Muscle Envy

Individuals respond differently to the same strength training program, short bursts of exercise impact longevity, ten minutes of movement helps fight cancer and your monthly recommendations.

The Rundown

Muscle Envy. A study in the European Journal of Sport Science has added to existing work on why some people respond better than others to the same exercise stimulus. A research team from the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland had 20 volunteers go through two separate ten-week strength training programs, with ten weeks off in between, to see if the same people were the biggest or smallest gainers both times. The results found that some people do pack on muscle and/or get stronger more easily than others. But everyone benefits to some extent.

For the strength training program, participants worked out twice a week. They did five exercises targeting the upper body and five for the lower body, with three or four sets of eight to ten repetitions, finishing within a rep or two of failure.

The team measured muscle size (using ultrasound) and muscle strength, measured as one-rep max for leg press and barbell biceps curl.

They found that those with the biggest gains in the first ten weeks were also the biggest gainers in the second ten weeks, suggesting that not all of us get the same results from the same program.

The takeaway? Some people get a bigger bang for their strength training buck than others. Individual variations in response and the scientific debate about that is complicated but understanding your personal response should, in theory, enable you to get the most out of your training.

A Little Longevity. According to two new studies, extensive exercise isn’t the only kind of movement that matters. In the first, an international team of researchers decided to find out if just a small amount of movement can impact longevity by examining the health records of more than 135,000 people from seven different health studies. Participants were from the UK, Sweden, Norway, and the Unites States. Follow-up periods with each person averaged eight years.

The team found that adding just five minutes a day of moderate physical activity, like walking at about 3 mph (5km/h), was associated with a 10% decreased mortality rate for the majority of adults. For the least active adults, the extra five minutes resulted in a 6% decreased mortality rate. If the extra activity time was increased to 10 minutes, the decreased mortality rate was 15% and 9% for average and least-active adults, respectively.

Additionally, the researchers found that for the majority of adults, reducing the amount of sedentary time by 30 minutes each day correlated with about a 7% reduction in mortality rate.

The second study looked at the combined effects that small changes in sleep, diet and exercise could have on longevity. The researchers found that an extra five minutes of sleep, an additional half serving of vegetables, and an extra two minutes of moderate physical activity daily could theoretically add an extra year of life to those with the worst sleep, eating and exercise habits.

The researchers, who looked at close to 60,000 people recruited between 2006-2010 for the UK Biobank, said that strong practices in each of these areas could lead to more dramatic extension of life. They linked an additional 9+ years of lifespan to those who ate well, got seven to eight hours of sleep and over 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day. Key to the research, the scientists say, is the synergistic effect of diet, sleep and exercise. For those people with the worst levels, for example, it would take five times the amount of sleep alone to realize the one-year life extension.

As with all studies of this type, the researchers cautioned that their work established a link between behaviors and longevity rather than causality.

Anti-Cancer in 10. There’s more positive news for brief amounts of exercise. Research out of Newcastle University found that just 10 minutes of hard exercise released molecules into the bloodstream that switched on DNA repair and shut down cancer growth signals.

The study included 30 men and women between the ages of 50 and 78. All were overweight or obese but otherwise healthy. Each volunteer did a short but intense cycling test that lasted about 10 minutes. Researchers then collected blood samples and looked at 249 proteins. Thirteen of the proteins increased after exercise, including interleukin-6, which plays a role in repairing damaged DNA. The team also found that genes linked to rapid cell division were turned down, which may make cancer cells less aggressive.

In the lab, the scientists exposed bowel cancer cells to the blood samples and found that more than 1,300 genes shifted their activity, including genes involved in DNA repair, energy production and cancer cell growth.

Lead author of the study, Dr. Sam Orange, said: “What’s remarkable is that exercise doesn’t just benefit healthy tissues, it sends powerful signals through the bloodstream that can directly influence thousands of genes in cancer cells.”

Extra Point

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