A new study published in the journal Aging suggests that regular exercise and reduced sedentary behavior may reverse epigenetic aging.
The study was a perspective review focused on previous research that examined how exercise is related to epigenetic aging in both animals and humans. Epigenetic aging is a method of measuring aging using DNA; by measuring chemical modifications in DNA, a person’s rate of aging can be measured at the molecular level. This method of measuring age can present a better picture of how the body and tissues are aging compared to simply counting the number of years a person has lived. Previous studies have shown that exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness may be associated with slower epigenetic aging. This study sought to synthesize the results of multiple studies surrounding this relationship to further examine how exercise impacts aging on a molecular level.
This review showed that structured exercise appears to slow or even reverse epigenetic aging in both mice and humans. In studies of mice, structured resistance training and structured cardiorespiratory training both slowed age-related changes in muscle tissue. In humans, structured exercise that lasted several weeks reduced biological age markers in multiple studies. In one study of older women who were initially sedentary, an eight-week program combining aerobic and resistance training reduced their average epigenetic age by approximately two years. Similar results linking exercise to slower or even reversed epigenetic aging were seen across human studies.
The authors noted that maintaining physical fitness seems to delay epigenetic aging across many systems and organs in the body. Regular exercise seems to be particularly beneficial for skeletal muscle aging in humans, although it may also slow aging in organs including the heart, liver, and gut. Fitness and regular intense exercise may also lead to slower aging overall, with beneficial effects for lifespan and healthspan.
Sources: Aging, Science Daily