Sedentary Lifestyle May Accelerate Biological Aging

The results of a recent study published in JAMA strongly suggest a link between inactivity and the aging process itself (not just the propensity to suffer age-related diseases). Specifically, the telomere length of individuals exercising with moderate-high intensity 199+ minutes per week was equivalent to the telomere length of individuals 10 years younger who are sedentary. This indicates that physically active individuals may be biologically younger than their sedentary counterparts with a lower chronological age.

As far as I know, this is a landmark study, as I've not heard of any other exploring a link between exercise and telomere length, the penultimate marker of the aging process.

Link to an article discussing the study published in the Washington Post:

http://www.washingto...8012802081.html

This is the first time I have seen a study linking telomere length to exercise or lack there of, very interesting, however, I am not too surprised.

A lot of research through the years has shown for almost every age related problem that exists in the human body, exercise is a silver bullet.

Click HERE to rent this advertising spot for EXERCISE to support LongeCity (this will replace the google ad above).

http://news.bbc.co.u...lth/7212698.stm

Exercise sounds like a pretty cheap anti-aging intervention I'd say.

I subscribe to Men's Health e-newsletter (no money of course) and while usually it's among the 100 e-mails I delete every day, something jumped out at me that made me read. 'Sweat makes you younger'. Unfortunately it was just a term and not directly related to sweat, but it was still relevant to my research. It contradicts my current understanding of metabolism and cell health though, so I thought I'd run it by here to see if anyone might have some ideas.

You've heard plenty of reasons you should work out regularly. Well, here's a new one: Going to the gym can make you younger.

A new study out of King's College London found that the amount of exercise you do each week affects how you age.

In the study of 2,401 twins, those who exercised vigorously for 3 hours a week were biologically 9 years younger than those who sweated for less than 15 minutes.

Can't fit in 30 minutes 6 days a week at the gym? Then aim for an hour and a half of moderate exercise each week—in the study, this habit was shown to provide a 4-year advantage.

You won't leave the gym looking years younger, but your telomeres will.

Telo-what? These structures that protect the DNA on your chromosomes get shorter as you age. But researchers found that those who exercised more frequently had longer telomeres, which means they're biologically younger than the number of candles on their birthday cake.

This was from the mail, the site itself goes into further detail with a summary: http://mhtoday.mensh...eal-founta.html

It's located in your gym. Or the pool. Or over in the park, on your running trails. Or in your basement, where that treadmill and bench are languishing.

New research from England puts into real numbers what we always knew: Exercise makes you younger.

And we're not just talking about youthful looks and smooth skin, though that could be part of the bargain. Scientists looked down to the molecular level and saw that people who exercise regularly have DNA that appears 9 years younger than the DNA of people who don't exercise.

This was one of our favorite kinds of studies: Twins! Identical twins provide a mother lode of research subjects for scientists. Because identical twins are ... well, identical, we can compare them and see how behavior affects the body.

In this case, 2,401 sets of twins were compared according to their exercise habits. Each twin gave up a DNA sample, and the scientists looked at the structure of the "telomeres," which protect the DNA on chromosomes.

These telomeres get shorter as people age, which some researchers suspect means cells are aging or dying. People with shorter telomeres are more likely to get age-related diseases, the scientists say.

So the researchers compared the telomeres of their twins, and cross-checked that with how much the twin exercised.

People who exercised vigorously 3 hours a week were biologically 9 years younger than those who exercised less than 15 minutes a week, based on telomere length.

How does exercise do this? Most likely, it reduces the oxidative stress on cells, the researchers say.

Now, up until now, I had believed that exercise's benefits to health were related to maintaining circulation, and giving the illusion of youth due to adaptive mechanisms like increased muscle mass, flexibility, endurance, all things that come easier to people who are young, so it makes you 'more on the level' of someone younger who does not exercise as regularly. However, that it might make you younger on a cellular level doesn't really make sense. I understand that during times of catabolism (which may occur during caloric restriction, fasting, or intense exercise, or a combination of the three) when the cells eat parts of themselves, this can help in destroying damaged components, benefitting health. However, I don't really see how you could restore DNA.

Obviously the wording used to advertise the study is misleading: reducing oxidative stress would only slow ageing, it would not 'make you younger'. Unfortunately, reporters are not held accountable to their words, people keep on reading, including me it seems.

However, does it increase oxidative stress? I don't really understand how it would. Exercising increases the use of oxygen, because you breath harder, you breath more, you expend more calories. It seems on the surface that exercise should do the opposite and increase oxidative stress.

This is why I'm wondering if perhaps we are observing the wrong thing. I think exercise probably, through its increased stress, makes people instinctively eat better. They eat foods with more vitamins and antioxidants, and engage in less destructive habits like smoking which would increase damage to DNA through free radicals (though this isn't actually oxidative stress itself, meaning the scientists' hypothesis would have to be wrong). This theory makes more sense to me. It's simple enough to say 'oh hey exercise reduces oxidative stress', but without explaining the theory, a skeptic isn't about to believe it. For example, an idea of how the mechanism would work, and why we should contradict current understanding of Calorie Restriction and the lowering of the metabolism, would be nice.

I can't help but think, that since exercise has chemical benefits, and such a strong culture, and health benefits in the short term, that people are biasing their research (intentionally or not) in favour of it. I find this very dangerous. Indeed, if more people did it, they would take up less space, be more attractive to be around (and more sexually attractive), and they would be more energetic, strong, and capable of working and serving their communities. However I don't think this is worth shortening the life span and increasing the chances of someone dying before they can extend their lives indefinately if they so wish. Exercise is beneficial in avoiding accident-related injuries, for helping some biological processes along, and for helping some health or dietary problems. There are probably less metabolically stressful alternatives to treating many of these problems however, and they should not be ignored in favour of exercise's popularity. We need to keep our minds open to the possibility that exercise ages us, not that just because it feels so damned great it must make us younger. This is obviously not the fact, because then the people who exercised the most would get youngest. This is not the case.

Since both things I've quoted are only descriptions by someone who has read it, I'm wondering if someone knows how to obtain the abstract from this study done in King's College, so that it can be reviewed properly rather than from this description, as we know descriptions tend to sensationalize it not just in their title and introductory phrases, but in the discussion overall.

tyciol, you'd probably be interested in reading the Jan 15 2008 issue of Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

This is John Saxon, Bruce Lee's costar on Enter the Dragon at age 71. In my copy of Dragon Door's HardStyle magazine there is a shot of him doing a military press with a 70 lb kettlebell, 70 lbs is much heavier than the kettlebell in this picture. Working out does make you look younger.

What a fascinating study, in how it is done--very nice. I've already shared it a few places.

I subscribe to Men's Health e-newsletter (no money of course) and while usually it's among the 100 e-mails I delete every day, something jumped out at me that made me read. 'Sweat makes you younger'. Unfortunately it was just a term and not directly related to sweat, but it was still relevant to my research. It contradicts my current understanding of metabolism and cell health though, so I thought I'd run it by here to see if anyone might have some ideas.

...

Now, up until now, I had believed that exercise's benefits to health were related to maintaining circulation, and giving the illusion of youth due to adaptive mechanisms like increased muscle mass, flexibility, endurance, all things that come easier to people who are young, so it makes you 'more on the level' of someone younger who does not exercise as regularly. However, that it might make you younger on a cellular level doesn't really make sense. I understand that during times of catabolism (which may occur during caloric restriction, fasting, or intense exercise, or a combination of the three) when the cells eat parts of themselves, this can help in destroying damaged components, benefitting health. However, I don't really see how you could restore DNA.

Obviously the wording used to advertise the study is misleading: reducing oxidative stress would only slow ageing, it would not 'make you younger'. Unfortunately, reporters are not held accountable to their words, people keep on reading, including me it seems.

However, does it increase oxidative stress? I don't really understand how it would. Exercising increases the use of oxygen, because you breath harder, you breath more, you expend more calories. It seems on the surface that exercise should do the opposite and increase oxidative stress.

This is why I'm wondering if perhaps we are observing the wrong thing. I think exercise probably, through its increased stress, makes people instinctively eat better. They eat foods with more vitamins and antioxidants, and engage in less destructive habits like smoking which would increase damage to DNA through free radicals (though this isn't actually oxidative stress itself, meaning the scientists' hypothesis would have to be wrong). This theory makes more sense to me. It's simple enough to say 'oh hey exercise reduces oxidative stress', but without explaining the theory, a skeptic isn't about to believe it. For example, an idea of how the mechanism would work, and why we should contradict current understanding of Calorie Restriction and the lowering of the metabolism, would be nice.

I can't help but think, that since exercise has chemical benefits, and such a strong culture, and health benefits in the short term, that people are biasing their research (intentionally or not) in favour of it. I find this very dangerous. Indeed, if more people did it, they would take up less space, be more attractive to be around (and more sexually attractive), and they would be more energetic, strong, and capable of working and serving their communities. However I don't think this is worth shortening the life span and increasing the chances of someone dying before they can extend their lives indefinately if they so wish. Exercise is beneficial in avoiding accident-related injuries, for helping some biological processes along, and for helping some health or dietary problems. There are probably less metabolically stressful alternatives to treating many of these problems however, and they should not be ignored in favour of exercise's popularity. We need to keep our minds open to the possibility that exercise ages us, not that just because it feels so damned great it must make us younger. This is obviously not the fact, because then the people who exercised the most would get youngest. This is not the case.

Since both things I've quoted are only descriptions by someone who has read it, I'm wondering if someone knows how to obtain the abstract from this study done in King's College, so that it can be reviewed properly rather than from this description, as we know descriptions tend to sensationalize it not just in their title and introductory phrases, but in the discussion overall.

First, the information presented in Men's Health is based entirely on the same study which is the basis of the articles linked in my OP and the BBC article after that, so we don't really need a third link to another layman discussing the same study. Here's a link to an abstract of the study itself, as posted on the website of the Archives of Internal Medicine, the journal in which the study was published: http://archinte.ama-...short/168/2/154

Second, your belief that exercise SHORTENS the lifespan is bizarre, tragically flawed, and contrary to the great weight of numerous studies showing a very significant life-extending effect from regular exercise of sufficient intensity. See, e.g., the 1989 8-year study of over 13,000 people published in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled "Physical Fitness and All-Cause Mortality", and the hundreds of follow-up studies that have essentially confirmed its findings. This is hard data, as are the differences in telomere lengths observed in the recent study of twins which is the subject of my OP. The conclusions announced in these studies have been reached by noted experts specializing in this type of research, as compared to flights of the imagination courtesy of layman armchair "experts" such as yourself.

I'm sorry to be hard on you, but the real danger here is not the "research bias" you imagine that somehow has clouded the minds of scientists around the world for decades (about as likely as the conspiracy theory that man has not landed on the moon)--it is the chance your ramblings may persuade another not to exercise, thereby increasing his/her mortality risk and decreasing quality of life.

(By the way, your understanding of the mechanism by which caloric restriction works is outdated and inaccurate. Several years ago, a study compared the effects of caloric restriction (CR) on one group of mice which were not placed on an exercise regimen, with a second group of mice which were also placed on a CR diet but which were also forced to exercise daily over the course of their lives (the CR diet was adjusted in proportion to the caloric expenditure from exercise). Group One lived on average the expected additional period due to CR alone, but Group Two lived on average even LONGER than Group One. Earlier studies of combined CR/exercise interventions found no decrease in life span for the combined intervention as opposed to CR alone (although they did not find an additive effect). Today, CR's benefits are no longer widely believed to result from a slower metabolism, but rather from activation of sirtuins that stall or reverse some markers of aging (which is the same mechanism by which resveratrol seems to provide its benefits) ).

Edited by TianZi, 30 January 2008 - 05:17 PM.

Wow, I thought my post was deleted and I was freaking out, I didn't think that there was a related thread this was moved to

This is John Saxon, Bruce Lee's costar on Enter the Dragon at age 71. In my copy of Dragon Door's HardStyle magazine there is a shot of him doing a military press with a 70 lb kettlebell, 70 lbs is much heavier than the kettlebell in this picture. Working out does make you look younger.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who reads Hardstyle I definately agree that it makes you LOOK younger, but as we know, looks can be deceiving. More accurate I think, it makes you strong, and you look vibrant and stuff, because these are reactions to activity, which is much harder for old people than young people. This is why young people tend to be more active, and why exercise is more associated with them, so people think you look younger when you exercise when actually you're stronger and your body has adapted to the exercise as normal.

Your belief that exercise SHORTENS the lifespan is bizarre, tragically flawed, and contrary to the great weight of numerous studies showing a very significant life-extending effect from regular exercise of sufficient intensity.

Your criticism is excessively overinflated. You will not argue that excessive exercise does shorten the lifespan, right? Chronic exercise, overtraining, etc. Now, I do agree with you that responsible exercise has an extending effect upon expected lifespan. I also believe it shortens your maximum lifespan. These are different concepts. I have already stated that it has many benefits, such as the adaptive response the body makes to it, which helps fight many forms of disease. These diseases are leading causes of death in a population, so when you avoid them, you live significantly longer than other individuals who die of those things. However, leading causes of death, or the things that kill the common man, these things are completely irrelevant to maximum lifespan, and the things that kill you later rather than sooner. We know rather than the common things, that the things shortening the maximum life expectancy are overall degredation of the body's systems, which are strongly associated with metabolism. There are plenty of alternate ways to avoid many diseases which exercise prevents.

This is why all other studies besides this recent one focusing on telomere length have been ignorable, as they don't take into account exercise fighting the leading causes of death, and not the late-onset causes of death which I expect have different proportions for cententarians. That exercise lowers your susceptibility to heart disease or that you won't fall and break your hip/head due to your stronger muscles is completely irrelevant to studying its cellular effects on the ageing process and things like organ failure. Until you show me that these studies are looking more specifically at this kind of ageing, and not just life expectancy, you can't expect them to hold any weight. It's the same sort of bias you get when the life expectancy of a population goes up just because more babies are surviving past a year, something that makes it seem like a group is improving due to their relative numbers compared to another group, even if their maximum life expectancy doesn't change.

See, e.g., the 1989 8-year study of over 13,000 people published in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled "Physical Fitness and All-Cause Mortality", and the hundreds of follow-up studies that have essentially confirmed its findings. This is hard data, as are the differences in telomere lengths observed in the recent study of twins which is the subject of my OP. The conclusions announced in these studies have been reached by noted experts specializing in this type of research, as compared to flights of the imagination courtesy of layman armchair "experts" such as yourself.

I would ask you not to put 'expert' in quotations as to imply that I have ever called myself that. I'm a layman yeah, and not an expert. That doesn't mean I can't speak my mind or ask questions of research. That a conclusion is reached by someone renouned as 'expert' is irrelevant, what is relevant is the competancy of the study. I have not insulted the telomere twin study, I have inquired about it, I am excited by it because I want to know what it is implying, and if the scientists had theories as to the mechanisms of the telomere preservation. Of course, it must also be respected that ageing is more than just telomeres, they are simply one form of protection DNA has against one form of degredation in cell division.

I'm sorry to be hard on you, but the real danger here is not the "research bias" you imagine that somehow has clouded the minds of scientists around the world for decades (about as likely as the conspiracy theory that man has not landed on the moon)--it is the chance your ramblings may persuade another not to exercise, thereby increasing his/her mortality risk and decreasing quality of life.

Anyone convinced so easily to do that is a fool. I exercise myself. Exercise has many benefits, and many processes rely on it, and the increase in % chance of living it gives in the earlier years likely outweights any decrease in % chance survival it might give in later ones due to metabolic stress. The increase in quality of life can also increase wealth, which can be used to fund medical procedures. I do not like your method of reasoning here, as you are essentially wanting to censor free speech simply because some people might listen to the right stuff. This isn't even a declaration, it is a promotion of free discussion. If you are truly worried that my concerns are wrong and invalid, then defeat them soundly in respectable discussion rather than simply respond "you're wrong because experts say this, and you're going to hurt people." I would ask you also not use any ad hominem, as this seems to be the direction this post is taking.

(By the way, your understanding of the mechanism by which caloric restriction works is outdated and inaccurate. Several years ago, a study compared the effects of caloric restriction (CR) on one group of mice which were not placed on an exercise regimen, with a second group of mice which were also placed on a CR diet but which were also forced to exercise daily over the course of their lives (the CR diet was adjusted in proportion to the caloric expenditure from exercise). Group One lived on average the expected additional period due to CR alone, but Group Two lived on average even LONGER than Group One. Earlier studies of combined CR/exercise interventions found no decrease in life span for the combined intervention as opposed to CR alone (although they did not find an additive effect). Today, CR's benefits are no longer widely believed to result from a slower metabolism, but rather from activation of sirtuins that stall or reverse some markers of aging (which is the same mechanism by which resveratrol seems to provide its benefits) ).

I was not aware of this research, thank you and this directly addresses what I was talking about. You say you have a study that a group that is eating more lived longer. When all the mice in this study died, I am curious, did the scientists list what the causes of death were for each respectively? As this would be pretty informative.

Edited by tyciol, 30 January 2008 - 08:36 PM.

[/quote]I was not aware of this research, thank you and this directly addresses what I was talking about. You say you have a study that a group that is eating more lived longer. When all the mice in this study died, I am curious, did the scientists list what the causes of death were for each respectively? As this would be pretty informative.
[/quote]

Hi Tyciol,

I apologize if you perceived portions of my post as a personal attack. My intention simply was to remind readers to give proper weight to the consensus opinion of experts as compared with laymen.

1. I'm afraid I do not know the cause of death for each mouse in that study.

If you need some help locating studies within the last decade demonstrating that a lower basal metabolic rate does not cause the life prolonging effects of CR, let me know. Anyway, extreme CR today seems primarily of interest to the scientific community only to the extent of discovering the precise mechanism by which it causes the body to prolong its own lifespan. As you are probably aware, there is an increasing body of evidence that CR's benefits are primarily the result of activating sirtuins, specifically SIRT1. If my memory isn't mistaken, there have been several studies on mice recently comparing the effects of interventions employing resveratrol, or even more effective proprietary compounds containing resveratrol, on one group of mice, and CR on the other, with the life extending results being quite similar. I believe there has been at least one study completed recently in which a combined resveratrol/CR intervention was compared to CR alone, and no greater lifespan increase was reported using the combined intervention. I also believe that studies have been done using resveratrol and CR on mice who had been altered so that certain sirtuins no longer functioned, and these mice did not benefit from CR or resveratrol interventions.

2. Getting back to the study on twins showing differences in telomere length between physically inactive and active identical twins, my hunch is that a study like this wouldn't have been funded or attempted without first demonstrating such results at least once in a study of mice (meaning that variables such as diet, etc.--concerns of yours with the accuracy of the study on twins--could have been precisely controlled). However, I'm only able to read online the very short abstract of the study on twins, and am not willing to subscribe to the journal in which it was published to satisfy my curiousity on this point. Perhaps another poster will do so and be gracious enough to summarize the key points not apparent in the abstract after reviewing the full text of the study. A university student such as Shephard may have free access to this journal (get on it, Shephard!).

3. Regarding other anti-aging benefits of certain forms of exercise that aren't well known by the general public, many studies have demonstrated sharp increases in growth hormone levels resulting especially from very intense weightlifting using the larger muscle groups, and to a lesser extent, high intensity cardiovascular exercises. Representative early studies include ones performed at U. of VA, Penn State U., and U. of FL--let me know if you want the citations. The National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA), among other specialized research bodies, continues to show a keen interest on how GH levels are influenced by exercise, as evidenced by the mountain of recent studies they've conducted in this area, many of which can be reviewed at their website.

Why should we care? Because HGH levels decline as we age, and GH interventions (using injections of GH) have demonstrated profound and fairly broad spectrum anti-aging effects in the elderly, as evidenced by the landmark HGH study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1990. Per this study and follow-ups to it, these benefits include sharp increases in lean muscle mass, decrease in body fat, regrowth of tissue in the heart, liver, spleen, kidney etc. (organs that ordinarily shrink with age), greater cardiac output, superior immune function, lowered blood pressure, stronger bones, younger, tighter and thicker skin, improved memory retention, and faster wound healing.

GH supplementation has also been shown to increase at least average life expectancy in mice, and perhaps may increase maximum life expectancy. In a 22 month study using 52 mice aged 17 months (over 3/4 their average life span) published in 1991 in Mechanisms of Aging and Development, the mice were separated into two groups of equal size: Group One was given a placebo, and Group 2 was treated with GH. By the 16th month, all of the mice in Group One were dead, with all but two having died from natural causes (two were culled for research purposes); by way of contrast, no mouse in Group Two had died of natural causes by the end of the 22nd month, which was the termination point for the study (4 were culled for research purposes). The GH-treated mice were discovered to have immune systems characteristic of youthful mice (this ties in with the study on telomere length in twins eventually, so bear with me!). Others studies have shown that GH supplementation can reduce shrinkage of the thymus, and (probably as a result thereof) increase levels of immune factors called cytokines, as well as interleukin 1 and 2, lending further support to the hypostheis that GH supplementation has rejuvenating effects on the immune system.

Sadly, HGH supplementation by injection has proven to be dangerous in humans (particularly with respect to women), at least in studies that gave a uniform dosage of GH to participants rather than one tailored to each of them personally. It is certainly dangerous at excessive levels, and is associated with acromegaly (gigantism); the problem is that an ideal supplemental dosage for one person may be hazardous for another who naturally has higher GH levels. However, no such adverse effects have been reported for persons who have naturally stimulated their body's own GH output through exercise.

4. Interestingly, fasting also causes sharp increases in GH production. Could this explain why mammals used in CR studies sometimes (often?) show an increase in lean muscle mass as compared to the untreated control group, even when they weren't forced to exercise? This observed increase in lean muscle mass is certainly counterintuitive, as you'd expect it to result only from exercise, and not while on a CR diet.

5. And now I return to the study on twins which is the subject of this thread. It is important to note that only immune cells were studied; testing of the effect of exercise on the length of telomeres in other types of cells will require further studies. In conclusion, it is interesting to note the age-defying effects on components of the immune system as demonstrated both in GH supplementation studies and the study of telomere length in twins. Keeping in mind that exercise of sufficient intensity causes significantly increased GH ouput, it is likely that the fittest category of individuals in the twins study had elevated levels of GH. But is increased GH level only a non-integral side effect of exercise that had no role in the length of immune cell telomeres, or did it cause the observed difference?

Edited by TianZi, 31 January 2008 - 07:33 AM.

This is John Saxon, Bruce Lee's costar on Enter the Dragon at age 71. In my copy of Dragon Door's HardStyle magazine there is a shot of him doing a military press with a 70 lb kettlebell, 70 lbs is much heavier than the kettlebell in this picture. Working out does make you look younger.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who reads Hardstyle I definately agree that it makes you LOOK younger, but as we know, looks can be deceiving. More accurate I think, it makes you strong, and you look vibrant and stuff, because these are reactions to activity, which is much harder for old people than young people. This is why young people tend to be more active, and why exercise is more associated with them, so people think you look younger when you exercise when actually you're stronger and your body has adapted to the exercise as normal.

I hope we are not the only ones reading Hardstyle . You maybe read the John Saxon story there and know that John worked through some tough physical issues to arrive where he is now. His training has been very good for him. He does look a little overweight, but sarcopenia doesn't seem to be a problem. He has plenty of muscle.

Yes, aging is a tough nut to crack. Endothelial dysfunction and sarcopenia seem to accelerate right about age 70. I will be 69 in May so I am preparing. taking GliSODIn and ALCAR/arginate to mitigate these problems. Also, I have stepped up my training to 6 days a week. The idea is that I need a powerful hormonal cascade to offset the much faster decline that happens in the 70's. Knowing that my teleomeres will be longer is a huge incentive. Like you say, something objective, not just looks. I will also be able to verify the status of my endothelial cells. GliSODin has been shown to improve endothelial cells in persons of my age. I have a baseline sonogram of my carotoid artery to chart what happens to artery wall thickness.

So, I was glad to see John Saxon press 70 lbs. I follow the Sarah Lurie(RKC) kettlebell workouts. I cannot keep up with her using a 34 lb KB, so I use a 25 lb one. The 34 lb one I can swing, snatch, clean, and press, but not as fast and long as the DVD goes. Maybe I will press 70 lbs when I am 71.

TianZi, if indeed the lower metabolic rate is not responsible for part of CR's benefits (I never thought it to be responsible for all of them, I know about the gene activation stuff, as well as the catabolism from the lysosomes as mentioned) and you would live as long or longer if you could duplicate the gene activation and exercised and ate a whole bunch, it would be totally perfect and make my day. Something so awesome and comforting is inherantly suspicious

In doing CR alone versus CR+Resvera and observing no difference, that's interesting, but what about comparing CR alone vs Resvera alone? That kind of test more directly addresses the issue. What you mentioned would show that Resvera does nothing that CR doesn't, but not the vice versa since it's not been isolated. You mentioned this was the second study, but unlike the first that was identical you said 'quite similar' so if they weren't the same it could mean CR's got something in reserve that Resvera does not, right? I'm very tempted to think of Resv as a wonderdrug, and indeed if you check out the bodybuilding communities they mention CR and say "but you wouldn't want to do that, you'd be weak and puny, so you just take Resveratrol". But we can't jump the gun on thinking it to be an end-all panacea for slowing ageing. A lot of the metabolic basis of ageing keeps bringing up the mitochondria and the free radicals generated them. We know that they're more active when you have more energy, which you tend to get from exercising more, or from having a bountiful amount of calories available. Endurance athletes train to multiply their mitochondria for more energy, but we're multiplying the things generating free radicals so it seems like something that maybe should be looked at more objectively first for the longterm ramifications.

That's a good point about the twin mouse precursor to the twin human study, I didn't think of that but that does make a lot of sense, I second your hope that Shepard the awesome will come to the rescue. I need to get in uni myself so I can be more independant in these things. I think they give discounts for subscription rates to students anyway right? Or they're free in the library or something a lot of the time since the profs buy it in large packages so all are available to everyone.

The growth hormone response to exercise is something I know about, I guess I wasn't totally sure if that's the best method of antiaging. I have to admit, while I knew about the increase in muscle and stuff, I didn't know about the regrowth of organ cells. I had always figured that it was stimulated as a survival thing, at the expense (or ignoring) of your organs rather than their benefit, as often happens when the endocrine systems are abused by steroids and stuff.

lean muscle mass, decrease in body fat, regrowth of tissue in the heart, liver, spleen, kidney etc. (organs that ordinarily shrink with age), greater cardiac output, superior immune function, lowered blood pressure, stronger bones, younger, tighter and thicker skin, improved memory retention, and faster wound healing

I guess the main confusion is, we know this is all great for 'health' and immediate survival, and resistance to many diseases, but one wonders if there is a more subtle 'ageing clock'. Because basically, even if you're fine in all regards but one, it's that one final regard that we might possibly ignore that can bring you down. Basically, degredation on the DNA level is what I'm worried about, because even if you have the healthiest system ever, if the DNA is badly damaged then you'll still eventually get health problems, even if it is so random (as free radical dmg often is) that you won't know what it'll be, cancer or otherwise.

The whole telomere thing has still thrown me for a loop, to be honest. I had thought a telomere was taken off each time a cell divided so it could be used as a mitosis clock or something. If people who exercise have more telomeres, would that mean their cells are not dividing as much? This seems counterintuitive because when the body is under stress, exerting itself, cells are getting damaged and destroyed, with new ones built in its place. Muscle hypertrophy itself is pretty much identified by our cells dividing, right? In the SENS presentation, De Gray presents exercise as a means of replacing lost cell populations in muscles due to that, but that approach includes things like telomere replacement, which I figure was meant to stand in the for exercise not stopping/slowing or even accelerating the loss of telomeres over time due to cell division.

That the telomere length was only something observed in the immune cells was something I missed, thanks for identifying this as it will make future speculation more pointed. I'm still not totally sure what it would be... but if it were only the immune cells and not others, do you think maybe rather than stopping telomere loss, there's something that could be adding telomeres back?

DNA repair isn't something I'd expect the body to be good at, because you'd need a reference for what is 'right' DNA such as another cell's DNA, and not only that, a way to determine it is the right DNA and not also damaged (or that the damaged DNA is not the right DNA, etc.). But that's just for the info. DNA pretty consistantly all has telomeres, regardless of how damaged whatever is sandwiched between them is, so it wouldnt require much accuracy to say, add telomeres back, even though I don't know how that could happen. Not losing telomeres at all is dangerous due to cancer right? So maybe, it loses them, but then cells which through some process of internal natural selection are determined to be the most health (ala not damaged/cancer) get telomeres restored?

This is all pretty excessive speculation seeing as how there's no evidence of the body restoring it's cells' DNA's telomeres, I guess it's tempting to think of alternatives due to the strangeness of the idea of cells dividing slower in a more active person when I had thought their cells underwent mitosis faster.

Okay, I read the full paper.

Big drawback is that it's all self-reported. 2152 women, 249 men placed themselves in categories from 1-4 (1 being least active, 4 being most). Non-surprisingly, most people indicated that they were in Category 3. The BMI of the participants did drop steadily from 1 to 4, so it might not have been too bad. Anyway, that said, it's not clear what effect exercise had on leukocyte telomere length (LTL). Oxidative stress, inflammation, perceived stress, etc. are negatively associated with LTL and exercise goes a long way to counteract those things. So, not much more than one more thing to add to downstream results from exercise in our modern lifestyle. Might not be that big of a deal for a person with a more relaxing lifestyle (unintentional CR, lots of meditation, monk, whatever).

I would think that exercise gets more nutrients to the cells, so they can live longer--thus needing to die and shorten, less.

Okay, I read the full paper.

Big drawback is that it's all self-reported. 2152 women, 249 men placed themselves in categories from 1-4 (1 being least active, 4 being most). Non-surprisingly, most people indicated that they were in Category 3. The BMI of the participants did drop steadily from 1 to 4, so it might not have been too bad. Anyway, that said, it's not clear what effect exercise had on leukocyte telomere length (LTL). Oxidative stress, inflammation, perceived stress, etc. are negatively associated with LTL and exercise goes a long way to counteract those things. So, not much more than one more thing to add to downstream results from exercise in our modern lifestyle. Might not be that big of a deal for a person with a more relaxing lifestyle (unintentional CR, lots of meditation, monk, whatever).

Shephard,

Was there any mention of a precursor study in mice or using other animals in a controlled laboratory environment? I'd be surprised if a study like this would have been attempted without some earlier studies having been performed on animal subjects in a laboratory environment. I'd expect this information to have been included in the Introduction.

Good of you to point out that earlier studies have shown similar differences in telomere lengths associated with differences in perceived stress (interestingly also showing a difference in telomere length equivalent to up to a decade or more of aging between those with the highest levels of perceived stress and those with the least; was this only with respect to immune cells or other types of cells as well?); I recall other studies also showing a difference in telomere length resulting from chronic lack of sufficient sleep. It's now fairly obvious that lifestyle affects the biological rate of aging.

I suppose it would be nice to have groups of twins with each twin being equally physically active, but with an extreme difference in perceived stress within each pair. Ideally, each pair would include a suicidal high-profile trial attorney who exercised 2+ hours daily with his identical twin who in contrast is a happy-go-lucky dilettante multimillionaire playboy. Not likely!

We'll have better luck looking to mice if we are concerned with the accuracy of self-reporting by the twins in the study. Three groups of mice, with Groups 1 and 2 forced to exercise daily in equal amounts, and Group Three not placed on an exercise regimen. Group 2 would live in conditions causing high levels of psychological stress in mice (being constantly surrounded by cats who would occasionally devour mice before the terrified rodent eyes of members of Group 2, or something equally awful; I'm joking, but something suitable could be devised). Compare telomere lengths of immune cells in all members of each group after 6 months or so. Voila.

Anyway, it seems certain this study using twins will attract lots of attention in the scientific community, so it will be worth keeping a keen eye out for the inevitable follow-up work to come.

Edited by TianZi, 01 February 2008 - 07:21 AM.

Was there any mention of a precursor study in mice or using other animals in a controlled laboratory environment? I'd be surprised if a study like this would have been attempted without some earlier studies having been performed on animal subjects in a laboratory environment.

There is no indication that an earlier animal study was performed. The nature of this study doesn't require the time/money of a completely controlled trial. It appears they just looked at data that said "B+C=D" and "A=B+C", let's see if "A is associated with D".

(interestingly also showing a difference in telomere length equivalent to up to a decade or more of aging between those with the highest levels of perceived stress and those with the least; was this only with respect to immune cells or other types of cells as well?);

PMIDs quoted in study:

16856882
15574496
11317710
14623283

Wait a tad... am I reading this right in that the amount of exercise they were subjected to was done intuitively and they just reported it, rather than it being randomized and forced upon them in different variations?

If the people were just doing what they were inclined to do, or able to do, that's sort of a different matter. For example, it's not a stretch to assume such people have genetic advantages over others who are less inclined to exercise perhaps due to a lack of energy or inefficient systems or something. Perhaps something about that aspect of them also involves less telomere loss during cell division, or something that preserves it or restores it sometimes.

What people draw from these studies is what forcing themselves to exercise will do for their telomere length, not what the telomere length tends to be for people who tend to exercise more. They're pretty different matters.

Wait a tad... am I reading this right in that the amount of exercise they were subjected to was done intuitively and they just reported it, rather than it being randomized and forced upon them in different variations?

If the people were just doing what they were inclined to do, or able to do, that's sort of a different matter. For example, it's not a stretch to assume such people have genetic advantages over others who are less inclined to exercise perhaps due to a lack of energy or inefficient systems or something. Perhaps something about that aspect of them also involves less telomere loss during cell division, or something that preserves it or restores it sometimes.

What people draw from these studies is what forcing themselves to exercise will do for their telomere length, not what the telomere length tends to be for people who tend to exercise more. They're pretty different matters.

Keep in mind this study was of differences in telomere lengths between identical twins.

Right you are, that's a relevant thing I overlooked...

Although, even if you're identical twins, one's DNA might become damaged in an unnoticable way that causes differences in health. Like say one day growing up one stuck his head in a microwave and one didn't.

In any accounts of "Exercise may slow down aging, increase maximum time living."

Jeanne Calment -Aged 122
Remarkable health presaged her later record. At age 85, she took up fencing, and at 100, she was still riding a bicycle. (Physical Health)

Tomoji Tanabe - Aged 115
He credited total abstinence from alcohol and smoking as the secret to his longevity (Physical health.)


So I believe anything that improves your physical health.., will benefit your maximum time living.

Also further that, I believe these people that aged that high in number, mustve got more exercise then anyone you or I know in our family that may have died in their 80's and 90's. In peoples lifetimes such as Tomoji or Jeanne, they had no cars. They mustve walked and ran a whole lot. Also I wouldn't see reasons to sit inside back then either with nothing to do. We have computers and video games today. Im not saying their bad, as I use both of them, im just saying these people must have sustained physical activity and the chance to do so allot more than humans do today.

Click HERE to rent this advertising spot for EXERCISE to support LongeCity (this will replace the google ad above).

This is John Saxon, Bruce Lee's costar on Enter the Dragon at age 71. In my copy of Dragon Door's HardStyle magazine there is a shot of him doing a military press with a 70 lb kettlebell, 70 lbs is much heavier than the kettlebell in this picture. Working out does make you look younger.

I'm a dragon door fan! I try to work out everyday. Although last month I only worked out like three times, but I'm a bit more motivated now.