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A recent study into the effects of exercise on aging shocked researchers, and made a few others begin their exercise programs immediately.

Professor of pediatrics and medicine, Dr Mark Tarnopolsky, and colleagues from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario used a litter of mice that had been modified to have a defect in a gene involved in repairing mitochondria, which supply energy for the cells. When the mice were three months old (roughly equivalent to 20 years in humans) they then forced some of the mice to exercise on a treadmill for 45 minutes a few times a week, while giving the others no exercise.

Dr. Tarnopolsky, a professor at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, said he and his colleagues had expected to find that exercise would affect the muscles including the heart, but they did not expect it would affect every tissue and bodily system studied, as it did.

“Exercise alters the course of aging,” said Dr. Tarnopolsky. It reduced or eliminated almost all every detrimental effect of aging in the exercising mice. None of the side effects of aging showed up in the mice that were put on exercise regimens, while the sedentary mice aged much more quickly.

Dr. Tarnopolsky students were so impressed, “I think they all exercise now,” he said.