Photographer: Arek Adeoye
“Any exercise is usually considered better than no exercise, but a new study indicates interval training — interspersing high and low speed levels during activities such as biking — is best at reversing age-related declines in muscle cells.
It has long been determined that the health benefits of exercise can include increased metabolism (the rate at which what we eat is converted to energy), a boosted immune system, and brain and heart health. But researchers in the U.S. recently set out to determine why exercise and which forms of it bring those benefits and how,” wrote Amina Zafar for CBC News on March 9, 2017.
Zafar continued, “The researchers studied 72 men and women — half of them aged 18 to 30, and the other half 65 to 80. The volunteers had no chronic illnesses and were assigned to three different exercise programs:
- High-intensity intervals of four-minute sprints on a bike, interspersed with light pedalling for three minutes.
- Strength training with weights.
- A combination of interval training and strength training.
Participants in the combination group were also sedentary for three months as a control.
In this week’s online issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, Matthew Robinson, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Oregon State University, and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., report that high-intensity interval training showed the biggest benefits at the cellular level, especially in the older adults.”
Read the full article here.
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