According to the WHO, one in every four adults follows a very sedentary lifestyle. Office jobs that demand hours of work sitting, endless scrolling all day, or simply being sedentary with no physical exercise routine, all fall under the category of a sedentary lifestyle.
It has become so common nowadays that not engaging in physical activity is considered ordinary. Day after day, we move less than ever before.
But let me burst the cloud here, sedentary living is one of the biggest silent threats to health today. Beyond the obvious risks like obesity, heart disease, or diabetes, there lies a serious unknown risk of DNA damage and our genetic health.
Let’s understand the basic maths here: when our body remains inactive for too long, the process, like the DNA repair mechanism, slows down, and over time, cells accumulate more damage, which can affect gene function, accelerating aging and increasing disease risks.
But you know what the good part is? The solution to this is not at all complicated.
Just a 30-minute process. Walking in the morning and a light workout in the evening can not only protect our DNA or support good genetic health but also our overall well-being by lowering the risk of some life-threatening diseases.
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Key Topics:
Regular exercise and genetic health
When we move our bodies while walking, running, cycling, or lifting weights, we trigger lots of biological reactions apart from just burning calories. Research shows that exercise can reduce oxidative stress that damages DNA and boost our body’s natural defence systems.
Regular exercise stimulates DNA repair pathways, which ensures the quick fix of the damage caused to our genetic material from daily activities before it turns into something serious.
Not only that, it also makes our epigenetic profile intact and healthy. To understand this… scientifically, let’s explore several studies supporting how daily exercise improves our genetic health.
Related article: How Caffeine Consumption is Hurting Your DNA.
Research published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences describes how regular exercise can change DNA through epigenetic modifications, especially DNA methylation. The evidence from muscle, blood and fat shows that workouts and long-term training can remodel methylation patterns across thousands of genes.
The results of this study were quite interesting.
In skeletal muscle, even a single workout resulted in reduced methylation in key metabolic genes like PGC-1a and TFAM, making them more active and boosting energy production. Also, it was noticed that long-term training created an epigenetic memory that helps muscles adapt faster to future exercise.
In fat tissue, regular exercise resulted in healthier methylation patterns leading to improved insulin sensitivity and reduced inflammation. Similarly, in blood cells, it was observed that training influenced tumour-suppressor genes, which gives us a hint of why there is a lower cancer risk seen in active people.
Overall, this research suggests that regular exercise can act as a natural epigenetic therapy.
Looking at another review article published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology, this review article points out exercise as a gene therapy approach for the brain by boosting DNA damage repair through brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signalling. BDNF is a 14-kDa polypeptide, a highly specific and selective protein that only binds to the TrkB receptor.
Neuronal cells are highly vulnerable to DNA damage because they are highly metabolically active, which produces oxidative stress at a greater rate than other cell types. And many studies have suggested that BDNF protects neurons from death and degeneration both in vivo and in vitro. Although the direct Administration of BDNF is quite difficult due to its target specificity and short half-life.
This review suggests that workout is consistently shown to upregulate BDNF. And there are certain forms of physical activities that can evoke BDNF release. Therefore, instead of administering BDNF externally, it is possible to increase BDNF levels and offset DNA damage through exercise.
Several other animal studies show that exercise increases Ku70, a protein that helps in fixing double-strand breaks, and lowers the common DNA injury marker that is 8-oxo-dG in hippocampal mitochondria.
Although the authors suggest that pushing too hard and working out too intensively can also cause oxidative stress, which can damage the DNA. Therefore, a normal, regular fitness routine is all one needs.
Related article: 5 Habits during pregnancy That can hurt Fetal DNA.
Key takeaways
- Regular exercise doesn’t just burn calories but also protects our genetic health.
- Physical activity can reduce oxidative stress, which can thereby reduce DNA damage.
- Rather than being dependent on drugs, just following a simple movement routine can be more beneficial.
- Just a 30-minute walk can boost your epigenetic memory.
Wrapping up
Who thought a 30-minute walk in the morning and a small workout routine in the evening could do so much? Right?
However, we know better now that not only exercising and maintaining a healthy lifestyle will not only keep us away from some of the most common diseases, but also protect us from inside, strengthen our DNA, help our genes function at their best and influence the DNA repair pathways.
It’s like a win-win situation, healthy on the outside as well as inside.
But remember, exercising too intensively can have an adverse impact not only on your body but on your DNA health as well, so follow a simple routine, eat well, stay positive and stay happy. That’s it!
Resources:
Schmidt, Robin H., et al. “Exercise as Gene Therapy: BDNF and DNA Damage Repair.” Asia-Pacific Journal of Ophthalmology, vol. 5, no. 4, 1 July 2016, pp. 309–311, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2162098923003201, https://doi.org/10.1097/APO.0000000000000226.
Światowy, Witold Józef, et al. “Physical Activity and DNA Methylation in Humans.” International Journal of Molecular Sciences, vol. 22, no. 23, 30 Nov. 2021, p. 12989, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34884790/, https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms222312989mage shows how .
