2014-03-30 09:45:16
Numerous studies show that physical exercise improves cardiovascular health and reduces the risk of coronary heart disease. Of course, exercise improves muscle strength and helps keep body weight in an appropriate range. Exercise also facilitates the action of insulin, a hormone essential to preventing the development of diabetes.
Perhaps less known, but no less important, is that physical exercise helps keep our immune system in better condition, and increases our ability to avoid contracting infectious diseases, including colds and the much-feared flu. Finally, I will mention that exercise also helps keep our mental health in shape. Reduces levels of cortisol, the stress hormone; increases the brain’s production of so-called endorphins, which generate a feeling of well-being; helps keep our intellectual abilities and memory in shape; and it also helps to maintain a good state of mind, self-esteem, and overcome depression, which is so needed in these times. In summary, physical exercise only seems to have very beneficial effects on health.
All of the above is good news, but from a purely scientific point of view, when observing an effect generated by a cause, it is worth asking what is the process by which the cause generates its effect. For example, maintaining an adequate weight, facilitated by exercise, could easily be attributed to burning excess calories. However, the effects of exercise in other areas, such as mental health, can hardly be attributed simply to calorie burning as the main cause.
Profit sharing
For this reason, scientists have studied the molecular changes induced by exercise that can explain the variety of beneficial effects it generates. And we have an enormous amount of scientific evidence to conclude that when a change occurs in the organism there is always some molecule involved in it, normally produced by modifications in the functioning of genes. These modifications accelerate or improve the efficiency of already active mechanisms, or enable the launch of new cellular mechanisms that did not exist before.
A crucial observation to investigate what type of molecules could be involved in the changes induced by physical exercise is that only the muscle cells are involved in carrying it out, but their effects, as we have said, are distributed across different systems, such as the immune and cardiovascular. For this reason, the molecule responsible for these effects is probably produced during exercise by the muscle, from where it would be secreted into the blood and disseminated to the rest of the body.
Those who study this topic also know that physical exercise modifies the functioning of certain genes in muscle cells. For this reason, it was likely that this function was involved in the generation of molecules secreted into the blood.
One of the most important genes whose functioning is increased in the muscle by physical exercise is the one called PCG-1a. This gene is involved in the regulation of energy metabolism, which is probably essential during physical exercise. Mice genetically modified to contain higher levels of PCG-1a in the muscle already show some benefits from physical exercise, even if they are forced to stay still and not do any. This meant that PCG-1a could possibly be involved in the muscle’s production of molecules derived from metabolism that spread the beneficial effects of physical exercise to the rest of the body. What molecule or molecules could it be?
BAIB
A large group of American researchers and several European countries address this problem. To do this, they study by chemical methods the molecules produced by the metabolism of muscle cells with higher levels of active PCG-1a, similar to those generated with exercise. They thus find a small molecule. This is beta amino isobutyric acid (BAIBA), similar to one of the amino acids in our proteins and which can be easily spread through the blood, just like a hormone.
Studying more than two thousand volunteers, researchers describe that BAIBA participates in the control of glucose, triglyceride and cholesterol levels in the blood. These effects may help explain the benefits of exercise on diabetes and cardiovascular health.
Likewise, scientists find that in adipose tissue, BAIBA activates genes that generate heat from the combustion of nutrients, which helps burn calories even after you have finished exercising. In the liver, BAIBA stimulates fat oxidation and thus prevents excessive accumulation of fat in said organ, keeping it in a healthy state.
How much exercise do you need to do to maintain good levels of BAIBA in the blood? Researchers indicate that just ninety minutes of exercise a week, spread over three sessions, are enough to raise BAIBA levels for several days. So, if you want to stay healthy, exercise, at least until BAIBA pills are sold at your nearest pharmacy, which may not be long before it happens. We are all so comfortable!
NEW WORK BY JORGE LABORDA.
It can be purchased here:
Chained circumstances. Ed. Lulu
Other works by Jorge Laborda
One Moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The intelligence funnel and other essays
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