Chapter 4 – Effects of daily voluntary wheel running on visceral adipose tissue mitochondrial content in Otsuka Long-Evans Tokushima Fatty rats

Well I have finished Chapter 4 on schedule.  Now it is on to a completely different topic for chapter 5.  The effect of exercise on epigenetic changes in skeletal muscle of mice.  This project was a high impact, high reward, high risk project that the funding agencies loved.  I received an American Heart Fellowship and 5K of research money from the American College of sports medicine to help with research.  The funny thing is, this is an on going project and I will not be done with it by the time I turn my dissertation in.  As long as chapter 4 gets accepted into a journal then I will be fine.  Alright, I have 10 days to finish this chapter.  Time to get to work.

Running a Marathon Won’t Kill You

Big surprise huh? The New York Times recently published an article about a new study showing that you are 2 times more likely to die driving a given marathon course compared to running it. This new study is published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which is the equivalent of the Journal or American Medical Association (JAMA).

It is funny how people so often worry about the fact that you could have a heart attack while running, yet the consequences of everyday activities like driving are never given a second thought. Normally the press will really play up the fact that someone died while running, while traffic related deaths have become such an ordinary part of life. I am not so biased that I don’t the irony in the fact that people can die while doing something that is good for you, but I think it speaks to how little we really know about the biolgical mechanisms by which exercise actually protects our health.

For example, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that your risk of a cardiac event does go UP while exercising relative to just sitting there. Of course there is also an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing to the least fit individuals being twice as likely to die from any number of a diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.). A paradox, perhaps. I look at more like a detective, what is it about continuinal increasing your risk and stressing your cardiovascular system that keeps it healthy. Much like the idea that you can “precondition” tissues to be able to better handle a subsequent similar stress the same is true with exercise. Short small bouts of stress are most certainly healthy for you.

So if you are thinking about running a marathon, don’t let your health risks stop you. Instead let the desire for good health drive you. Your body will thank you in the long run.

Life Evolved With the Help of Physical Activity

So here is an idea that I have been thinking about. It all started with my mentor, Dr. Booth, getting really excited about a paper in 2006 by Raymond and Segre appearing in Science. Although the details were difficult to understand his interpretation was clear, physical activity was key to the development of complex metabolic pathways early in life.

Here is the jest of the argument. Once photosynthesis evolved in bacteria (the process of using sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide to make energy and oxygen) the amount of gaseous oxygen in the atmosphere increased dramatically. Back then oxygen was toxic to most organisms and there were multiple was organisms could respond to this rise in oxygen. They could 1) Hide, 2) Adapt, or 3) Perish. Well a group adapted (likely by chance since evolution is not forward thinking) by being able to use oxygen as the final electron acceptor in aerobic respiration. The consequences of this cannot be understated, oxygen with a huge electronegative potential allowed for 4 times as much energy produced from a molecule of glucose over any other currently used final electron acceptor.

All of a sudden organisms had all this extra energy without having to do anything. Naturally they starting to use this energy for a wide variety biochemical reactions that previously were too energy costly. This is what Raymond and Segre showed, adding oxygen greatly increasing the number and the complexity of biochemical reactions possible. Genomes became more complex, behaviors became more complex, and the diversity of life exploded. It is easy to visualize that being more motile (of physically active) would have allowed organisms to obtain energy easier and avoid predators easier. With their new found extra energy from aerobic respiration this likely happened. Once they became more physically active then the biochemical pathways for those actions would have further developed, meaning physical activity actually selected certain genes and behaviors to develop. Amazing.

It then does not come as much of a surprise that physical activity is important for our health today. Just think about it’s beginnings.