We've been saying it for years, but now we have one more piece of evidence: Exercise can keep you young.
Last week, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published research demonstrating that exercise was able to reduce almost all the visible and functional effects of aging in mice that had been genetically programmed to grow old at an accelerated pace, according to an article in the New York Times. This study is incredibly crucial information for the human lifespan.
For this experiment, professors at McMaster University in Ontario used lab mice whose mitochondria carried a genetic mutation that affected their ability to repair dysfunctional mitochondria.
We all learned in 7th grade biology that mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. They combine oxygen and other nutrients to create cellular energy. Inevitably, the rodents' mitochondria begin to malfunction and die over time, which is suspected as the beginning of the aging process in mammals.
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Oh, come on Oz, there’s more to growing old than that! I’ve been participating in masters swimming for decades and last summer I was running 5 miles, three times a week and I still have to wear a hat to keep from blinding the people around me. Mitochondria are important, they are the powerhouses of the cell. They turn adenosine diphosphate into adenosine triphosphate, the energy currency of the muscle cells.
The Blackburn Lab at UCSF has tied aging to the wearing away of telomers, the caps at the end of our chromosomes. The longer our telomers are, the longer our lifespans will be. Exercise does seem to play a role in that however, they report that an active lifestyle does mean a longer lifespan. Recently, researchers at Harvard restored the youth of old and sick mice using telomerase to extend the telomers of their chromosomes.
The fault, my dear Oz, lies not in our mitochondria, but in our genes!
Regular exercise and a well balanced diet would cure half this countries illnesses and increase longevity.