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Exercise Keeps You Young

March 03, 2011 By: John Blue Category: Science

The lazy mouse is an old mouse

A recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that mice that exercised vigorously did not show signs of aging compared to mice that did not exercise.

The study used mice that were genetically unable to repair mitochondria and therefore aged rapidly. The New York Times article on the study reports:

By the time they reached 8 months, or their early 60s in human terms, the animals were extremely frail and decrepit, with spindly muscles, shrunken brains, enlarged hearts, shriveled gonads and patchy, graying fur. Listless, they barely moved around their cages. All were dead before reaching a year of age.

Except the mice that exercised.

The exercising mice stayed fit and healthy long after their slacker colleagues had kicked the bucket.

This study looked at one specific aspect of aging (mitochondria), and they were looking at mice and not humans, but it’s an interesting and encouraging piece of work.

The exercising mouse stays young

At 8 months, when their sedentary lab mates were bald, frail and dying, the running rats remained youthful. They had full pelts of dark fur, no salt-and-pepper shadings. They also had maintained almost all of their muscle mass and brain volume. Their gonads were normal, as were their hearts.

If you can’t manage to exercise for your heart, maybe you could do it for your gonads.

2 Comments to “Exercise Keeps You Young”


  1. Interesting…nice to know that exercising keeps you young. Perhaps I should start!

    1


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