Exercise Regardless of Your Genes
For all the talk about exercise being one of the key things we can do to improve our health, it’s also one of the most difficult to do. I’ve personally never achieved the high that people talk about when they exercise regularly or gotten a constant boost of energy either. The gene the codes for the angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) could be the reason why some people get much more out of exercise than others. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, August 9, 2005)
The ACE gene is involved in blood pressure regulation and researchers found that in both young Army recruits and older people, individuals respond to physical exercise differently depending on which variant of the ACE gene they carry. Older people who carried the variation of the gene that produces the least amount of ACE were 45 percent more likely to have trouble climbing stairs or walking a quarter-mile, compared to exercisers who had higher levels of ACE.
These results, however, doesn’t mean exercise doesn’t benefit us all. In the same study, people who burned more than 1,000 calories a week from physical activity–about two beef and cheese chimichangas or five old fashioned doughnuts–were also 33 percent less likely to report mobility problems.
“One of our most important findings was that everybody did better with exercise,” Stephen B. Kritchevsky, professor of gerontology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said. “But people with this genotype did not get the best response.”
Maybe the key to getting the best response if you have the less productive ACE gene would be to exercise more. In any case, it doesn’t take a DNA test to tell us that exercise is good, and slovenliness is bad. I really should spend less time writing this blog or find some way to hook my computer up to a treadmill.
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POSTED IN: General Genetics and Health
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