Exercise

High Levels of Exercise Linked to Nine Years of Less Aging at the Cellular Level

Despite their best efforts, no scientist has ever come close to stopping humans from aging. Even anti-aging creams can’t stop Old Father Time. But new research from Brigham Young University reveals you may be able to slow one type of aging – the kind that happens inside your cells. As long as you’re willing to sweat.

“Just because you’re 40, doesn’t mean you’re 40 years old biologically,” Tucker said. “We all know people that seem younger than their actual age. The more physically active we are, the less biological aging takes place in our bodies.”

The study, published in the medical journal Preventive Medicine, finds that people who have consistently high levels of physical activity have significantly longer telomeres than those who have sedentary lifestyles, as well as those who are moderately active. Telomeres are the protein endcaps of our chromosomes. They’re like our biological clock and they’re extremely correlated with age; each time a cell replicates, we lose a tiny bit of the endcaps. Therefore, the older we get, the shorter our telomeres.

Exercise science professor Larry Tucker found adults with high physical activity levels have telomeres with a biological aging advantage of nine years over those who are sedentary, and a seven-year advantage compared to those who are moderately active. To be highly active, women had to engage in 30 minutes of jogging per day (40 minutes for men), five days a week.

“If you want to see a real difference in slowing your biological aging, it appears that a little exercise won’t cut it,” Tucker said. “You have to work out regularly at high levels.”

Although the exact mechanism for how exercise preserves telomeres is unknown, Tucker said it may be tied to inflammation and oxidative stress. Previous studies have shown telomere length is closely related to those two factors and it is known that exercise can suppress inflammation and oxidative stress over time.

“We know that regular physical activity helps to reduce mortality and prolong life, and now we know part of that advantage may be due to the preservation of telomeres,” Tucker said.

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Source: ScienceDaily

No More Excuses – Hit the Stairs

Everyone knows the health benefits that come with physical activity, but when asked, most people use one of two common excuses. The first is time, as in “I just don’t have enough time in my day”, and the second is place, as in, “There’s no gym near me”.

Researchers have put both of those excuses to rest. A study at McMaster University conducted two separate protocols with female participants, divided into two groups. All the women were healthy but admittedly not active. Each group was asked to exercise in short 10 minute sessions three times a week for a period of six weeks. Each session included a warm up and cool down.

In the first experiment one group was asked to climb stairs aggressively in 20 second intervals, while the second group was asked to simply ride an exercise bike for the same length of time. Results showed that the short 20 second bursts of stair climbing were more effective than the exercise bike.

In the second experiment the women were asked to climb stairs for 60 second intervals. As in the first experiment, participants showed an increase in respiratory fitness.

It would appear that the excuses for not exercising have just gone out the window. Short (10 minutes) intense periods of stair climbing will improve cardiovascular and respiratory health which leads to additional benefits derived from a healthy active lifestyle.

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Source: WorldHealth.net

Regular Exercise Critical for Heart Health, Longevity

Workout.ExerciseDictThe majority of citizens in developed countries should not be concerned by potential harm from exercise but rather by the lack of exercise in their lives, according to a clinical perspective published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology from the ACC Sports and Exercise Cardiology Leadership Council. According to the council, small amounts of physical activity, including standing, are associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, but more exercise leads to even greater reduction in risk of death from cardiovascular disease.

“The evidence with regard to exercise continues to unfold and educate the cardiovascular clinical community,” said JACC Editor-in-Chief Valentin Fuster, M.D., Ph.D. “The greatest benefit is to simply exercise, regardless of the intensity, while the danger is two-fold: to not exercise at all or to exercise intensely, without due preparation.”

The council found that moderate and vigorous intensity exercise lower mortality risk in different populations around the globe. Increasing the amount of moderate intensity exercise a person engages in results in increased reductions in cardiovascular disease mortality; however, the reductions in cardiovascular mortality benefits from vigorous intensity exercise do level out at a certain point.

There is no evidence for an upper limit to exercise-induced health benefits and all amounts of both moderate and vigorous intensity exercise result in a reduction of both all-cause and cardiovascular disease mortality compared to physical inactivity.

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Source: ScienceDaily, 18 January 2016.

Does Exercise Slow the Aging Process?

Workout.Exercise.Dict2Almost any amount and type of physical activity may slow aging deep within our cells, a new study finds. And middle age may be a critical time to get the process rolling, at least by one common measure of cell aging.

Dating a cell’s age is tricky, because its biological and chronological ages rarely match. A cell could be relatively young in terms of how long it has existed but function slowly or erratically, as if elderly.

Today, many scientists have begun determining a cell’s biological age – meaning how well it functions and not how old it literally is – by measuring the length of its telomeres.

For those of us who don’t know every portion of our cells’ interiors, telomeres are tiny caps found on the end of DNA strands, like plastic aglets on shoelaces. They are believed to protect the DNA from damage during cell division and replication. As a cell ages, its telomeres naturally shorten and fray. But the process can be accelerated by obesity, smoking, insomnia, diabetes and other aspects of health and lifestyle.

A new study, which was published this month in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, researchers from the University of Mississippi and University of California, San Francisco, decided to look broadly at the interactions of exercise and telomeres.

Their results show that risk declined more substantially if someone exercised more. People who reported two types of exercise per week were 24 percent less likely to have short telomeres; three types of exercise were 29 percent less likely; and those who had participated in all four types of activities were 59 percent less likely to have very short telomeres.

Interestingly, these associations were strongest among people between the ages of 40 and 65, the researchers found, suggesting that middle age may be a key time to begin or maintain an exercise program if you wish to keep telomeres from shrinking, says Paul Loprinzi, an assistant professor of health and exercise science at the University of Mississippi.

The message seems clear, Dr. Loprinzi says. “Exercise is good” for your cells, and “more exercise in greater variety” is likely to be even better.

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Source: the New York Times.

Active Body, Active Mind: The Secret to a Younger Brain May Lie in Exercising Your Body

Body.Brain.Puzzle1It is widely recognized that our physical fitness is reflected in our mental fitness, especially as we get older. How does being physically fit affect our aging brains? Neuroimaging studies, in which the activity of different parts of the brain can be visualised, have provided some clues. Until now, however, no study has directly linked brain activation with both mental and physical performance.

As reported in the latest volume of the journal NeuroImage, an exciting new study led by Dr Hideaki Soya from the University of Tsukuba in Japan and his colleagues show, for the first time, the direct relationship between brain activity, brain function and physical fitness in a group of older Japanese men. They found that the fitter men performed better mentally than the less fit men, by using parts of their brains in the same way as in their youth.

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Source: University of Tsukuba. “Active body, active mind: The secret to a younger brain may lie in exercising your body.” ScienceDaily.

Exercise Boosts the Brain

Body.Brain.ThinkThe ability of the circulatory and respiratory systems to supply oxygen to skeletal muscles during sustained physical activity is known as cardiorespiratory fitness. Scott Hayes, from Boston University School of Medicine (Massachusetts, USA), and colleagues assessed a group of adults ages 18-31 years, and a group aged 55-82 years.

All participants underwent brain MRIs and were assessed for cardiorespiratory (heart and lung) fitness via treadmill test. Among the older adults, the team observed that cardiorespiratory fitness was positively linked to the structural integrity of white matter fiber bundles in the brain; no such association was observed in younger adults. The study authors observe that: “[cardiorespiratory fitness] is positively associated with neural white matter microstructure in aging. The association between peak VO2 and [fractional anisotropy – an indicator of white matter integrity] appears to be age-dependent.”

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Source: WorldHealth.net.

Exercise Results in Physiological Changes that Suppress Inflammation in Rheumatic Disease

Body.InflammationResearch findings presented at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014) suggest that exercise transiently suppresses local and systemic inflammation, reinforcing the beneficial effects of exercise and the need for this to be regular in order to achieve clinical efficacy in rheumatic disease.

The researchers have found that exercise generates a true biological response and induces changes on a molecular level that stimulate anti-inflammatory effects.

“As the inflammatory process in rheumatic diseases is a major cause of disability, we are excited to uncover the process by which exercise works on a molecular level to decrease this inflammation. Our results show the benefits that exercise could have in decreasing the great burden of rheumatic diseases. They also highlight the need for frequent exercise in order to create clinically significant results,” said Dr. Nicholas Young, presenting author from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio, US.

Rheumatic disease is a term used to describe over 200 conditions characterised by inflammation, swelling and pain in the joints or muscles. They are leading causes of morbidity and disability, giving rise to enormous healthcare expenditures and loss of work.

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Source: Medical News Today.

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“I see exercise taking this perverted detour. The original intention …”

Misc.QuotationMarks“I see exercise taking this perverted detour. The original intention of exercise was to heal and maintain health. Now I see it as having nothing to do with health. I see most exercises based on looking good. They actually make you less healthy. You overdevelop the obvious muscles. You take drugs to enhance that. You ignore the rest, and you become more out of balance.” – Bryan Kest

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