Scientists have found that physical activity can improve genetics

Scientists have found that physical activity can improve genetics

We tell you how and how much you need to train for this.

The benefits of regular physical exercise are well known and are not questioned. Constant exercise helps to improve health, slow down the aging of the body, and prevent type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease. However, the mechanisms behind all these miraculous effects are still poorly understood and are of great interest to scientists.

Researchers from Sweden and the USA have found out in which case physical activity has the most beneficial effect on health and makes positive changes at the genetic level.
So what kind of sports and how long should be practiced in order not to give a chance to diseases and even cheat genetics?

What should you do to improve your genes?

Research on the effects of exercise on the molecules of the human body has been done quite often recently, but mostly focuses on the short-term changes that occur as a result of individual workouts. Researchers from the University of San Diego and Karolinska University in Sweden have joined forces to look at the problem from a different angle and study the effects of constant exercise over a long period.

“Although short workouts have been shown to affect the activity of molecules in our muscles, it is the commitment to habitual exercise over many years that provides long-term health benefits. ‘Understanding how our muscles change over years of exercise is crucial to determining the link between exercise and health,’ says study leader Mark Chapman.

Endurance training

The study involved 40 volunteers, 25 of whom had been doing physical activity for at least the past 15 years: 9 men and 9 women did regular endurance training (running or cycling) and 7 men did strength training. The rest of the experimental participants, 7 men and 8 women, were healthy but physically untrained individuals of appropriate age.

All subjects underwent skeletal muscle biopsies to measure the activity of more than 20,000 genes.
It turned out that in those who constantly ran or cycled, the activity of more than 1000 genes differed significantly from the parameters of people in the control group. Many of the altered genes are associated with the prevention of metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes.

Unexpected were the results of the study of weightlifters – in them significant changes were detected in only 26 genes. However, say scientists, this does not mean that strength training does not have a positive impact on health in the long term. The point is that in this experiment, RNA molecules were used to control the parameters, and the changes resulting from strength training are probably related to proteins.

A year of exercise improves metabolism

The researchers also compared the findings with tests taken from people with type 2 diabetes before and after a one-month period of exercise. It turned out that even after a short period of regular exercise, gene activity in people with metabolic disorders began to approach the characteristics of regular adherents of intense exercise.

“This suggests that even exercise programs lasting 6-12 months are enough to positively impact the health of people with metabolic disorders. The study has helped to identify genes that are sensitive to exercise,” says Professor Carl Johan Sundberg of Karolinska University.