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Cells burn more calories after just one bout of moderate aerobic exercise, OSU study finds

Dante_80
Dante_80 Posts: 479 Member
Interesting new study about metabolism and moderate exercise. This time focusing on sedentary people, not athletes.

Cells burn more calories after just one bout of moderate aerobic exercise, OSU study finds

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CORVALLIS, Ore. — In a recent study testing the effects of exercise on overall metabolism, researchers at Oregon State University found that even a single session of moderate aerobic exercise makes a difference in the cells of otherwise sedentary people.

Mitochondria are the part of the cell responsible for the biological process of respiration, which turns fuels such as sugars and fats into energy, so the researchers focused only on mitochondria function.

“What we found is that, regardless of what fuel the mitochondria were using, there were mild increases in the ability to burn off the fuels,” said Matt Robinson, lead author on the study and an assistant professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

OSU researchers recruited participants who do not follow a regular exercise routine and had them ride a stationary bike for an hour at a moderate intensity. They biopsied their muscles 15 minutes later to test how efficient the mitochondria were after the exercise was completed and compared those results with a resting day.

Post-exercise, study participants’ mitochondria burned 12-13% more fat-based fuel and 14-17% more sugar-based fuel. While the effects were not drastic, they were consistent, Robinson said.

“It’s pretty remarkable that even after just one hour of exercise, these people were able to burn off a little more fuel,” he said.

Previous research in the field has long established that regular exercise creates lasting change in people’s metabolism, making their bodies burn more energy even when they’re not working out.

Prior studies have looked at highly trained or athletic people, but Robinson’s team wanted to look specifically at singular bouts of exercise in people who were generally active and disease-free but who did not have structured exercise regimes. These people were on the lower end of fitness, which is associated with low mitochondrial abundance and energy production. Participants were monitored while working out at approximately 65% of their maximal effort, where they could keep up the cycling pace for an hour or more and still comfortably carry on a conversation.

Robinson said they’re hoping these results help break down the mental barrier of people thinking they need to be elite athletes for exercise to make an impact on their health.

“From a big picture health perspective, it’s very encouraging for people to realize that you can get health benefits from a single session of exercise,” Robinson said. “We’re trying to encourage people, ‘You did one, why don’t you try to do two? Let’s do three.’

“We know that exercise is good for you, in general. But those benefits of that single bout of exercise seem to fade away after a day or two. You get the long-term benefits when you do that exercise again and again and you make it a regular habit.”

In this study, Robinson’s research team focused narrowly on mitochondria to find out how big a role mitochondria play in the overall function of muscle metabolism. Other studies are looking at changes in blood flow to the muscle and how the muscle metabolizes fats versus sugars.

From a disease perspective, Robinson said it’s clear that obesity and diabetes involve impairments in metabolism. Physiologically, when the body undergoes exercise, sugars tend to be burned off first while fats are stored, but in cases of diabetes and obesity, there is some dysregulation in metabolism that causes the body to not be able to switch between the two types of fuel.

Exercise can help reset that system, he said.

“Since those get burned off in the mitochondria, our hope is that with exercise, we could increase the mitochondria and then improve how the body burns off fats and sugars,” he said.

Other recent and ongoing studies at OSU are investigating whether high intensity interval training (HIIT) sessions might alter a specific pathway by which fats are burned off in the mitochondria, and how certain proteins in the muscle shuttle fat around to either be stored or burned.

The study was completed in collaboration with Samaritan Athletic Medical Center through Samaritan Health Services, with several physicians working on campus with OSU researchers in the Translational Metabolism Research Laboratory. Co-authors were Sean Newsom, Harrison Stierwalt and Sarah Ehrlicher.

About the OSU College of Public Health and Human Sciences: The first accredited college of public health in Oregon, the college creates connections in teaching, research and community outreach while advancing knowledge, policies and practices that improve population health in communities across the state and beyond.

Source:. https://today.oregonstate.edu/news/cells-burn-more-calories-after-just-one-bout-moderate-aerobic-exercise-osu-study-finds

Replies

  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,980 Member
    I don't find this to be crazy news.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

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  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,416 Member
    Yeah, I mean, yeah. Haven't we known that for a long time? You'll use more fuel when you exercise.

    Or is this just breaking news because someone used the word Mitochondria?


    Maybe they're still back a couple hundred years there in Oregon.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,197 Member
    In what way is this different from "even moderate exercise has EPOC" (not a radical idea)? Or is it just trying to identify the mechanism behind that, or something along those lines?

    Looking at the abstract, at:

    https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/9000/Substrate_specific_Respiration_of_Isolated.96110.aspx

    . . . it looks more like the study was trying to get at mechanisms, not just the idea that there were post-exercise effects in untrained people.

    The abstract's intro:
    Skeletal muscle mitochondria have dynamic shifts in oxidative metabolism to meet energy demands of aerobic exercise. Specific complexes oxidize lipid and non-lipid substrates. It is unclear if aerobic exercise stimulates intrinsic oxidative metabolism of mitochondria or varies between substrates.

    And the conclusion:
    In sedentary adults, the single bout of moderate intensity cycling induced modest increases for intrinsic mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation that was consistent across multiple substrates.

    This sounds like the researchers were mostly concerned with mechanisms (what and how), but the gee-whiz press release was going for "one exercise session changes your body, couch potato!!!"

    Call my cynical, once again.

    (Study article itself appears to be paywalled.)
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,214 Member
    Click bait waiting in the bushes looking for personal data uploading lol.
  • threewins
    threewins Posts: 1,455 Member
    You know when you go for a long run, your body will be warmer for say 30 minutes or so after finishing the run? How long do you have to run for before that effect starts happening?
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,214 Member
    edited May 2021
    EPOC is seriously serious.