Who doesn’t want to look young? No one likes to age or look old and most of the aging adults spend hundreds of dollars a month buying aging creams and lotions that are available in the market. These anti-aging treatments and lotions are quite expensive, but people seem to care less about the cost factor as long as it shows results.
All of us know the health benefits of exercising. Exercising helps maintain your weight, keeps you stress free and disease free. Now, researchers say that exercise, specifically resistance training, also helps you remain young and could be the cheapest anti-aging formula.
A study was conducted by analyzing gene expression profiles in tissue samples of twenty five healthy older adults aged between 65 and 70, and compared it with the profiles of younger adults. The gene expression profiles involved age-specific mitochondrial function; mitochondria act as the “powerhouse” of cells. As people age, there is a decline in the mitochondrial function.
The older adults were then subjected to six months of resistance training twice a week. The results of the gene expression profiles of these adults showed a remarkable reversal of the genetic fingerprint back to levels similar to those seen in the younger adults after six months of exercising.
It was found that the older adults who were fifty-nine percent weaker than the younger adults were much fitter and were only thirty-eight percent weaker than younger adults after the strength training.
An interesting point here is that the older participants recruited at the McMaster University had never participated in formal weight training earlier but led an active lifestyle and none of them took medications which means that it it is never too late to reverse the anti-aging process.
We expected to see gene expressions that stayed fairly steady in the older adults. The fact that their ‘genetic fingerprints’ so dramatically reversed course gives credence to the value of exercise, not only as a means of improving health, but of reversing the aging process itself, which is an additional incentive to exercise as you get older.
says study author Simon Melov.
Tell your grand-moms-and-dads to start exercising and look younger for-ever!
Image
Source