What is the woman?

M: This morning, we are gonna pump you up. You know, working out is obviously good for your body, but this week’s Newsweek Magazine reports there is new evidence showing it can boost your brainpower and fight disease as well.(1)Miriam Nelson is an associate professor at the Friedman School of Nutrition at Tufts University. Miriam, nice to see you, how are you doing?
W: Very well. Thanks for having me.
M: So, we are talking about rigorous, aerobic exercise, clearly good for your body. Explain to me in layman’s terms if you can now, about this new research that says it can also help your brain grow new nerve cells.
W: That’s right. What we’ve known for years is that(2)individuals who are physically active have reduced risk of getting Alzheimer’s disease. We’ve also known that people with mild cognitive impairment also have improved function with exercise. There’s some very new research that is very exciting. And what is seen is it’s taken 11 individuals, puts them on an about 3 or 4 months’ course of aerobic exercise, 4 days a week, an hour a day. And what they’ve seen is actually people through MRI Scan, they see that they’re actually growing new nerve cells.
M: And, and more new nerve cells mean what to me, someone in my age group?
W: Yeah, what you’re, what, my age group, too.
M: OK, our age group too, right.
W:(3)What we are seeing is that the new nerve cells are growing. They’re increasing a web and they’re weaved and they’re connecting. It’s all the interconnections of the nerve cells. When you get those connections, your brain functions better, primarily this is in the executive functioning part of the brain in the hippocampus. We are looking at multitasking, memory, problem solving, name recognition, lots of things that start to decline as we get older.
M: I am sure a lot of people are watching this right now, Miriam Nelson, can I make up for lost time? I don’t have a history of exercising throughout my life. Now I’m 45 years old, if I start exercising now, do I make a difference?
W: Well, certainly,(4)the data shows us that exercising in your 40s and 50s, hopefully we wanna start a little bit early, but in your 30s, 40s and 50s will make a difference for reducing the risk of getting Alzheimer as you get older. And there’s even newer research with children that is also very exciting.
M: Let me switch gears now and turn into the subject of the connection between rigorous exercise and preventing breast cancer. And, specifically I am talking about estrogen negative breast cancers. A study showed that there was a drop between 26 and 40 percent even if you take the lower end of that spectrum. That is significant.
W: It’s a very large, uh, decrease. So, one of the first studies with the Nurse’s Health Study to follow 3,000 people for 14 years and they saw between a 26 to 40 percent decrease in death and recurrence in individuals who already had breast cancer. This newest study, the California Teacher Study, followed 110,000 women from the earlier mid-90s up until 2002 and they saw that the women that were exercising the most had the greatest reduction in breast cancer, as you said, about 31 percent, about 5 hours a week.
M: What about the impact of exercise on estrogen positive cancers?
W: Well, the studies before have not really differentiated between the two and the school’s latest study. We’ve always thought that it was through estrogen because when you exercise, you have lower levels of estrogen, so we thought that was a reason that you get the decrease. This California Teacher Study was in the estrogen negative, um, type of cancer, so it seems, at the moment, that’s just one study, so, at the moment, it’s really looking like it’s all types of breast cancer.
M: So to wrap things up, for a woman who gets a diagnosis of breast cancer is difficult, does it make sound the first thing you would tell that woman to do, go out and start exercising?
W:(5)Well, see your doctor and get a very good medical team and then make sure that exercise is an adjunct to that, and the research that we are doing at the Friedman School is showing that we can get a lot of people exercising, so, um, it’s really important for your brain as well as your reducing your risk of breast cancer. And as a woman with a history of Alzheimer in my family, I am certainly gonna keep exercising.
M: A lot of people are gonna pay attention to it. Miriam Nelson, professor, thanks, good to have you here.
W: Oh, my pleasure.