Regular exercise key to unlocking whole- body health benefits, disease risk reduction
Shave indicated that individuals who exercise regularly and achieve the recommended levels of physical activity are at a lower risk of a wide range of diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, various types of cancer, and allcause mortality.
Current health recommendations suggest about 150 to 300 minutes of moderately intense exercise or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise, such as running per week for adults. Furthermore, the ideal exercise routine should consist of muscle strengthening and activities to improve balance and endurance.
In a recent study published in the journal Cell Metabolism, scientists examined the physiological responses to exercise. They reviewed the adaptations that occur in tissues due to chronic exercise and their cumulative role in improving cardiometabolic health.
While factors such as resistance, number of sets, rest intervals, and repetitions can be modulated, the general principle of exercise regimens is progressive overload, where the load is increased progressively to improve the adaptive response. The subsequent increase in energy demand also results in changes in systemic metabolic homeostasis. The review examined the adaptive changes that occur in various tissues in response to chronic exercise. The review focused on resistance and endurance exercises with studies involving human interventions. Exercise generates intense energy demands, with almost a 100- fold increase in the requirement of adenosine triphosphate ( ATP) supplied through the activation of both aerobic and anaerobic pathways. Short but intense exercise results in an increased utilization of the anaerobic pathways and glycogen stores. However, longer exercise durations depend on aerobic ATP production metabolisms, resulting in increased oxygen consumption, redistribution of blood flow into muscles, and cardiac output. Furthermore, various signal transduction pathway networks and transcriptional programs that respond to muscle contractions, availability of energy, hormones, ions, oxygen availability, and redox state are activated during acute exercise. Transcriptional programs are activated by acute exercise in a tissue- specific manner through the involvement of various transcriptional factors, corepressors, and coactivators.