Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Exercise, The Fountain of Youth

I spotted this article ("Internally Fit" by Gretchen Reynolds) in the New York Times Magazine a few months ago and held onto it because I found it so interesting. The article essentially states that exercise throughout one’s life keeps one’s cells young (or younger). Stephen Roth, a professor of kinesiology at The University of Maryland, conducted a study in which he measured the telomeres of middle-aged subjects. Long telomeres are indicative of healthy, youthful cells. His research suggests that the telomeres of active middle-aged people were longer and more youthful than those of his sedentary subjects.

Many other studies have been conducted which support this theory: running (activity) reduces the effects of aging on a molecular level. In the article Christian Werner, an internal medicine resident at Saarland University Clinic in Hamburg was quoted as saying, “to see in our study that many of the middle-aged athletes looked much younger than sedentary control subjects of the same age.” Although science is fallible and experimentation can never be proven (only disproved), the research that Gretchen Reynolds compiled in this article presents an excellent argument regarding the anti-aging effects of exercise.

Here is the link to the article: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE4DE1538F932A05752C0A9669D8B63

On a side note, I will be taking a week off from intense training. So I won't be posting any workouts for a while. I've been dealing with some really wicked fatigue lately that I suspect might be related to adrenal fatigue. I am going to do a bit more research on it. Expect a post focusing on adrenal fatigue in the near future.

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