Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Exercise keeps your cells young, and a tip on running.

Two random items on exercise.  Work by Lieberman et al. on running has caused quite a stir in the press (and two MindBlog readers have pointed it out to me). I've tried taking off my running shoes for a few days now, and wow.... this is good stuff. (This should not have surprised me of course...I ran around barefoot for years as a kid growing up in Austin, Texas.)  Here's the abstract:
A second item concerns exercise and longevity. Larocca et al. show that exercise delays the normal shortening of telomeres that occurs on aging. (Telomeres are tiny caps on the end of DNA strands, long strands of DNA that are snipped when cells divide, a process that is believed to protect the rest of the DNA but leaves an increasingly abbreviated telomere. Eventually, if a cell’s telomeres become too short, the cell either dies or enters a kind of suspended state.)

1 comment:

  1. Lieberman have a website that is very useful if you look at the whole thing and not just the headline finding. Barefoot running may lead to injury in people who are not accustomed to it. Note the barefoot runners were 'habitually barefoot endurance runners', not average joes fresh out of their Nikes. Barefoot running or running in minimal shoes looks like a promising route but it requires retraining of gait, supporting tissue and muscles. Lieberman's training tips section is here: http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/5BarefootRunning&TrainingTips.html