Many of us hit the gym in the hopes of looking and feeling younger, but new research is shedding new light on the benefits of getting your sweat-on. It appears that getting those reps in with some intense physical activity can do more than improve your reflection in the mirror, it could reverse your age at a molecular level too. The groundbreaking new study, led by Tohoku University in Japan, aimed to show the relationship between exercise and epigenetic aging to find out if physical activity can slowdown, or even reverse ageing, and if so, what type of exercise is best suited for longevity.
What is Epigenetic Aging?
While chronological age is simply the number of years lived, epigenetic studies are more detailed and provide a clearer story on how an individual’s cells and tissues are performing as they mature. Epigenetic aging is the process by which our DNA changes at a molecular level, and scientists measure this benchmark of aging by referring to ‘epigenetic clocks.’
A research team, headed up Takuji Kawamura, trawled through the archives of existing studies and confirmed what we already knew; that exercise is a key lifestyle factor for aging more gracefully, but the results went even further, pinpointing the exact types of exercise that provide the most benefit.
What Type of Exercise is Best For Longevity?
In both mice and human trials, moving weights appeared to move the dial back on the aging processes. “These findings suggest that maintaining a high level of physical fitness delays epigenetic aging,” concluded the study. While general physical activity such as walking the dog or doing housework offers health benefits, the study found that more structured exercise routines that were repetitive and goal-directed appeared to have the most dramatic effect on slowing down the process of epigenetic aging.
“These findings suggest that maintaining physical fitness delays epigenetic aging in multiple organs and supports the notion that exercise as (an anti-aging tool) confers benefits to various organs,” noted the new study.
In mice, organized resistance training reduced the molecular changes that took place in their muscle tissues as a result of aging. Similar results were also found in humans. Data showed that previously sedentary middle-aged women were able to reduce their epigenetic age by two years after just eight weeks of aerobics and strength training.
Experts note that regular physical activity is not only great for maintaining or building skeletal muscle, but it also provides protective effects on organs such as the heart, liver, and fat tissue. Olympic athletes have been shown to have slower epigenetic aging than those who are not athletes, further cementing the link between long-term, intense physical activity and anti-aging.
