A new review reveals that exercise rewires the body at a molecular level, offering potential pathways for disease prevention and treatment, according to Australian Catholic University (ACU).
ACU researchers Professor John Hawley and Dr Nolan Hoffman analysed 20 years of research exploring how physical activity affects metabolism, highlighting the complex molecular networks that drive the broad health advantages of physical activity and potential directions for future research.
“Exercise is not just about physical performance, but a powerful biological intervention that affects our health at the deepest molecular level,” Hawley said in a press release. “For chronic conditions like heart disease, obesity, and type 2 diabetes, these findings suggest a future where exercise is integrated into healthcare as a form of preventive medicine.”
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The paper discusses how molecular biology approaches and new omics-based technologies have dramatically improved our understanding of how exercise impacts the body at the molecular and cellular levels.
These tools allow researchers to analyse biological molecules on a large scale, according to the Centre for Human Specific Research, providing comprehensive insights into the structure, function and dynamics of organisms.
Over the past 20 years, Hoffman explained, these tools have allowed researchers to map the “molecular blueprints of exercise, identifying thousands of molecules that become activated during different modes of physical activity (endurance versus strength training), contributing to a greater understanding of how they “interact and contribute to the health benefits of exercise.”
They point to three landmark studies in human exercise metabolism that reshaped the field, showing that “exercise triggers a specific timeline of genes and proteins in muscle, orchestrates metabolic and immune systems in the bloodstream, and releases molecular ‘packages’ into the circulation that communicate with various cells and organs around the body, showing that exercise’s effects extend far beyond just muscle contraction.”
