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Health See other Health Articles Title: Exercise counters premature aging Exercising on a treadmill for 45 minutes, three times a week, warded off the effects of premature aging in lab mice, a McMaster University study shows. The researchers hope that when people see the dramatic difference between sedentary mice and those with the treadmill routine, it’ll give them an extra push to get off the couch. Anything that motivates people to exercise is beneficial because it’s good for human health, decreasing rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes while increasing longevity, said Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. “To see a mouse with grey fur and osteoporosis hunched up in the cage, and then the littermate controls running around bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with beautiful fur and showing every part of the body being protected, I think that really motivates individuals to say, ‘Wow, this is good for me, not just my muscles, but everything.’” The findings were published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study made use of mice that were genetically engineered to age prematurely due to a defect in the repair system of their mitochondria — the cellular powerhouses responsible for generating energy to carry out day-to-day activities. These mice quickly display the characteristics of aging — hair loss, brain atrophy, cataracts, hearing loss, osteoporosis, thin muscles, enlarged heart, gonadal atrophy and anemia, explained Tarnopolsky. They’ve been used in other lab studies to see if various drugs or reduced-calorie diets will slow the effects of aging, but none of those therapies worked, he said. He enlisted Adeel Safdar, a graduate student and coauthor of the paper, about three years ago to determine whether a three-times-per-week exercise regimen, lasting for five months, would make a difference in the mice. “The exercise had almost 100 per cent protection — so everything from brain atrophy to muscle atrophy to anemia, heart enlargement and, interestingly, gonadal atrophy and dysfunction, and hair loss and greying of the fur were all protected by exercise,” Tarnopolsky said in an interview. “So I think what this really shows is that exercise doesn’t just affect your heart and your muscle, which everybody kind of knows. It has a very potent systemic effect, and what’s coming out of our muscle is having an effect on all organs in the body. “And that was really, I think, probably the most striking outcome of this study.” Safdar, who received a standing ovation when he presented the findings at a scientific conference, said people need to start thinking about “healthspan” in addition to lifespan. “My ultimate goal is to get our elderly population on their feet, enjoying life and living their dreams with great health and independence,” he said in an e-mail. In terms of followup work, Tarnopolsky said the researchers have already mapped out the specific biochemical and molecular pathways responsible for the protection, and results will be presented in subsequent papers. They are looking at the effects of some of the proteins that come out of the muscle into the blood. “And we’re looking at all the different tissues in the human body in a petri dish to see how these different proteins that are being secreted by muscle are having a beneficial effect on all tissues in the body,” he said. The Canadian Press
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#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Hi Tatarewicz, I'll be sure to pass this most important article on to all my lab mice friends (many are Couch Potatoes, Drunks, Junk-Food Junkies etc.). Patrick
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