86Thousand400: That which doesn't kill you…

It's well known that the way to build muscles is to break them down and let them rest. The same paradigm applies to nerve cells, which have built in repair mechanisms activated by mild stress. The great thing about exercise is that it fires up the recovery process in our muscles and our neurons. It leaves our bodies and minds stronger and more resilient, better able to handle future challenges, to think on our feet and adapt more easily.

In the brain, the mild stress of exercise fortifies the infrastructure of our nerve cells by activating genes to produce certain proteins that protect the cells against damage and disease. So it also raises our neurons stress threshold.

Metabolic stress happens when the cells can't produce adequate ATP, either because there isn't enough glucose to get into the cell or because there's not enough of it to go around in general. Therefore the best way to build up cells is by bringing mild stress on yourself: using the brain to learn, restricting calories, exercising, and, as Mattson and your mother would remind you, eating your vegetables. (Anabolic/Catabolic balance)

The paradox is that our wonderful ability to adapt and grow doesn't happen without stress - we can't have the good without a bit of the bad