Exercise May Keep Your Cells Biologically Young

Dec. 1, 2009— -- People who run everyday do it to keep their hearts strong, spirits up and waistlines trim, but how many could guess that sweating it out on the treadmill may actually fight aging?

A new study in the journal Circulation, shows that vigorous exercise may be inducing a natural anti-aging effect that goes right down to our DNA.

"People who exercise have better health and live longer, however the mechanisms are not completely understood," said Dr. Ulrich Laufs, lead author of the new study and researcher at the University of Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany "You'd be amazed at how little we know about the mechanism of exercise on the cellular level."

In his small study of 104 people, Laufs and colleagues found that 50-year-old adults who had exercised vigorously over a lifetime -- such as marathon runners or endurance athletes -- appeared biologically younger --sometimes decades younger-- than healthy people the same age who were not active.

The American College of Sports Medicine and other medical institutions agree that exercising can prolong life by protecting against diseases.

But research has not been able to point to an actual anti-aging effect in exercise, or detail exactly how exercise protects against some diseases even among people who are otherwise thin and healthy.

"As most people grow older they develop increase likelihood of developing chronic diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. People who exercise regularly have been shown to have a lower rate of developing those chronic diseases," explained Wojtek J. Chodzko-Zajko, a member of the American College of Sports Medicine and head of Kinesiology and Community Health at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"But individuals differ widely in how they age. I think we're a long way from understanding all of it," he said.

Laufs and his colleagues decided to tackle the problem by studying exercise's chemical influence on telomeres -- caps, that act as a sort of buffer at the end of chromosomes that protect DNA from damage. A young cell typically has long telomeres, but telomeres begin to degrade and fray as it ages. Older people typically have shorter telomeres in their cells. If telomeres in a cell are too short, the cell dies.