Information Wellness Blog

Exercise can do wonders for our bodies, from cardiovascular benefits to protecting us against the harsher aspects of aging.

Research has demonstrated the power of regular aerobic exercise to slow or even reverse multi-system age decline, while resistance training a few days a week can actually reverse them by strengthening muscles and optimizing endurance levels.

Aerobics

Aerobic exercise gets your heart racing faster, expands lung capacity and increases oxygen transport in your blood. Over time, this leads to improved stamina and energy levels as well as stronger bones and muscles – and may help prevent colds or flu from taking hold! This type of workout may also stimulate immune function so as to make you less susceptible to illnesses like colds or flus.

To maximize aerobic exercise’s potential, it’s essential that it be undertaken regularly and at an appropriate intensity level. You can gauge this by holding a conversation while exercising; for those with any health concerns it would be prudent to consult a healthcare provider first before beginning an aerobic fitness regime.

While we have yet to discover a fountain of youth, research indicates that regular exercise may shave years off of our biological age. This effect is caused by something known as telomeres, like little caps on shoelace ends that protect genetic material inside our cells from deteriorating over time. As cells divide more frequently, telomeres get shorter. Exercisers’ telomeres become closer in length with those of younger people. A study published in “Exercise and Sports Sciences Reviews” in October 2023 revealed that high intensity exercisers’ biologically nine years younger than those of sedentary people!

Resistance Training

Resistance training (also referred to as strength or weight training) refers to any exercise which uses any form of force against muscles in order to build their size and endurance. This could range from free weights and resistance bands all the way up to your own bodyweight – although as we age we may notice our muscles become thinner, resistance training can reverse this trend and prevent future muscle atrophy.

Strength training helps strengthen muscles by breaking down and then rebuilding muscle fibres, leading to larger muscles. Furthermore, muscle fibres secrete substances which help the body use blood sugar more effectively which may help lower insulin levels and risk for diabetes.

Recent research indicates that resistance training may also reverse some of the cellular aging in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, providing some promise of better cognitive performance as you age. It appears resistance training could slow and even reverse some aspects of cellular aging – thus providing hope of increased cognitive functioning over time.

For maximum effectiveness when it comes to resistance training, two or three workouts each week is recommended for maximum muscle growth. Doing too many workouts could result in decreased muscular gains; starting off slowly with this frequency and gradually increasing it will allow you to see and feel improvement as time goes on.

Squats

Squats are an invaluable form of exercise, effective at strengthening knees and hip joints while increasing metabolism, core strength, posture and metabolism. Squats may even help increase bone density. Before commencing a regular squat routine, however, it is advisable to screen for potential contraindications like anterior knee pain.

Squatting is a multi-muscle movement, targeting quadriceps, calves, glutes and abdominal muscles all at once. Weights may be added for additional resistance – the more resistance added, the higher your caloric burn.

People often shy away from squats because they can be challenging, yet this exercise should be part of anyone’s fitness regime as they age. When performing squats with weighted vests, barbells or dumbbells this movement becomes much simpler and more effective.

At its core, proper squat form is of utmost importance. A common error involves allowing knees to cave inward and tracking above toes; to check this properly using either mirrors or videos can help immensely.

No matter your daily tasks – from lifting heavy objects in everyday life and playing sports to cleaning the house – or any other physical endeavor, being able to pick things up with your lower body safely requires confidence in using leg power effectively. Squats provide this confidence while simultaneously keeping you mobile as you age while helping maintain balance.

Standing Calf Raise

Standing calf raises are an effective isolation exercise designed to target two muscles that make up your calves: gastrocnemius and soleus. The gastrocnemius forms the main shape and size of your calf while soleus sits underneath and attaches directly to Achilles tendon – stronger calves can help prevent knee injuries while increasing lower body stability during exercises like squats and lunges.

To perform this movement, begin by standing with heels firmly against the floor with weighted hands (or no weights at all) in each hand. Lift your heels off of the ground to an angle of 90 degrees, pausing at this peak position for 2-3 seconds before lowering them slowly back to their starting points and repeating as instructed for your assigned repetition count.

If balance becomes an issue with freestanding calf raises, lean against something or lean against a wall for support. Weighted options — dumbbells, kettlebells, gallon of water or barbell on a Smith machine — can increase resistance by making every movement harder for your muscles.

Try performing seated calf raises as a fun variation to add variety. This movement primarily targets soleus, while simultaneously strengthening your knee joint as gastrocnemius activates more when your knee bends. For added resistance and gastrocnemius activation, add resistance with leg press machine raises or incorporate unilateral single leg raises into your workout plan for unilateral development.

Climbing Stairs

Climbing stairs (also called “stair walking or ambulation”) is an effective cardiorespiratory workout that strengthens leg muscles while being low impact and easy to do for anyone. Climbing the stairs provides a good cardiorespiratory workout and may reduce heart disease risk and obesity risk while improving lung and cardiovascular health.

Stair climbing can burn many more calories than walking flat ground can; an hour spent climbing stairs for one 170-pound person could see him burn over 500 of them! A 2023 study from “Preventive Medicine” suggests such results.

Stair climbing is an excellent alternative for individuals who struggle with impact movements or don’t feel ready to undertake more intense exercises such as running. Stair climbing serves as resistance training that targets all major muscle groups of the legs including quads, calves and hamstrings.

Exercise increases heart rate, strengthening and strengthening heart muscle for more efficient blood pumping throughout your body. Furthermore, this activity engages muscles quickly to exert force quickly and efficiently that builds power; furthermore it is an ideal way to build strength, endurance and agility for other forms of physical exercise such as running or rowing.

High Impact Movements

New research indicates that as we age, muscle fibers become less efficient at regenerating. But according to Amsterdam UMC and Maastricht UMC+ researchers, consistent aerobic exercise may reverse this decline by helping muscle cells recover their ability to regenerate more effectively. They studied the effect of exercise in mice and discovered that consistent aerobic training reverses protein accumulation associated with age in muscle tissue as well as increasing mitochondrial function – results of this research are published in Nature Aging journal.

Mayo Clinic research indicates that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is the most beneficial exercise to combating anti-aging effects. HIIT increases mitochondrial regeneration while simultaneously improving insulin sensitivity to reduce cellular aging. Endurance activities like running, biking or swimming also play an essential role in protecting heart and lung health.

This research builds upon previous work demonstrating how exercise can renew muscle cells at the molecular level. Exercise stimulates four transcription factors (chemicals that regulate gene expression). These Yamanaka factors, named for Japanese scientists who first discovered them, transform specialized mature cells into more flexible pluripotent stem cells.

Researchers used an exercise wheel progressively loaded with magnetic weights to increase muscle load on mice’s muscles, increasing force on muscle cells and stimulating Yamanaka factors. Their results show that exercise reprograms muscle fibers to become younger-looking by activating Yamanaka factors; such results could one day be used to develop drugs to supercharge exercise response for bedridden people or astronauts in zero gravity environments.

Scientists have demonstrated that aging is malleable – laboratory animals can live longer by switching genes on and off; however, resetting an epigenetic pattern which determines which genes are expressed is more difficult.

Sinclair and her team have developed six chemical cocktails to revive mouse cells quickly and without harm to cellular identity, rejuvenating them within days without compromising cellular identity. The chemicals increase activity of an anti-ageing protein which has decreased significantly with age.

Epigenetics

Researchers have long suspected environmental factors could alter gene activity, yet could never pinpoint what caused them. Epigenetics could provide the answer: DNA sequences make proteins that, when altered in any way, cause disease; epigenetic changes occur when changes in how cells read those DNA sequences – these changes do not alter DNA but instead can make genes “on” become “off”, with devastating health impacts ranging from diet and exercise habits affecting genetic expressions to epigenetic influences on your health from food intake and exercise regiment.

An epigenetic mark prevents genes from turning themselves on and can last years or even for life. Some epigenetic marks are harmful – like those which prevent your body from healing itself after an auto accident or prevent cancerous cells from growing – while others can help you respond better to stress or maintain immune system health.

Epigenetic marks are created by molecules called methyl groups, which attach to your genes and alter how they’re read. Methyl groups act like erasers by turning off or slowing down their functionality – researchers are still learning how the environment impacts these methylation patterns and whether or not they can be reversed.

Studies have confirmed that epigenetic effects can be heritable, meaning they are passed from parent to offspring. One well-known example is the Agouti gene which controls hair color. Mice with its variant known as Avy have faulty controls for this gene and produce yellow fur or dark agouti coats in pups – further suggesting they exhibit more irregular genetic expression than expected. These Avy mice also tend to be obese and suffer from other health issues suggesting their genetic code might express itself more inconsistently than normal.

Sinclair’s team has pioneered an effective method for altering epigenetic states using four chemicals known as Yamanaka factors. Similar to enzymes that methylate DNA, they make changes faster and more precisely. In one experiment they applied this technique on retinal ganglion cells from mice eyes in order to restore them back into embryonic or pluripotent stem cell status – and subsequent mice regained sight as a result! They have since used it on brain, muscle, and kidney cells with similarly promising results

Stem cells

Stem cells that give rise to specialized cells in blood, bone, muscle and other tissues possess unique qualities. They’re capable of replicating themselves ad infinitum; yet have limited lifespans that will eventually cause them to stop producing and die off or enter a suspended state known as senescence; contributing to signs and symptoms associated with aging.

Scientists study stem cells to gain an insight into how specialized cells form, identify the sources of disease such as cancer and develop models of illness in the laboratory for testing new medicines.

Researchers are exploring ways to extend the lives of mice by reprogramming their cells back to more youthful states and hope this method can also work on humans. Scientists found that activating telomerase, which keeps chromosomes from shortening too rapidly leading to cell degradation, helped reverse aging on mice. Scientists then administered injections with chemicals activating this gene and revitalizing aging cells with rejuvenating treatments, leading to healthier intestinal, spleen, heart and brain organs resulting in longer, healthier lives

Scientists used an experimental compound known as ICE to reactivate telomerase. This compound works by creating temporary cuts in DNA that heal quickly – mimicking daily cell damage from chemicals, sunlight and environmental stressors like pollution and radiation. By making cuts like these in DNA, the ICE compound was able to stimulate telomerase activity and restore healthy chromosome length in mice that showed diminished sense of smell, smaller brain size, and infertility symptoms reduced significantly.

Scientists believe reprogramming cells into more youthful states may provide us with greater insight into disease development, while simultaneously developing methods to directly manipulate genes related to aging in order to extend lifespan and health. Their discoveries could pave the way towards anti-ageing treatments that could prevent or treat conditions like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and diabetes; their work was published in Nature journal.

TERT

A new treatment to reverse aging on mice involves increasing the levels of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), a protein that typically decreases with age. TERT helps protect chromosome ends and maintain the protective caps protecting their ends – when these caps wear away cells can no longer divide as frequently, leading to build-ups of cell debris called telomeres that eventually break down and lead to cellular senescence.

Researchers engineered mice with gene switches that caused their telomeres to wear down prematurely so they could study the impact of activating telomerase on these animals. Reactivating telomerase significantly delayed symptoms associated with aging while significantly improving health span and longevity – not to mention an increase in number of surviving cells across all tested tissues.

Reactivating telomerase was found to significantly boost cell growth and neurogenesis, reduce inflammation, improve memory, coordination, grip strength and memory tests in mice as well as slow the progression of brain tumors in the hippocampus and improve performance on memory tests.

Researchers administered AAV viruses carrying mTERT genes to mice, which allowed it to pass quickly into cells throughout their bodies and cause significant increases in TERT levels as well as an increase in telomere length across numerous tissues. At the same time, this increase coincided with decreased levels of p16, an anti-aging protein linked to cell senescence.

Harvard scientists state in their proof-of-concept study that reactivating telomerase can rejuvenate cells, but it remains uncertain if such actions would extend human lifespans. Adult humans turn off their telomerase production when they reach adulthood; it remains to be determined if activating it again would prevent cancer or simply hasten the process.

ICE

Researchers from the Salk Institute have developed an effective technique for “reversing” aging in mice using gene therapy. After making temporary cuts in their DNA, they then administered an ICE gene therapy treatment to reboot epigenetics – effectively undoing genetic “software glitches” responsible for aging – and resetting organs and tissues back to a youthful state – proving invaluable research data that may one day help scientists create strategies to extend human lifespans as well.

Researchers used the ICE gene to reprogram cells in the body so they behave like stem cells – cells with the capacity to differentiate into other types of cells and grow and divide over time – known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, and these iPS cells may then form new tissues and organs to reverse signs of aging and disease. Their next goal will be assessing if similar rejuvenation processes could help treat other diseases like heart disease or diabetes.

Scientists have long held the view that mutations to DNA were the main contributor to aging, but recent research conducted at Cell University shows otherwise. One key contributor could be changes to how genes turn on and off. The report was released recently as well.

Scientists wanted to test whether using the ICE gene would reverse aging by creating mice that experienced multiple DNA breaks. When this happens, epigenetic factors are supposed to repair them and return the genes to their original locations – however in these modified mice these factors kept becoming “distracted”, failing to return back where they should. As a result, epigenomes became disorganized.

Scientists manipulated this condition by disrupting gene expression patterns, mimicking how mammals age over time. Scientists then gave mutant mice the ICE gene and administered a drug that suppressed certain proteins; this not only caused their iPS cells to appear older but also reversed certain biomarkers of aging.

After reviewing their experiments, researchers concluded they had discovered a chemical cocktail which rejuvenates cells without altering their identity – OSK cocktail to be exact – which rejuvenates both biological and chronological age significantly below that of untreated mice. OSK significantly enhanced gene function related to senescence such as mitochondrial metabolism, lysosomal function and apoptosis which had become severely impaired over time.