Everyone, Welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays.

In fact, this is the last one of two and twenty five, and today we're going to dive into some pretty cool new science about how exercise doesn't just strengthen your body, but also boost your brain in ways that were not previously understood.

And all of this comes down to some very tiny particles floating around in your blood, called extracellular vesicles or evs for short.

Now, unless you are a full card carrying biology nerd, you probably haven't heard much about these little guys, if even anything at all.

But trust me, they are turning out to be a big deal.

So here is the latest research.

When you engage in vigorous physical activity, you're not just burning calories or building muscle.

You're actually triggering a cascade of biological processes that include the release of these evs, their little tiny membrane bound bubbles that carry all sorts of biological cargo like proteins, lipids, and even nucleic acids.

Now, these little vesicles, actually, it turns out, helps yourselves to talk to each other, and recent research has shown that they can travel through the bloodstream and even cross the blood bur and barrier carrying really important cargo.

Now why does this all matter?

Well, the new study that I read recently was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Medical Sciences branch of that journal, and in it, researchers out of Turo University in Nevada have discovered that these ev the latch onto something called POMC right, which is short for propio milano corton.

This is a hormone precursor or a pro hormone that actually gets turned into several important hormones such as endorphins, which you'll probably know where feel good chemicals in the brain, but also gets turned into acth adrenal cardotropic hormone that's the hormone that helps you respond to stress.

And we know from other lines of research that a deficiency in POMC can cause extreme hunger, severe obasicly, but it can also cause adrenal insufficiency and even and I love this one, can even cause pale skin and make you into a ginger.

It causes red or ginger her when you have an insufficiency.

So there must be why spreading insufficiencies of POMC back in Celtic history.

But anyway, back to the podcast, here's the exciting bit that the research has just discovered, after about of intense exercise, the amount of POMC hitching a ride on evs increased fourfold.

Now that's far from a subtle increase.

A fourfold increase is clearly a very deliberate biological mechanism.

But here's the game changer.

What these researchers find is that the PMC that was bound up in the evs can actually cross biological barriers such as the blood briant barrier, way more efficiency than POMC floating around on its own.

So what does this actually mean in real world terms.

Well, first of all, let's talk about mood.

No doubt, I've heard of the runners high that euphoric feeling you get if they're a good workout.

It's not just a run that you get it in.

But turns out it's not a flick.

These evs are helping deliver hormone precursors into the brain that can then be converted into mood boosting endorphins.

And that's one very plausible mechanism, or at least part of the mechanism by which exercise is such a powerful mood enhancer and antidepressant, and as I've discussed previously, absolutely trumps antidepressant medication.

But it actually goes deeper than this.

This new research suggests that the exercise induced evs may also help us to modulate pain and damping inflammation, help us with our energy balance and even metabolic function, all by acting as smart transport shuttles.

It's kind of like your body has got built in uber eats for your brain, and exercise actually sends out the fleets are are books the ubers.

What's also remarkable is how these evs know what to pick up and this is really super interesting.

Well, it is for gig like me under exercise induced stress such as acidification of the blood.

You know when you get that lactic acid your blood turns acid from that high intensity exercise.

The POMC actually changes shapes slightly and this allows it to bind more readily to specific receptors on the surface of the evs, which is how it gets a lift in the first place.

And that's pretty freaking clever stuff.

And once on board.

These hormone packed evs get a free pass into areas like the brain where they can have all kinds of effects and most of them very very beneficial.

So this is actually a bit of a new paradom.

I think it's one where exercise doesn't just impact the body through MACA or cardiovascar effects, which have been well established for decades, but also through targeted molecular messaging via these tiny evs.

And add this to the exercise driven MYO kinds that I talk about so many times.

And it's simply undeniable that exercise is a very potent, if not the most potent driver of metabolism and body brain health.

And there's just so much stuff that is organized around exercise in our metabolism that this is it's just undeniable for me.

And from a broad or health perspective, this mechanism opens up a whole new world for medical science.

As these researchers point out in the journal article.

If these evs can carry hormone precursors into the brain efficiently, could we potentially use this same system to deliver therapy peutic drugs across the blood brain barrier.

Could this be a new way to manage conditions like depression, chronic pre in or even neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkins's and Alzheimer's like.

It is very early days, as the researchers point out, but the potential is massive, and until we explore that potential, there is a takeaway.

You know, if you did need yet another reason to move your body, but this time at higher intensity, whether that's running, hit, lifting weights, cycling, anything that gets your heart ate up significantly, this is the reason your workout might just be fueling your brain in ways that we have never understood before.

These are tiny evs but a big brain boost.

So that is it this week for and actually for the year for Wisdom Wednesday.

So the big take home, get moving, get those evs flowing.

I'll catch you next time.