Heart's fountain of youth lies in exercising

Washington, July 24 : Here's yet another reason why you should exercise: it makes your heart stay young, says a new research on older adults.

According to the study conducted at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, showed that older people who did endurance exercise training for about a year ended up with metabolically much younger hearts.

The researchers also showed that by one metabolic measure, women benefited more than men from the training.

"We know that the heart deteriorates as people get older, and that's largely because they don't stay as active as they used to," says first author Pablo F. Soto, M.D., instructor in medicine in the Cardiovascular Division.

"Past research has suggested that exercise can reverse some effects of aging, and we wanted to see what effect it would have specifically on the heart," F. Soto added.

The participants in the study were six men and six women, ages 60 to 75, who were not obese but who had been living an inactive lifestyle. They were put on an eleven-month program of endurance exercise under the careful guidance of a trainer.

To reach the conclusions, the research team measured heart metabolism in sedentary older people both at rest and during administration of dobutamine, a drug that makes the heart race as if a person were exercising vigorously.

For the first three months, the participants were required to exercise to about 65 percent of their maximum capacity. After that, the program was stepped up so participants reached about 75 percent of maximum.

At the start of the study, they found that in response to the increased energy demands produced by dobutamine, the hearts of the study subjects didn't increase their uptake of energy in the form of glucose (blood sugar).

But after endurance exercise training - which involved walking, running or cycling exercises three to five days a week for about an hour per session - the participants' hearts doubled their glucose uptake during high-energy demand, just as younger hearts do.

Soto explains that if heart muscle doesn't take in glucose in response to increased energy needs, it goes into an energy-deprived state, which may raise the risk of heart attack. But if it can increase glucose uptake, the heart is better protected against ischemia (low oxygen) and heart attack.

Based on heart glucose metabolism, both the men and women in the study had the same rejuvenating benefit from their exercise programs.

But the heart uses both glucose and fatty acids for energy. And when the researchers looked at fatty acid metabolism, they found a striking difference in the results of exercise training between women and men.

In the men, the heart's fatty acid metabolism dropped in response to increased energy demand, but it went up in women.

The study is described in an article that appeared in advance online publication on June 20, 2008 in the American Journal of Physiology.

ANI