Health Farm

-- Regular exercise protects muscles against age-related loss and damage

More good news for gym-goers – another study shows how exercise keeps you young.

A recent investigation published in Physiology.org explored the role of inflammation in aging, building on earlier research that observed an age-related rise in body inflammation with a corresponding drop in muscle mass and strength.

Physically fit people tend to have lower levels of inflammation in their bodies than inactive people. So, chief researcher Todd Trappe, a professor of exercise science at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind. set out to understand the link between inflammation and muscle health.

Todd and his research team recruited men and women in their 70s and 80s who had been training continuously since the running boom of the 1970s, along with runners and cyclists in their 20s, and another 10 healthy but sedentary elderly men.

Immediately they observed the burliest legs belonged to young athletes, and the spindliest to elderly athletes, with inactive elderly men wobbling around on veritable pea sticks.

Next, researchers put participants through a session of intense lower-body weight training, checking their muscle tissues for signs of inflammation.

While inflammation helps stressed tissues heal and strengthen, it becomes harmful when it lingers, blocking muscles from growing larger and stronger after exercise.

Young athletes displayed the least amount of inflammation in their blood. While their muscles flared briefly after exercise, countervailing anti-inflammatory signals increased to cool the inflammation.

A similar response occurred within the muscles of the elderly athletes, though the process was slightly less efficient. But in the untrained elderly men, inflammation was much more of a bushfire, spiking to higher levels and showing fewer cellular signs of abating.

The results suggest that long-term exercise may help aging muscles remain healthy in part by priming them to combat inflammation. But on the flip side, sedentary living seems to set up muscles to overreact to strain and remain inflamed, potentially leading to fewer muscular gains post exercise.

Findings support another recent study showing how endurance exercise turns back the clock, by activating telomerase activity.