Login | October 21, 2025
Can resistance exercise help with neuron repair?
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: October 20, 2025
I’ve just read a study that I can very much relate to.
The study, “Actuating Extracellular Matrices Decouple the Mechanical and Biochemical Effects of Muscle Contraction on Motor Neuron,” published on Nov. 10, 2024 in Advanced Healthcare Materials, discusses how a group of MIT engineers have confirmed that at the cellular level (via test tube type experimentation) repeated muscle contractions impact peripheral nerve growth.
But before I dig into the research piece, here’s why this news impacts me so personally.
So over the last two years I’ve been engaged in a pretty solid PT routine for my right leg’s posterior musculature - primarily the calves, hamstrings and gluteal muscles - this as a result of nerve damage incurred from a severely shifted L5 vertebra coupled with degenerative spinal stenosis.
Thus, what ensued was a very gradual constriction and possibly even necrosis of some of the nerves that innervate my posterior leg muscles.
Now initially, like two decades ago when I was diagnosed with the back issue, I hadn’t really felt anything other than incessant low back pain.
And it wasn’t until around 2020 that I gradually began to notice the neurological damage that had been steadily progressing - numb toes, reduced hamstring and calf strength along with notable muscle atrophy.
Eventually the neurological symptoms got so severe that I’d begun to walk with a slight limp and I couldn’t get out of the saddle (stand up) on my bicycle due to the fact that my right calf and hamstrings wouldn’t support my body weight.
Those symptoms exponentially superseded my chronic back pain and that’s when I sought the consultation of a back surgeon.
Ultimately I underwent a back operation, and to make a long story short, my surgery, done in late 2022, was very successful.
Yet one of my primary post-surgical concerns centered on whether or not I could regain what I’d lost neurologically. Could I get back to hiking and biking normally like the old me?
My surgeon was optimistic and encouraged me to proceed steadfast with what could be a long, long stretch of PT work on my own.
Well, by now that PT has likely entailed thousands upon thousands of muscular contractions for my posterior right leg musculature, often done in 20-minute sessions four-seven times per week.
But has it worked?
Teaser alert: Back to the MIT study first.
So the researchers discovered that when muscles contract during exercise, a conglomeration of biochemical signals called myokines are released.
And due to the generation of these signals, neurons can grow four times farther compared to neurons not exposed to these signals.
Thus, their experiments - again, test-tube experimentation - imply that exercise can initiate a very measurable biochemical effect on nerve growth.
What’s more, the researchers discovered that neurons also respond to the physical impacts of exercise.
Indeed, it seems that when neurons are tugged back and forth, much like how muscles expand and contract during exercise, the neurons grow equally as much as when they’re exposed to those myokines.
And that discovery puts a totally different spin on how exercise scientists view the cause and effect actions of muscles and nerves.
Traditionally the view was that the nerves controlled the muscles.
But according to this MIT study there appears to be cross-talk between muscles and nerves.
Subsequently, now that it’s been established that the exercising of muscles can promote nerve growth at the cellular level, researchers are looking to investigate the prospect of targeted muscle stimulation as a way to grow and heal damaged nerves.
Such a study if proven successful could be a godsend for people with mobility issues and individuals who are experiencing degenerative nerve diseases such as ALS.
And this brings us back to my experience.
So in answer to the question as to whether all my PT work has been successful, my answer’s a resounding YES.
Am I back to the old me after two years of dogged work?
Absolutely not, but I’m going to continue my PT - in addition to any new input - ad infinitum in an attempt to get myself back to some semblance of “normal.”
Now though this successful test-tube study is a long way off from actually providing a bonafide PT protocol for severe neurologically-impaired individuals, it’s my belief that what I’ve experienced is only the tip of the iceberg in this arena.
And what lies on the horizon are some absolutely amazing advances in neuromuscular therapies.