Gretchen Reynolds, health columnist for the New York Times
, has found some more evidence that exercise can slow the aging process. Aging is a process, right? Reynolds directs us to research conducted at the University of Mississippi and University of California, San Francisco, correlated the length of telomeres with amounts of exercise. Telomeres, Reynolds reminds us, are caps on the ends of DNA strands whose length is generally a good indicator health of a cell, and, not coincidentally, the age of a person. It works like this: the shorter the telomere (they naturally shorten with age) the older the person, and the less healthy the cell. OK, the researchers looked at data for about 6,500 people ranging in age from 20 to 84 about frequency of exercise, based on answers to questions about weight training, moderate exercise like walking, more vigorous exercise like running, or having walked or ridden a bike to work or school. Then they looked at telomere length, measured in blood samples. Ready, the envelope please…..The researchers found that the risk of having short telomeres declined as people reported doing more types of exercise. Specifically, the Times reports, people who reported two types of exercise were 24 percent less likely to have short telomeres; three types of exercise were 29 percent less likely; and those who had participated in all four types of activities were 59 percent less likely to have very short telomeres. Wait, there’s more: The Times reports that the associations were strongest among people between the ages of 40 and 65, suggesting that middle age may be a key time to begin or maintain an exercise program if you wish to keep telomeres from shrinking.
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