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Pumping Iron
Why performing weight-resistance exercises is so important for health
Twenty years ago I was working as the CIO of an NIH-funded research institution that focused on ageing and on age-related diseases. One of the Principal Investigators, in association with colleagues at the University of Calgary, did a study with people aged between sixty-five and eighty. All subjects prior to the study were reasonably normal: they walked minimally, did no kind of resistance exercises, ate the standard American diet (e.g. profoundly toxic), and tended to have too much body fat.
At the start of the study, gene expression profiles were made for each person. All showed minimal muscle repair along with high levels of markers for inflammation. Most subjects had very poor cardiovascular readings (high blood pressure, high heart rate, poor O2 absorbtion).
Half the cohort were then subjected to a twelve-week program in which they performed weight-lifting exercises three times per week for approximately thirty minutes per session. The other half had no change to their lives.
At the end of the twelve-week period, gene expression profiles were once again established for each person. As expected, the cohort who didn’t change their lifestyle had no change to their gene expression profiles. But the cohort who’d been going to the…