Anti-Aging Benefits
The science behind the commonly-held belief that exercise, along with diet and exercise can lead to a long life.
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Exercise Boosts Anti-Aging Benefits
We’ve been told for years that exercise will keep you young, but a recent study gives proof and reveals why: German researchers have found that DNA at the tips of chromosomes that protect our cells were longer and healthier in endurance athletes than even in healthy, non-smoking, albeit non-exercising adults.
The “telomeres” at the tips were compared to the plastic tips at the end of shoelaces that can prevent the laces from fraying, said Emmanuel Skordalakes, an assistant professor of gene expression and regulation at The Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. He explained that cells continue to divide over a life span but when the telomere gets too short, cells stop dividing -- and that starts the gaining process that includes muscle loss, less skin elasticity, and loss of vision and hearing and some mental abilities.
Athletic participants included professional runners with an average age of 20 who run more than 45 miles a week, while the control group was a healthy, non-smoking, age-matched group that exercised less than an hour a week and not regularly. A second group of athletes used had an average age of 51 and had been active in endurance exercise since their youth, still running nearly 50 miles a week.
The athletes had a slower resting heart rate -- a sign of cardiovascular fitness -- as well as lower blood pressure, lower body mass index and lower cholesterol than those in the control group. But the athletes also had longer “telomeres” than those who were of similar age but did not exercise, and the athletes showed increased activity of the enzyme “telomerase,” which maintains the telomere.
“This is direct evidence of an anti-aging effect of physical exercise,” study author Ulrich Laufs, a professor of clinical and experimental medicine in the department of internal medicine at Saarland University in Homburg, said in a statement from the American Heart Association.
A related thought is that one reason cancer rates increase with age is that the white blood cells themselves age and become less efficient at fighting off disease and abnormal growths. If exercise maintains the youthfulness of the white blood cells by preventing the shortening of the telomere, it may explain why exercise can protect against developing cancer, said Annabelle Volgman, a cardiologist and director of the Heart Center for Women at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
The same logic applies to heart disease, where aging cells may allow the build-up of plaque.
“We know that any physical activity improves cardiovascular health and helps in preventing cancer,” Volgman said in an AHA statement. “This study is showing us the molecular basis for this.”
No one really knows yet how much is enough to prevent telomere shortening. Volgman said the best advice is to do some sort of exercise regularly. Previous research has shown even moderate activity can be beneficial to the telomeres, and some groups recommend a minimum of 30 minutes five to seven days a week.
So what? It’s not an urban myth that exercise can help you stay young, healthy and disease-free. There are good reasons, which science is now revealing, and there is no better time than the present to do something.
For the scientifically minded: Because of their importance, the study findings were released recently in advance of publication in the American Heart Association’s journal, Circulation. The study can be accessed by clicking here.