March 28, 2012

Speed Up Your Metabolism and Clean Up Your Body..Through Exercise?


According to recent research, it has been discovered that exercise is the quickest way to purge the insides of your cells of all the unwanted debris that accumulates there over time. “Broken or misshapen proteins, shreds of cellular membranes, invasive viruses or bacteria, and worn-out, broken-down cellular components, like aged mitochondria, the tiny organelles within cells that produce energy”, all add up over time and end up producing this “trash heap” that needs to be removed. Cells clear away this debris and even use it to give them energy through a “self-eating” process called autophagy. The cell creates special membranes that collect all the matter in the cytoplasm and then carry it to the cells lysosome which breaks apart this matter and uses it for energy. Scientists have found that malfunctions in this system of autophagy can lead to many diseases and may even be a great contributing factor in aging. Autophagy increases in situations of physiological stress such as exercise. So an experiment was run in order to see the connection between autophagy and exercise and how these two activities benefit the body as a whole. The first strain of mice had normal levels of autophagy but when they were forced to run, within 30 min, their levels of autophagy level increases greatly. The second strain of mice was altered to ensure that their level of autophagy would not increase in stressful situations but is otherwise normal. When both mice were set up to run the altered mice who couldn't increase their levels of autophagy quickly became tired and weak. The scientists also discovered that when put on a fatty diet the normal mice were able to alter their diabetic effects through exercise whereas the altered mice were not able to do so. This finding shows that exercise can increase levels of autophagy which can in turn clean your cell faster, making you healthier and stronger!



Link to the Article

1 comment:

K. said...

It makes sense if you think about it. I don't exercise nearly enough.