The Benefits of Exercise
Filed under: General Health, Training
A former client sent me an interesting article about exercise. We have known for a long time now that exercise is the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth.
Exercise improves quality of life in innumerable ways. It improves cognitive function, cardiovascular health, improves blood vessel function, improves mood and decreases risks for a plethora of diseases.
Even knowing all that, we still have never really known why exercise works. What is it that it actually does to drastically improve our health?
This article on boston.com delves into some new research on that very topic. It is just scratching the surface, but already revealing some interesting facts about the benefits of exercise.
These researchers have looked at exercise and found that there are 21 metabolites in the blood stream that respond to exercise. They also found that fit people respond to exercise differently than unfit people.
Of these 21 molecules some of they indicate how carbohydrates, sugar and fat are oxidized as fuel, while others are involved in controlling insulin levels and cellular stress. Clearly this makes tremendous sense, since we know that exercising will improve glucose tolerance, insulin sensitivity, decrease fasting glucose and insulin and is associated with longer life expectancies.
The scientists took blood from people before and after the 2006 Boston Marathon, as well before, during and after subjects rode exercise bikes or ran on treadmills.
They measured the changes in 200 metabolites, and by finding which ones responded to exercise they pulled back the curtain a little bit on why exercise is so good for us.
They found that fit people and unfit people had different responses. Fit people had levels of glycerol twice as high as unfit people as well as higher levels of niacinamide. Glycerol is the backbone of fatty acids, and is released into the blood stream when these fatty acids are oxidized as fuel. Niacinamide is involved in regulating insulin levels.
There are many more questions to be answered, but “The studies to date are really what we like to think of [as] the first comprehensive chemical snapshot of exercise,’’ said Dr. Robert Gerszten, senior author of the paper and director of clinical and translational research for the MGH Heart Center.
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Posted on August 2nd, 2010 by Brian St. Pierre
1 Comment
August 3rd, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Nice deads