Half of Aging Is Optional: Why Strength Is Your Retirement Account
Generation after generation we seek youth, the Shangri-La of longevity. I have been postulating on it for years in many blogs, but now a new study published in Nature reveals what I have been telling you for years: regular exercise prevents more than half of the molecular signature of aging in muscle. Want to stay young? Read on…
I see this every day at ReVibe, and I want you to picture what I observe. Let’s take two 85-year-olds. Both born the same year, both share similar birthdays. One struggles to climb up and down stairs or get out of a sofa-chair. They move with great caution when they do move, so they sit and rest most of the day, losing their memory a little at a time along with their vitality.
The second 85-year-old has a sharp mind. They work out three days a week on ReVibe’s whole body vibration equipment, leaving with more energy than they had when they started. They love to drive their sports car, go for trips and meet others. They are as sharp mentally now as they were decades ago, and they love life (and chocolate chips too, but that’s another story).
Same year of birth, almost the same birthday. But why are they so different? Genetics? Environment? Luck? Goals? Well, the evidence strongly suggests that how we age is very much under our control. Of course, our genetics influence our longevity, but not exclusively. The evidence in research has always indicated that we are very much in control of our lifespan and our health, but now, it also suggests we are in control of our biological age too, and even if you are struggling, it’s still modifiable.
The common denominator, of course, is exercise. Across all interventions, few processes rival the benefits of regular exercise in slowing age. Not just any exercise, however; adding muscle and, in particular, strength is the real key.
Your strength is your independence. Your strength is the deposit you make into your retirement account that you will need to draw on later. It will keep you safe, it will prevent falls, it will keep your bones strong, it will provide additional energy and vitality, and it will help you avoid disease.
Amazingly, it’s not just the strength of the muscle that matters. What the Nature study found was even more compelling: exercise does not just build a larger reserve; it actively changes the way your cells age.
That’s pretty amazing, right? The study cited was small, only 47 subjects, but those subjects were various ages and fitness levels. The researchers performed a barrage of tests using muscle samples taken from the participants. Not blood draws, muscle biopsies. Then they measured over 24,000 gene transcripts, looked at hundreds of metabolites and lipid species. The result? An incredible snapshot of molecular aging, and how exercise influences our cells and, even more important, what it prevents.
Let me paint the picture first. In your cells you have tiny structures called mitochondria. They make the energy from food usable in the body through a cycle that includes something called an electron transport chain. The mitochondria also happen to be last in line to stomp out harmful reactive oxygen species or free radicals. When we age, we lose mitochondria because we lose muscle and tissue and because of free radical damage too. That means your body’s organs get less energy, and so do you the older you get. But exercise turns on the genes responsible for putting together the components of the chain that the mitochondria use to make energy. Exercise also stimulates the development of more mitochondria.
Let’s look at it this way. Inactivity appears to impair the electron transport system which is used by the mitochondria to keep you alive. Keep in mind your body (without strength training) is losing 5-7 pounds of muscle every decade after 35 years of age. As you lose muscle, you lose strength, and the metabolism lowers itself accordingly. Thus, each decade, without strength training, your organs get less and less energy to function normally because you have fewer mitochondria. You also gain more weight, but that’s another story too.
Now one of the most important molecules in the electron transport chain is something called NAD+. NAD picks up molecular energy, then delivers it to the mitochondria which make something called ATP for you to live. So, all cells need ATP, and without it they cannot survive, and neither can you.
ATP is therefore pretty important, right?
Most people sum this up by saying the metabolism slows as we age. It’s not wrong, but it is like looking at a single piece of a jigsaw puzzle and trying to assume the whole picture.
As I said, the metabolism does slow down as we lose muscle and become less active; however, we also lose NAD+ with age. As that NAD+ declines, be it in muscle, brain or heart, the metabolism falters.
I have heard it explained as the idea that NAD+ is like a fleet of Amazon trucks. When we eat, which is like putting in an order, the truck loads the energy and delivers it to the mitochondria, our cells’ power plant (holding facility), where we convert it into ATP and use that to live (package delivered).
Then we age. Aging reduces the number of delivery trucks, which makes the power plant less effective. As less energy is received, less energy can be made, and then the body has an issue. We have all these delivery sites that need it, but we don’t manufacture enough to fully satisfy every order. At first, we simply ration it. Instead of getting 10 boxes, each business gets 8 and so on. But some businesses are more important (brain, heart, etc.), so the quantity has to change and satisfy those businesses that keep all others in business. Problem is that the smaller businesses can’t sustain business with less and so begin to shrink their staff, cut back on maintenance and cleaning, and eventually on efficient function.
In case you missed it, I just described aging. If that were the end of the story, it would be a pretty bleak outlook. We get old, we get weak, we get tired and we die, sometimes of a disease. End of story.
Fortunately, that is not the end of the story, nor is it inevitable! The researchers found that exercise erased over half of aging’s molecular signatures. That’s because exercise made more delivery trucks and built more powerhouses! Yep, when the scientists compared highly trained older adults with normal active older adults, they found that over 55% of the gene-expression changes normally associated with aging were not there!
Wait, what? Yes, you read that right, the markers of aging were not reduced and, even more surprising, worked like a younger person’s markers.
Do you realize what that means? You are still getting older, but your muscles refuse to age and instead stay strong.
Now, it’s not all roses and wine. There are definitely markers that slow down aging, but there are also some that don’t care whether you exercise or not. But exercise affects those markers that have a larger impact on aging and health; these are changes that are preventable and help you stay young. Here’s the most important part of all of this. Aging is marked by damage to the mitochondria as well as a significant loss in their volume; both contribute to aging and disease. Exercise, both cardiovascular and strength, preserves the mitochondrial base, thus making your physiological age far younger. In other words, exercise preserved the molecular machinery necessary for producing energy, destroying free radicals and preventing disease.
Literally, without a healthy level of mitochondria you age faster, and you get mitochondrial dysfunction, something that is caused by a lower number of mitochondria coupled with damaged mitochondria. I have written about this before, but it’s worth a second mention. The loss of mitochondria lowers the available ATP, which is then rationed, giving more to the organs directly in control of immediate life, while essentially starving the other organs of the ATP they need. The result: rapid aging and rapid decline. Think of ATP as the gasoline that fuels all of your cells.
Obviously, exercise builds the size and number of mitochondria, which essentially allows the full production of energy to all organs. But exercise does something else too. Exercise stimulates the mitochondria to produce a hormone called MOTS-c.
Did you know that mitochondria produce their own hormones? They do, but they also have their own DNA too. And hidden deep within that DNA are tiny genetic codes called open reading frames. But here’s where it gets super cool and interesting. During exercise, MOTS-c levels increase 12-fold, so the question begs: what does that do?
MOTS-c actually turns on the enzymes that act as a fuel gauge for the body, which helps to create and use energy more efficiently. Keep in mind that a lack of it does the exact opposite, which is why we age quicker without exercise, and why we get so tired.
Now, if that were all, it would be pretty cool. But, of course, there’s more, much more. MOTS-c also improves insulin sensitivity and that helps the muscle take up blood sugar more easily with LESS help from insulin. Mind blown yet? No? Well, MOTS-c also acts like exercise! Yep. It mimics some of the cellular and metabolic effects of exercise, making exercise a double benefit.
So, which kind of person do you want to be at 85? Do you want the one that works out three times a week, has energy and moves like someone much younger? Or do you want to be the other side of the coin, unable to generate enough energy to carry you through the day?
We now have a very obvious choice to make. There are two futures you can move towards as you age. Exercise, especially strength training, appears capable of preserving your youthful energy reserves, your health, your activities of daily living and your mitochondria, reducing half of the molecular signatures of aging. The other half is partly natural aging and partly food choices. Bad food choices accelerate aging; whole foods slow it down.
We have choices; choose wisely.