Exercise and Movement to Reduce Inflammation

Hello and welcome to Zoey Recap. Where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health Here's an important term you may not have heard before Inflammaging It describes a link between chronic inflammation in the body and accelerated aging While it's relatively unknown. This process is one of the most important concepts to understand if we want to live longer, healthier lives I'm joined by Professor Janet Lord break down what information is Why it's one of the biggest threats to healthy longevity And the surprisingly simple science backed habits we can all use to slow it down inflammaging is that Basically, it's an increase in inflammation in the body as you get older, so with age. so it's the two things combined And most people would think that inflammation, if they've heard of it, they assume it's something that happens when they cut their hand or if they've got a chronic disease like rheumatoid arthritis, o, I've got inflammation. But with aging, it's broader than that. So it's a low level, sort of grumbling level of inflammation that goes on for years. So if I measure inflammation in your blood, it's not like that level that you would see in an infection or if you've got a chronic inflammatory disease like rheumatoid arthritis or inflammatory bowel disease. It's much lower than that, but you've got it for years and years grumbling away there And that affects how I age? It does indeed. We didn't know for many years really what caused aging But now we're really beginning to understand the processes in the body that drive aging that cause us to become more prone to diseases like dementia, like cardiovascular disease. Like even cancer And it turns out that inflammation is one of those key processes. Information is one of these words that I feel we hear a lot, but I'm probably not the only person who still struggles really to understand what's going on. And I just thinkin about what you just described to me because I managed to smash up my finger yesterday one way or another and it's really sore this morning In my mind that somehow my finger is inflamed. Is that correct That's correct? No, that's correct. So what's going on there and how is that same or different from this like low long level inflammationly So like everything else in the body, inflammation isn't always bad. It's there for a reason. We've evolved to have inflammation. And so its primary focus is to repair damage in the body. So if you cut yourself, you have inflammation and it's stimulates repair processes Its other key function is in combating infections So inflammation really stimulates your immune system directs it in the correct way. So is your infection a bacteria or is it a virus? And depending on which it is, you know the immune system will then be educated to behave in a particular way. And inflammation is important to that That's all acute inflammation. It's rapid. It goes away when the problem is resolved. So when your cut has healed itself, when the infection has been cleared, it subsides This inflamm aging is there at a very low level and it's there for years and years. So if you don't turn that inflammation off, then unfortunately it can be damaging So, for example, too much inflammation will actually suppress your immune system What are the signs of aging that can be affected by this inflammation and the way the immune system is not working as well. So I'm going to give you two examples. So one thing, as I've said, the inflammation can actually suppress your immune systems So you're more susceptible to infections And when you actually get an infection, it takes you longer to clear it So again, most of your viewers will know if you're a twenty or thirty year old and you get flu You have a week or two in bed, you have a few duvet days, but then you're fine. But if you're seventy, eighty years old and you get the flu There's a good chance you could end up in hospital and even die as a result because you get secondary infections like pneumonia as well. So that's one thing, that's one very visible thing that most of your viewers will know that the older you are, you're in a high risk category. Coming back to my thinking that isn't that just what it means to be older? You're looking at me and as like, No, D definitely, Jonathan. It is a marker of aging, so it's something we recognize But it's not inevitable. And so you're saying that this is because the immune system has design has declined, yes, it's compromised part of this ongoing level of inflammation? Yes,'s yes, it's certainly one of the key drivers we think Other things happen as well that can affect your immune system, but inflammation is looking like a major driver Another aspect that again, your viewers will recognize and think about as an old person is walking more slowly, perhaps less struggling to get out of a chair, you know, groaning every time you get out of the chair And that is because with age, our muscles, we have less muscle and it's less good quality muscles. It's called sarcopenia So you lose muscle strength And we know that inflammation is one of the drivers there So this inflammation It actually does lots of things to muscle. It slows down the production of molecules that you need to grow the muscle, like are growth factors presses that also causes the production in the muscle of Hormones stress hormones and again, some of your viewers may have heard of one called cortisol Cortisol breaks muscle down So it's suppressing the growth of new muscle and it's accelerating the breakdown of existing muscle So again, inflammation we know drives this cortisol production and suppresses these growth factors. It's one of the factors that's causing this frailty Janet, that's amazing. I've neverard that before. So you're saying that if my inflammation is higher, It's actually basically like reducing my muscles and like breaking them down and making it hard to build them. Exactly. So it's one of the things that's going to increase the risk of an older adult becoming physically frail. So I'd love to talk a bit about what we can do because I think you're now painting this picture that inflammation is playing a really big role, I think in how many healthy years we're having to enjoy. But there's one intervention that I know that you've studied really extensively And I'm saying that's exercise I think lots of people listening is like, Well, you know, I know that exercise is good for me What's that got to do with like my immune system and inflammation Can you help us understand, J? I can. Again, lots of ways. And as youve said, we've known for a long time that the more physically active you are, You reduce your risk of a whole range of diseases You're likely to be longer lived and have a longer healthy lifespan And it's now becoming clear that this might be because exercise reduces inflammation It does it in lots of ways So if you being very physically active, you're less likely to have too much adipose tissue, too much fat. so you've reduced One of those sources of that inflammation By doing that, you've reduced the risk of your vessels being damaged. I told you earer about inflammation reduces your muscle mass and strength. so you've reduced one of the causes of your feeling more frail and less able to function physically The other thing that your viewers may not be aware of is that muscle itself actually can be anti inflammatory touch on that earlier mooving muscle produces cytokines that dampen the inflammation down, particularly they educate immune cells to be anti inflammatory And so the more your muscle is moving, the more it's producing helpful cytokines to dampen the inflammation And the more you sit the less of those are being produced So that's why we know that sedentary time is also important Your viewers might struggle with this one. so help me to understand that So different factors. So the time you spent doing exercise is great. It's going to give you all of these benefits, reduce the inflammation, help you to be more anti inflammatory If you then say you do your forty five minutes of exercise in the morning, you go and walk the dog or you do a little jog, whatever you do for your exercise, and then you sit Th for eight or ten hours, watching daytime television or you're at work and you're at your desk, you can undo a lot of that because the muscle will then produce that dampening site kind for that long period of time So now we know that yes, you need to be physically active, but also don't be too sedentary If you're sitting, you've got a desk job or you're at home, you're retired now Perhaps every hour, get up and move around, even if it's just for ten minutes. I think I'd understood why that might be good for my heart or something. There's always seems like, you know just having the muscles is good. but here you're describing the way that it's directly sort of almost orchestrating my immune system. It's totally, totally. It turns out that your muscle is a major regulator of your immune system. can make it less inflammatory basically And so if you're not moving then say you get an infection you're much more likely to have this overshoot with your inflammation As long as you break that sitting time up And then this pro inflammatory system can't really get established. So you get, you know after an hour, move around and then yeah, becausecauseuse sometimes, you know, you may not be able to you know, stand up all day. I had a standing desk at work and so I did stand all day. So think about that one, that's another good one to think about. So one thing you're saying is, don't sit for a long time. I need to walk around because then I'm getting all of these benefits from my muscles that are sort of dampening my inflammation. What about the exercise itself I guess how important is that forty five minutes of something more intense? What do you need to be doing to get benefit to sort of fight this inflamm aging. Yeah, so we sort of class exercise in two broad areas as aerobics. So that's basically anything that raises your heart rate, gets you a little bit out of breath is very good for reducing the inflammation, for helping your heart, helping your lungs, as well as your muscle function itself. And the other type of exercise is what we call resistance exercise. So that's strengthening. This might be band work Or if you go to a gym lifting weights, or I always say to people, you don't even need to go to the gym, just go up and downstairs And then you know that's a really good exercise. It's aerobic and it's resistance But the resistance is more important for the building of strength of your muscle and the muscle mass. So ideally you need to do both. The aerobic to bring the inflammation down. the evidence is stronger there for aerobic bringing inflammation down and the resistance to keep your muscles themselves a good size and good function I always say, you know, worst thing you can do as an old adult is to go and get a bungalow or live in an apartment with no steps and you'll end up with bungalow legs, so legs with less muscle and less strength That's really interesting. I heard this on speaking to another scientist a little while ago thinking about you what you should do with your parents. And I definitely was brought up with this idea that you know as your parents get older, anyone gets older, like they should take it easy. They shouldn't have to carry their own bags. And he was saying, Oh, no, you shouldn' make, you know your parents carry the shopping stair if you really love them Is that really true? Yeah, abbsolutely true. Yes. My mother, when we were looking for a home for her to move into, when she was downsizing, she wanted a ground level apartment. We said, No, M, you're getting one with stairs. You're on the first floor or the second floor. She wasn't pleased about it, but I think she enjoyed it. And you feel that basically you're giving her more years of healthy life. Absolutely. Y ground floor, you're not using those stairs, you're not getting that exercise for your muscles and it's such a simple thing to do. You know, I always say to people for no other reason every day, just going down your stairs ten times, just for no reason, just go and do it as your exercise Professor Sarah Berry here all experience that familiar three PM slum, that moment where your energy dips and you find yourself aimlessly rummaging through the kitchen for a quick fix Biologically, that typically happens because highly refined soft textured processed foods can cause rapid sharp peaks and subsequent drops in circulating blood sugar Our data shows that these kind of sharp drops can actually leave you seeking out more energy, forcing you to ride a metabolic roller coaster that can drive people to consume an average of three hundred extra calories later in the day To address this challenge, the team developed the Zoegott Health Bar. It's a snack bar built with over ten distinct plants formulated by our scientists to offer high plant diversity. When making this bar, our primary objective was to break the roller coaster cycle