For Fitness, Intensity Matters

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

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This year, exercise science expanded and fine-tuned our understanding of how physical activity affects our brains, oints, hearts, and even genes, beginning before birth and continuing throughout our lifespans, which can be lengthened, it seems, by exercise, especially if we pic! up the pace" This year#s fitness news, as a loo! bac! through $%&'#s (hys )d columns shows, was variously enlightening, validating *if, li!e me, you never bothered cooling down after a wor!out anyway+, and practical *,"I"-" concussion testing, anyone.+" It was also occasionally deflating, at least if you hoped that barefoot running invariably would reduce the ris! of in ury, gentle exercise would /uash your appetite, or training for a marathon would automatically exempt you from being a couch potato"

0ut the lesson that seemed to emerge most persistently from the fitness-related studies published this year was that intensity matters, especially if you wish to complete your wor!out /uic!ly" The most popular column that I wrote this year, by a wide margin, detailed 1The 2cientific 3-4inute 5or!out,6 a concept that appealed, I have no doubt, because the time commitment was so slight" 0ut the vigor re/uired was considerable7 to gain health benefits from those seven minutes, you needed to maintain a thumping heart rate and spray sweat droplets around the room" Almost halving the time spent exercising was also effective, a later and li!ewise popular column showed" In that study, out-of-shape volunteers who ran on a treadmill for a mere four minutes three times a wee! for &% wee!s raised their maximal oxygen upta!e, or endurance capacity, by about &% percent and significantly improved their blood sugar control and blood pressure profiles" The results undercut a common excuse for s!ipping wor!outs" 18ne of the main reasons people give6 for not exercising is that they don#t have time, said Arnt )ri! T onna, a postdoctoral fellow at the 9orwegian :niversity of 2cience and Technology, who led the study" 0ut they emphasi;e, too, the potency of hard effort" The volunteers ran at <% percent of their maximum aerobic capacity for those four minutes, a level that is fran!ly unpleasant" 0ut, in four minutes, they were done" There were other hints throughout the year that exerting yourself vigorously may have uni/ue payoffs, compared with less strenuous exercise" In a study that I wrote about a few wee!s ago, for instance, people who wal!ed bris!ly, at a pace of &3 minutes per mile or less, generally lived longer than those men and women who strolled during their wal!s, at a pace of $% minutes per mile or slower, although the study was not designed to determine why the intensity of the exercise mattered" And in 2eptember, I wrote about two studies showing that strenuous exercise blunted volunteers# appetites after wor!outs more effectively than longer sessions of easy exercise did" The studies were small, though, and involved only young-ish, overweight men" 5hether the results are applicable to other people, including those of us who are not male, re/uires additional experiments" I expect to be covering the results in $%&=" 4eanwhile, other studies that I wrote about this year emphasi;e how pervasive the impacts of any amount and type of exercise can be" 8ne of my favorite experiments of $%&' detailed how rodents that ran on wheels for several wee!s responded far better to stressful situations than sedentary animals, in large part, it seems, because their brains contained speciali;ed cells that dampened unnecessary anxiety" At a molecular level, the runners# brains were calmer than those of their sedentary lab mates" 0ut perhaps the most remar!able studies of the year examined the effect of exercise on our ,9A" In several experiments, which I wrote about in >uly, scientists found that exercise reshapes genes in human cells, changing how atoms attach to the outside of

individual portions of our ,9A" As a result, I wrote, the behavior of the gene changes" In one of the studies, researchers found that six months of moderate exercise profoundly remodeled genes related to the ris! for diabetes and heart disease" 0ut for those of us too impatient to wait six months, the other study found that a single session of bi!e riding altered genes in volunteers# muscle cells" The effects showed up whether the pedaling was easy or strenuous, but, in line with so much of this year#s exercise science, were more pronounced when cyclists rode vigorously" 2till, for everyone, as one of the scientists told me, the studies are an important and inspirational reminder of 1the robust effect exercise can have on the human body, even at the level of our ,9A"6