It's bad news for people who don't like exercising, but it may keep them younger. Not just looking younger, but actually younger. The benefits of exercise include increased strength of bones and muscles, improved mobility and endurance, and lower risk of heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.
But younger?
A recent study published in Aging Cell suggests this could be the case. Kevin Murach, an assistant professor in the Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation at the U of A., was one of the researchers who wrote the paper.
There is a bootcamp for mice.
The paper is dense with data, reflecting the use of several analytic tools, but the experiment that generated the data was relatively straightforward. At 22 months, lab mice were allowed to use a weighted exercise wheel. Generally, mice don't need to be coerced to run. Younger mice can run up to 12 kilometers a day, but older mice can run anywhere from six to eight kilometers a day. They built muscle with the weighted wheel. Murach likened it to a soldier carrying a heavy backpack and exercising.
After two months of progressive weighted wheel running, the epigenetic age of the mice was found to be eight weeks younger than that of the sedentary mice. The specific strain of mice and their housing conditions can impact lifespans, buthistorically, they start dropping off after 24 months. When your lifespan is measured in months, an extra eight weeks is a noteworthy gain.
My dearest friend, my name is Methylation.
The science behind this is dependent on a biological process. A recent New York Times article discussing Murach's work on muscle memory described a process in which clusters of atoms called methyl groups attach themselves to the outside of genes like barnacles.
As the body ages, there tends to be more hypermethylation at promoter sites on genes in muscle. "If you can look at someone's DNA from a given tissue sample and have a fair degree of accuracy, you can predict their chronological age," Murach said. Researchers can use a number of "methylation clocks" to determine the age of a DNA sample.
Aging and exercise are related to the genetics.
There is still much that needs to be learned from the paper. The connection between aging and methylation is clear, but the connection between muscle function and methylation is less clear. Murach isn't ready to say that exercise causes improved muscle health. He explained that the study was not set up to do that. He wants to determine if changes in methylation result in altered muscle function.
What are the consequences of this? Is there an actual phenotype that emerges from the changes on these very specific methylation sites? Is it related to aging or something else? Is it something that happens in concert with other things happening during the aging process? That's what we don't know.
This is the fourth paper that Murach has published as a faculty member of the U of A. The paper draws on research Murach began as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Kentucky Center for Muscle Biology, in collaboration with the University of Texas Medical Branch and Ridgeline Therapeutics. His co-authors include a number of people.
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