The Benefits Of 10 Minutes Of Exercise

The Benefits Of 10 Minutes Of Exercise

A new study says that ten minutes of brisk exercise triggers metabolic changes that last for at least one hour, and the more fit you are, the more benefits you just might be getting.

Everyone knows that exercise and healthy eating are important for protection against heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions. But what exactly causes the improvement to health from working up a sweat or from eating more healthily? Also, are some people more biologically predisposed to get more benefits than others?

These are just a few of many questions arisen in a new field called metabolomics, that metabolic profiling aims to answer in hopes of one day optimizing those benefits.

“We're only beginning to catalog the metabolic variability between people,” said Dr Robert Gerszten of Massachusetts General Hospital, whose team just moved toward that goal.

The team measured biochemical changes in the blood of a variety of healthy middle-aged individuals, some who became short of breath with exertion, and some who were marathon runners.

The researchers put 70 healthy people on treadmills and found that more than 20 metabolites change during exercise. Some of the metabolites -- naturally produced compounds involved in burning calories and fat and improving blood-sugar control -- were not known until now to be involved with exercise. Some revved up during exercise, while others decreased with exercise.

Those are pretty shaky findings, a first step in a complex field. But they back today’s health advice that even brief periods of exercise are good.

“Ten minutes of exercise has at least an hour of effects on your body,” Gerszten said, noting that some of the metabolic changes that began after 10 minutes on the treadmill still were measurable 60 minutes after people cooled down.

Gerszten called the findings of lingering biochemical changes “tantalizing evidence” of how exercise may be building up longer-term benefits.

The researchers also found that thinner people had greater increases in the metabolite niacinamide, a nutrient byproduct that is involved in blood-sugar control.

In checking the fat breakdown of a metabolite, the team found that people who were more fit appeared to be burning more fat than those who were less fit. The team measured oxygen intake during exercise to make determinations on what level of fitness individuals carried.

Those extremely fit -- 25 Boston Marathon runners -- had tenfold increases in the metabolite after the race. Still other differences in metabolites allowed the researchers to tell which runners had finished in under four hours and which weren't as fast on their feet.

“We have a chemical snapshot of what the more fit person looks like. Now we have to see if making someone's metabolism look like that snapshot, whether or not that's going to improve their performance,” Gerszten told The Associated Press.

Metabolomics researcher Dr Debbie Muoio of Duke University Medical Center said the new work shows how complicated the body’s response to exercise is, and that one should never expect a pill to work like exercise does.

But scientists are searching for nutritional compounds that might give the same metabolic processes in specific ways. For instance, Muoio discovered the muscles of diabetic animals lack enough of the metabolite carnitine, and that feeding them more improved their control of blood sugar.

Muoio is starting a new study in 25 older adults with pre-diabetes to see if carnitine supplements might work in similar ways for people who lack an appropriate amount.

Also, with University of Vermont researchers, Muoio is testing how metabolic changes correlate with health measures in a study of people who alternate between a carefully controlled Mediterranean diet and higher-fat diets.

“The long term hope is you could use this in making our way toward personalized medicine,” Muoio said.

Posted on: Tuesday, 1 June 2010, 06:25 CDT
Source: RedOrbit Staff & Wire Reports