Exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health/well-being. Give mice a running while, and they will run from 3 to 7 miles every night. It seems to let their brains retain their ability to generate nerve cells. Steady exercise reduces blood levels of various pro-inflammatory molecules whose concentrations typically rise as we age.
Exercise is the safest and much more socially acceptable way to delay Aging, compared to Dietary Restriction. Just like Dietary Restriction, Exercise has at least 10 overlapping mechanisms of action:
AMPK activation
mTOR inhibition
PGC-1a activation
Autohagy activation
Proteasome activation
FOXO3a translocation to nucleus
Lowering mitochondrial baseline ROS
ROS-mediated Nrf2 translation to the nucleus and turning on ARE genes
hypoxia induced HIF-1 translocation to the nucleus, and turning on the latitude response elements
SIRT1,2,3 and 4 mediated deacetylation of multiple proteins
reduced epigenetic drift
DNA repair activation
Klotho pathway activation
Surprising counter-intuitive effect on hGH and downstream IGF-1 (increased, not decreased)
These benefits far outweigh the negative effects of NF-kB activation, norepinephrine output from the adrenal gland, glucocorticoid output from the adrenal gland
