Food sets the foundation. The B vitamins, the magnesium, the methyl donors — all the cofactors that keep the cleanup enzymes running.
For most people, getting the food right is most of the difference.
For people with slower MAO-A and COMT patterns, food does its part, and exercise does the other. Together they cover what neither does alone.
Here is how the second half works.
Catecholamines — dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine — are the chemistry of focus, drive, and stress response. They do their job, then they're supposed to clear.
Two enzymes do most of the clearing. MAO-A handles breakdown inside neurons. COMT handles the prefrontal cortex and synaptic gaps. Together, the cleanup crew.
Carry the slow variants of both — common in men with the X-linked MAO-A T allele and a COMT V158M variant — and the cleanup runs behind. Catecholamines linger. More arrive. Those linger too.
Restlessness without a reason. The leg that won't stop bouncing. Thoughts that loop. Tics. Edge.
Anxiety with no event attached. Irritability that surprises you. Sleep that won't come because the brain is still firing.
Chemistry that hasn't had a chance to clear.
Many people living with this pattern have been told they have ADHD. The diagnosis isn't wrong — it's describing the same neurochemistry from a different angle. Slow MAO-A and slow COMT mean catecholamines linger; lingering catecholamines mean a brain that has trouble settling, focusing on demand, or quieting at night. Same wiring, two different vocabularies.
A 60-second walkthrough of what's happening inside · sound on
Push hard and a few things happen at once.
During hard exercise, working muscle becomes one of the body's major targets for catecholamine signaling. Norepinephrine and epinephrine get used for the job they were built for: mobilizing fuel, driving effort, and matching the body to the demand.
Exercise does not rewrite MAO-A or COMT genetics. But it gives catecholamines somewhere useful to go: into movement, fuel mobilization, heat, recovery, and adaptation — while the normal cleanup pathways keep working in the background.
The word itself carries the idea. Exercise comes from Latin exercere — to keep busy, to train, to drive out of idleness. The deeper root may be ex- plus arcēre: to drive out from confinement. For a body carrying chemistry that won't clear on its own, the older meaning lands. The work moves something out.
For many people, hard exercise can raise BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor — a protein that supports neuron growth and learning) acutely and improve sleep quality over time. The next morning, the baseline can feel quieter.
People with slower MAO-A and COMT patterns often describe high-intensity training the same way: the thing that finally makes them feel normal.
It's relative to where you are. A real strength session. A hill sprint. Jiu-jitsu. Boxing. Hauling something that's genuinely hard to move.
The thread: real effort. The body has to feel like it's been asked to do something. Three to five sessions a week is a common sweet spot — recovery matters as much as the work.
Walking is wonderful. The release valve needs sweat.
The food layer is the foundation. MAO-A needs riboflavin. COMT needs magnesium and methyl groups. The whole system is built on cofactors that come from real food.
Food sets the floor. Exercise opens the valve.
Order matters: get the food right first, then add the movement. Without the cofactors in place, the body has nothing to spend.
Food and exercise are two halves of the same protocol. The cofactors come from the plate. The release valve opens with sweat.
Run your DNA through foodZipper and check your MAO-A and COMT cards. If both trend slower, this post may be worth paying attention to.
Get the cofactors in. Riboflavin from liver, eggs, dairy. Magnesium from greens, nuts, seeds. Real folate from spinach and lentils. Real B12 from animal protein.
Put high-intensity exercise on the calendar. Three sessions a week to start. Intense enough that you feel it the next day. Track restlessness, sleep onset, irritability, and the next-morning baseline for two weeks.
Most slow-MAO-A, slow-COMT people who do this report the same thing: they didn't realize how loud the wiring was until it got quiet.
Change the way you eat. Change the way you feel. That's foodZipper.
— B+
A meta-analytic review of the effects of exercise on brain-derived neurotrophic factor — PMC
Genes, Cognition and Brain through a COMT Lens — PMC
Physical exercise in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — evidence and implications — PMC
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