Re: Exercise (running) beneficial - study

[Guest guest]

What about resistance training? results of the following study seem

to suggest that if we MUST exercise we should favor this form:

1: PLoS ONE. 2007 May 23;2(5):e465.

Resistance exercise reverses aging in human skeletal muscle.Melov S,

Tarnopolsky MA, Beckman K, Felkey K, Hubbard A.

Buck Institute for Age Research, Novato, California, United States of

America. smelov@...

Human aging is associated with skeletal muscle atrophy and functional

impairment (sarcopenia). Multiple lines of evidence suggest that

mitochondrial dysfunction is a major contributor to sarcopenia. We

evaluated whether healthy aging was associated with a transcriptional

profile reflecting mitochondrial impairment and whether resistance

exercise could reverse this signature to that approximating a younger

physiological age. Skeletal muscle biopsies from healthy older (N =

25) and younger (N = 26) adult men and women were compared using gene

expression profiling, and a subset of these were related to

measurements of muscle strength. 14 of the older adults had muscle

samples taken before and after a six-month resistance exercise-

training program. Before exercise training, older adults were 59%

weaker than younger, but after six months of training in older

adults, strength improved significantly (P<0.001) such that they were

only 38% lower than young adults. As a consequence of age, we found

596 genes differentially expressed using a false discovery rate cut-

off of 5%. Prior to the exercise training, the transcriptome profile

showed a dramatic enrichment of genes associated with mitochondrial

function with age. However, following exercise training the

transcriptional signature of aging was markedly reversed back to that

of younger levels for most genes that were affected by both age and

exercise. We conclude that healthy older adults show evidence of

mitochondrial impairment and muscle weakness, but that this can be

partially reversed at the phenotypic level, and substantially

reversed at the transcriptome level, following six months of

resistance exercise training.

PMID: 17520024 [PubMed]

PMCID: PMC1866181

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17520024?

ordinalpos=25 & itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.P

ubmed_RVDocSum

>

> Washington Post

> Health Section

>

> By Schneider

> Tuesday, August 26, 2008;

>

> There is a branch of my wife's family convinced that running ruined

our

> cousin Frances (not ruined in the Southern gothic sense, of course,

just

> hobbled in the knees and back). Frances ran pretty regularly in her

day, and

> my mother-in-law warns me about it whenever she catches me in

running shoes,

> most recently last month on a trip to the beach.

>

> Just in time (who doesn't love rebutting his mother-in-law?),

researchers at

> the Stanford University School of Medicine released the latest

batch of

> results from a long-term study comparing hundreds of older runners

with

> others of about the same age.

>

> After my colleague Rob Stein posted an item on The Checkup health

blog last

> week, it seemed most of those who commented thought the study was

consistent

> with their experience: that regular running or other vigorous

exercise was a

> way to stave off the effects of aging, not a recipe for trouble.

>

> Here's the gist of the research: Begun in 1984, the project

assembled nearly

> 1,000 volunteers, about 538 runners and 423 " healthy controls. " They

> averaged about 59 years old at the time. Death and dropouts have

winnowed

> the group, but about 440 have stayed involved.

>

> They are now pushing into their 80s, and the research has found

that the

> running group is living longer, with a lower incidence not just of

> cardiovascular disease, but of some forms of cancer as well. More

to the

> point here, they also are suffering fewer disabilities than the non-

runners.

>

> Using a standard questionnaire that assesses eight basic life

activities,

> such as standing, dressing and eating, the study found that non-

runners, as

> they aged, were much more likely to reach a point where they were

unable to

> do one or more of those tasks. F. Fries, who began the

project to look

> at the long-term effects of exercise on aging, calls it

the " compression of

> morbidity " : people who stay active as they grow older not only live

longer

> but also go through a shorter period of infirmity before they die.

>

> Along with faring better on the study's broad measure of

disability, the

> runners seemed to have the same rates of osteoarthritis of the knee

as the

> non-runners, said Eliza F. Chakravarty, an assistant professor at

the

> Stanford medical school and one of the researchers. A

rheumatologist, she

> found that especially interesting as she reviewed the data.

>

> " There's a concern that with all of the pounding, [running] would

wind up

> being detrimental to the knee, " she said. " But there was no

significant

> difference between the runners and the controls. "

>

> Why is that the case?

>

> Chakravarty said there are plenty of possibilities.

>

> Running itself will increase muscle and ligament strength, while the

> weight-bearing impact of the exercise will help bone density. The

cartilage

> in our joints, she said, is not fed directly by any set of

dedicated blood

> vessels or other system, and it needs the squeezing and motion of

exercise

> to be adequately lubricated and nourished.

>

> There may, of course, have been a self-selecting aspect to the

outcome:

> Perhaps those still running in their 60s and 70s stuck with it

because they

> had remained injury-free.

>

> The message is " it is never too late to adopt exercise, and we

should not

> discourage people from exercise just because of their age, " she

said.

>

> Although this study focused on runners, she said it is likely that

biking,

> swimming or any strenuous activity (which the researchers defined

as keeping

> the heart rate higher than 120 beats per minute) would have much

the same

> result.

>

> Of course, common sense and good training rules still apply: Warm

up, cool

> down and stretch, and if you are just starting out on a running

program, mix

> some walk breaks in at first as your body adapts.

>

> As some of the commenters noted in Rob's blog, injury often occurs

when we

> press beyond limits we have not prepared for: Endurance is built

with

> consistency, not acquired all at once.

>

> If you still have doubts, try to think less about the possible

aches and

> pains and more about why we have arms and legs in the first place.

Animals

> use their limbs to find food and run from danger. Just because

there are no

> saber-toothed tigers around anymore doesn't mean we can't pretend.

>