Summary
Research has found that briskly walking for 450 minutes each week is associated with living around 4.5 years longer than doing no leisure-time exercise. Regular physical activity can fortify the immune system and stave off chronic diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
Exercising regularly can strengthen the immune system and stave off disease. High levels of IL-6 can be beneficial or harmful, depending on how it is provoked. During exercise, the body has learnt to benefit from a fundamentally stressful process. “If stress doesn’t kill you it makes you stronger,” says Ye Tian.
In 2020, a team at Stanford University took blood samples from 36 people aged between 40 and 75 years old. The team used multiomic profiling to measure more than 17,000 molecules, more than half of which showed significant changes after exercise. Creating a catalogue of exercise molecules is an important first step in understanding their effects.
NIH established the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium. Six-year study on 2,600 people and more than 800 rats aims to generate a molecular map of exercise. Researchers hope reams of molecular data will eventually help clinicians to develop tailored exercise prescriptions for people with chronic diseases.
There is already evidence that exercise itself acts like medicine. Around 25% of adults globally do not meet the World Health Organization’s recommended levels of exercise each week. A physiologist at the University of Sydney in Australia says that understanding the inner workings of exercise could help to develop clearer public-health messages.
