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Chronic inflammation is nasty stuff: It’s considered a contributing factor to diseases from arthritis?to cancer, in addition to long-term health conditions like obesity. Regular exercise can curb inflammation in the body, however it?hasn’t been clear just how it helps-or how much activity you need to reap the advantages.
Now, new research suggests that your workouts don’t have to be too long, or very difficult, to produce real results: Just Twenty minutes of brisk walking produced an anti-inflammatory response in immune cells of study participants, supporting the concept that every workout truly does?count.
“Each time we exercise, it would appear that we are doing something good for our body in the cellular level,” says senior author?Suzi Hong, PhD, associate director of the Integrative Health insurance and Mind-Body Biomarker Lab in the?University of California San Diego.
The study involved 47 adults, who were asked to walk on a treadmill at a pace that felt moderately difficult to them. (Think faster breathing and light sweating.) They provided liquid blood samples before and soon after the exercise, so researchers could measure proteins associated with whole-body inflammation.
The “after” samples showed in regards to a 5% reduction in a protein called TNF, that is made by immune cells. Hong says this can be a “clear and significant sign that the immune cells are suppressing the inflammatory markers,” which might provide health benefits both in the short term and, when being active is repeated regularly, the long run too.
The research also shed light on exactly how this process happens, says Hong. It would appear that stress hormones released during moderate exercise may trigger receptors in the body’s immune cells. The outcomes were published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity.
“The message here’s that exercise doesn’t have to be really intense to have anti-inflammatory effects,” says Hong. That’s particularly important for those who might be afraid of the idea of exercising, or annoyed by deficiencies in noticeable results, she adds-including those people who are overweight and have a chronic inflammatory disease. “Even before you decide to see weight coming off, there’s evidence that you are fighting inflammatory activation in your body,” she says.
The study didn’t compare treadmill walking to differing types (or different intensities) of exercise, so it’s uncertain whether harder or easier workouts would produce similar results.
It’s also not entirely clear just how much these cellular changes really affect healthy men and women without elevated inflammation. But it is likely that everybody can benefit, says Hong, since exercise-triggered immune responses could make the body more effective at regulating inflammation over time.
Hong cautions that people with chronic illnesses should always talk to their doctors before beginning a brand new fitness program, and should not expect exercise alone for stopping their problems. But she hopes her research will provide this group with new motivation to add moderate exercise to their routine.
“Everyone knows that exercise is great for them,” says Hong. “But maybe making it a bit more specific-saying that every time you workout may have a real anti-inflammatory benefit-will help people accept it a bit more clearly.”??
