Muscle mass, mitochondria, and aging

It's always news if someone finds a way to reverse the aging process. So it is that several newspaper articles published this week highlighted an interesting finding coming out of a study conducted at McMaster University: resistance training can reverse the aging process in skeletal muscles. Resistance training is another term for strength training. Study participants were asked to lift weights for just two hours per week. The result was a 50% increase in strength. Well, this doesn't seem like that much news to me.

However, the other interesting tidbit discovered in this study was that the participants actually increased the number of mitochondria in that increased muscle mass. Well, this caught my attention. I get pretty excited reading anything about mitochondria. These babies are neat.

The mitochondria exist at the cellular level in our bodies to convert stored carbohydrates into adenosine triphospate (ATP). ATP is the fuel your muscles need to contract. If you have more mitochondria in your body, they are able to convert more stored carbohydrate to ATP to allow muscle contraction. More mitochondria, better calorie consumption - even at rest! In other words you are altering your resting metabolic rate which is the rate at which you burn off calories when resting. It's a thing of beauty.

I've read studies where the authors discovered that the intensity of exercise performed is the key workout ingredient for mitochondrial production. Scientists know that if a person works at an intense level, 17-19 on the Borg Scale of Rate of Perceived Exertion ( a scale that goes from 6-20), they will increase the mitochondria in their body.

It would appear that we have two ways to increase mitochondria in our body: resistance training and intense cardiovascular training. The next question is whether endurance training, such as marathon walking, affects mitochondrial production.

It has always been our focus at WoW Power Walking to work on intensity. As well, we encourage strength training (which we are now doing in our Walk Circuit classes!). So, we're pretty much covering the whole mitochondria production thing here. If they find out that endurance workouts also increase mitochondria, we might be doing so much reverse aging, we'll have to go back to kindergarten!