Leverage Your Brainpower to Increase Your Muscle Power

Wouldn't you love to love to exercise? I mean, wouldn't you love to look forward to every workout, rather than dreading workouts like a nasty chore? Well, if you don't already love to exercise, you can learn to do so. I do, and the reason I love exercise has to do with the fact that I appreciate the complex and multifaceted impact of exercise on my body and overall health. Beyond muscles and calorie burning. And I internalize this knowledge and manifest it into enthusiasm for activity. And in this video, I want to infect you with some of that love I have for exercise in the form of 5 fast, awesome, and pretty nerdy facts. And hopefully it will get you motivated to get moving as well. So, Warm-up done, let's hit the main set. Fact 1: Exercise can improve mental health. This may be intuitive, but new science shows how exercise can reduce anxiety. In particular, high-intensity exercise. This form of exercise, high-intensity exercise, increases lactate in your body and in your brain, in your medial prefrontal cortex. And lactate in the brain can bind to and modify different proteins, literally bind to them and change their activity. And this modification in turn changes how proteins function and how neurons talk to each other, so-called synaptic transmission, with a direct impact on brain metabolism, brain function, the human mind, mental state, and anxiety. This is one way exercise can reduce anxiety, and I will double down on that. Exercise increases lactate, which directly modifies proteins in the brain to change how brain cells function, how they talk to each other, changing mental state. How cool is that? Admittedly, admittedly, defining these mechanisms does require animal model studies, since you can't very well decapitate humans for scientific research. Typically frowned upon by ethics boards. But there's every reason to believe these findings would generalize to humans since we have similar brain circuitry in these regions. For more detail on exercise and anxiety, I did do a deep dive on those new data in this video that you can check out. But moving on, Fact 2: Exercise improves fat quality. Of course, many people exercise because they want to reduce fat mass. And lose weight. But in one recent study, researchers analyzed the fat quality of chronic exercisers versus that, or those, of sedentary people, but who were matched for body fat percent and total body fat. And they found that the exercisers had better fat quality with more vascularization and less of a particular form of collagen associated with metabolic syndrome. So same fat mass, but healthier fat tissue. Thus, even if your efforts aren't immediately being reflected on the scale, or in body composition if you get a DEXA scan, every day at the gym could be improving the quality of not only your muscle tissue, but also your fat tissue as well to improve your overall health. And at the end, that's really what matters, or what should matter. Now, Fact 3: Exercise changes your gene expression. But with a catch. The beneficial effects of exercise are mediated largely by changes in gene expression, how your DNA is turned into RNA, which is then turned into proteins, and then the proteins do the work of the body. But there's a catch. Your baseline metabolic health will influence how the same exercise impacts gene expression. In one of my favorite papers published in Cells entitled "The Molecular Choreography of Acute Exercise" from the Snyder Lab at Stanford, Researchers found that a subset of genes in your genome had opposite expression profiles in response to exercise based on whether people were insulin resistant or insulin sensitive. Opposite gene expression profiles. Of course, I still believe exercise benefits almost everyone, but these data make a compelling case that to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to exercise, you also want to get your metabolic health in order, which means appropriate diet— nice macadamia nut butter all over there— and sufficient sleep. Fancy that! Exercise, diet, sleep, they synergize. Who knew, right? Alright, moving on. Fact 4: Exercise and longevity. Now, the data here are complex, and it certainly isn't a "more is better" scenario. You don't want to run 200 miles a week and then hit the gym. Human longevity science is notoriously difficult to study because you can't really do randomized trials, among other limitations. Basically, human longevity science, really difficult. But you can still look at proxies of longevity, biomarkers of aging. And in another recent study, researchers looked at a biomarker of aging in fat called BMP lipids. More aging is associated with higher BMP lipids. And they found that just 1 hour of intense exercise for just 4 days reduced levels of this aging biomarker, these BMP lipids. Now, I can't confidently say this will translate into longer life. However, I promised you motivating facts, and for me, imagining that I'm hammering down levels of an aging biomarker with every rep and set at the gym is, to me, motivating. All right, moving on. Fact 5. I'm now gonna interrupt your regular programming to bring you an important message about a new AI-powered academic search engine called Consensus. This won't be your typical promotion, as it will include a content teaser from me, and I'm going to ask you for something I really want your help with. But first, on Consensus, it's not a black box like ChatGPT. You can see exactly where the answers on Consensus came from, from your scientific queries, with citations. You can see topic syntheses, easily trackable citations, and information about the study, like the study type— is it a randomized controlled trial or a meta-analysis?— the number of citations, the journal, and paper-level details. It's very powerful, and Consensus's purpose is the democratization of scientific access. Your access to the world's research. And it mixes fiercely with my own passion, my purpose, to support n=1 science and citizen science. Consensus is now at over 5,000 universities, and I think it will be the premier search engine for academics, while also being totally accessible to everyone else, which is why I bring it to you. And you can follow the links below to get an awesome discount or free access, available to all my audience members who are passionate about self-empowerment around metabolic health. Now, the reason I'm so passionate about tools like Consensus is because I sense a strong and growing enthusiasm from all of you about this idea of n=1 science and the democratization of science. And this goes well beyond diet tribes, cutting past keto, vegan, carnivore, what have you. Therefore, I plan in the future to make more content on this theme, scaling up our own n=1 experiments from eggs to bacon to vegan keto and beyond with new partners. And creating how-to videos on n=1 science. So now I wanna ask you, what do you want to see or know? Any particular n=1 experiments you want to see from me, friends, and colleagues? How about questions about n=1 protocols? Drop your questions below, and now back to your regular programming, but you definitely should check out Consensus. It's super, super cool. Fact 5, exercise versus willpower. Now imagine for me, thought puzzle, you're in a situation where you have a treadmill on your right and a beautiful enticing tower of your favorite donuts on your left, or if you prefer, a chocolate fondue fountain with dippable fruit and cookies. Doesn't that sound yummy? Which would you choose? Well, researchers recently discovered a group of neurons in the brain that helped to dictate Temptation-resistant voluntary exercise. In other words, neurons that help people, or in this case more accurately mouse models of people given access to yummy food versus a running wheel, choose exercise over food. These neurons are called hypocretin orexin neurons, or a subgroup of hypocretin orexin neurons. Now, why am I telling you this? Because doesn't this sort of rob you of free will? Like, if you have a weak hypocretin orexin neurons? Are you just doomed to choose the bag of chips and the couch over the gym every time? Is there no free will? Actually, the way I look at it is that insight into bodily and brain processes allow you to compensate for them or deficits in them. Like, by way of analogy, when I had the chance at age 19 to drive a sports car, in particular a yellow Porsche, on the highway, I felt this urge to just hit the gas to the floor and speed off But then the thought occurred to me, "Hey man, your prefrontal cortex at 19 as a male really isn't fully developed to the point that you can adaptively assess risk-benefit analysis of the situation." And that thought helped me to compensate for my underdeveloped prefrontal cortex and prevented me from dangerously speeding. And in the same vein, I think imagining this group of hypocretin orexin neurons in the brain being kind of sluggish when you don't feel like working out, and then thinking to yourself, "Hey, little buddies, stop being lazy and rev up because we have work to do." I think that can be an adaptive, if goofy, thought to change behavior and motivate you to get to the gym. And also, typically, the more you use a brain circuit, the stronger it becomes. And we also know that motivation and effort can convert to habit if you stick with it long enough. So I find that pretty motivating. Okay, those were your 5 facts, but I have a bonus fact 6 for you. It's not even really a fact. I'm entitling it, "Boosh!" The last is more of a demonstration vis-à-vis 2 badass people, I think I can say ass on YouTube, that are role models for me, and then I want you to think about role models. Anyway, the first is Eddie Hall, a former World's Strongest Man alive, who just went carnivore as, as he explained it, to reduce inflammation, lose weight, while also fueling his workouts and his muscle with a fat-fueled diet. And he's now self-reporting excellent energy, elite-level performance, fat loss, and boasting a six-pack at 350 pounds. How freaking incredible is that? And to boot, he can actually bench press four of me plus the bar. I think that's pretty cool. To me, that's a motivating thought. The other role model I want to share with you is my friend Kaylee, a fellow 4th-year Harvard medical student. And along with the heavy burden of USMLE exams, sub-internships, courses, residency applications, and getting married to boot, she just took it upon herself to run a marathon while fully keto. And guess what? She not only did it, but she did it in under 3 hours. That is fast, really fast, especially for a female who is a busy medical student and new bride. Again, a total beast. And she's time qualified for the Boston Marathon in 2025 in the elite Red Wave. So let's hear it for Mrs. Dr. Cayley. Okay, now why did I raise these examples? I didn't raise them to prove to you that you can be an elite athlete without carbs, which incidentally you can, But that's not the topic of this video. Rather, I wanted to provide personal examples of people in my life, or who I know of, who motivate me. And I want you to think about who motivates you. Who gets you pumped? Who do you want to be like when it comes to a physical work ethic? Now channel that person. Think, what would they do? And I think by internalizing the reality of how profound the health benefits of exercise are on every body system. In combination with holding these role models in mind, and of course with an awesome gym playlist, well, that's all I need for a preworkout. Now, go get some!