your emotions or your brain:
It is exercising your spirit.
Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air…No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave… For physical training is of some value, but spiritual training is of value in everything and in every way, since it holds promise for the present moment and all the moments to come forever.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
(1) Paolo M. Cunha, André O. Werneck, Leandro dos Santos, Max D. Oliveira, Liye Zou, Felipe B. Schuch, Edílson S. Cyrino, Can resistance training improve mental health outcomes in older adults? A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials, Psychiatry Research, Volume 333 , March 2024, 115746, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165178124000337?via%3Dihub
(2) Azevedo, Caroline Vieira et al. “The effects of resistance exercise on cognitive function, amyloidogenesis, and neuroinflammation in Alzheimer’s disease.” Frontiers in neuroscience vol. 17 1131214. 2 Mar. 2023, doi:10.3389/fnins.2023.1131214, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10017453/
