Regular Exercise Makes for Younger Skin

A study led by Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics and exercise science at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, finds exercise may keep skin younger and even reverse some aging.  The report of the study was presented in April 2014 at the annual meeting of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine.

After 40, most people begin to notice signs of aging skin; wrinkles and sagging are common as the top layer of skin becomes drier and more dense while the layer underneath thins.  This under-layer, the dermis, loses elasticity and the skin often appears to sag and becomes more translucent.

The study, first conducted on mice and then tested on volunteers between the ages of 20 and 84, compared unexposed skin of those who exercised for at least three hours per week with those who remained sedentary.   Biopsies of the skin revealed changes expected with aging but those who exercised frequently had noticeably younger, healthier skin, according to a Gretchen Reynolds who wrote about the work in her health blog for The New York Times.

Damage from the sun as well as genetic makeup and other lifestyle factors such as diet and smoking also have a direct impact on the health of aging skin.  Researchers believe that myokines,  a substance released into the bloodstream by working muscles, may be connected with the anti-aging results.

The 2011 study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and can be found at www.pnas.org .