Can exercise fight the aging process?

I think I can speak on behalf of many of us when I say this pandemic has caused us all to feel like we have aged rapidly. This could be from stress, anxiety, worry or a bad diet due to all the ‘procrasti-baking’ we have done over the last 18 months.

However, with the help of regular exercise did you know that you can fight the effects of aging? More importantly, it is one of the best defenses against the toughest aspects of aging.

 “Exercise is the best defense and repair strategy that we have to counter different drivers of aging,” says aging researcher Nathan LeBrasseur, professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. It can’t reverse aging, per se, he cautions, but “there’s clear evidence that exercise can activate the machinery necessary for DNA repair.”

 Don’t worry – when we speak about exercise, we don’t mean run a marathon or go to the gym constantly to reap the anti-aging benefits of exercise. A simple at home workout or even modest physical activity—taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walking the dog etc all have physical and cognitive benefits, as long as you do them regularly.

Emma Hogan from Les Mills explains, ‘’For the majority of those who don’t exercise, heart rate declines by about one beat per minute every year after the age of 30. By 40, you start losing about 90g of muscle each year, which means by the time you hit your 70s you’ll likely have a third less muscle than a 25-year-old. From the age of 50, you can expect a 16 percent decrease in aerobic capacity, falling by 26 percent by the time you're in your 70s’’.

 Yikes! Even reading that makes me want to go run a flight of stairs!

Recently introduced, there is now a transformative high-intensity interval training formula, where small volumes of exercise are used to stimulate disproportionate increases in cardiometabolic health. Participants used a stationary cycle to pedal through six 30-second sprints (at 40 percent of their peak power output) interspersed with three-minutes of active recovery. This short, but sharp 20-minute workout was performed every five days for six weeks – amounting to nine workouts in total.

 Now it’s time to get a little scientific. Taken from Myeloma Crown “exercise effect on muscle stem cells and tissue repair come down to a tiny protein called cyclin D1.” Aerobic exercise has a way of “restoring these cyclin D1 levels in dormant stem cells back to youthful levels… effectively accelerating muscle stem cell regeneration.”

So there we go, overall – regular exercise can have us all looking younger for longer and only 30 minutes a day is a very achievable task for most of us. If you are needing a little further motivation then Les Mills on Demand have a plethora of amazing online classes you can do rain or shine from the comfort of your own home. You can check these out here and when you are ready to take the next step then all SMART TECH equipment can be ordered directly from us!