Be 10 years younger! It's not easy, but it's possible.

Did you know that intense exercise keeps you young? You've probably noticed that people who put more effort into their workouts look more youthful. Is it because they have a smaller waist circumference? A slimmer waist certainly has an impact on how old you feel, but in reality, youthfulness starts at the cellular level. By exercising intensively, it is possible to look up to 10 years younger than your real age, science tells us.

A study at Brigham Young University looked at 6,000 people aged between 20 and 84 years and concluded that people who are regularly highly physically active have much longer telomeres than those who have a more sedentary lifestyle or who exercise at significantly more moderate levels.

After this lengthy talk of telomeres, some of you may have been reminded of the scene in "Love for Three Oranges", where Pantalone reads with fascination the Pauksons' astrological guide and tries to figure out what this well-developed "jalaa-labaa" is all about. "What the hell are telomeres?" some people who got an A in biology class at school are probably asking now.

In short, telomeres are the nucleotide ends of our chromosomes. They are like our biological clock and they are extremely closely linked to age; every time a cell reproduces, we lose a tiny part of these ends. So the older we get, the shorter our telomeres are.

However, this study found that this shortening is slower in intensively exercised people, so it is safe to say that intense exercise keeps us younger, and the cells of intensively exercised people show up to 10 years younger than their actual age.

What is considered intensive training?

The fact that intensity is a very relative concept is particularly clear if you read the social media posts of the members of the Riigikogu and see how hard and intense their work is, and then compare the picture of empty benches in the chamber.

The authors of the present study have defined intensive training as at least 5 times a week of at least 30-40 minutes of effort at an intensity at least equivalent to running. This is even slightly more than the upper limit of the WHO physical activity recommendation. The WHO recommends 75-150 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week for adults.

A 30-minute walk after breakfast is therefore not enough exercise to achieve this positive effect. Of course, morning walks have all sorts of other pleasant effects: they burn calories, induce a nice meditative flow-like state and help your dog feel lighter. So there's no need to skip your morning walk, but it doesn't count as a substitute for exercise.

Let's now take a slightly non-scientific approach and ask the good trainers, who mostly don't observe people at the cellular level and with a microscope, why should you add intense exercise sessions to your daily schedule?

Nike head coach in the Baltics Britta Alep recommends adding intensive training to the training schedule to ensure all-round development. For example, if a person is used to training at a lower intensity and the body is already used to the workload. In this case, more intense workouts should be gradually added to the training plan.

"The emotional aspect is important, why it's worth challenging yourself with HIIT training from time to time. The feeling of exertion and the 'feel-good' hormones that are released certainly provide a good feeling that makes a strong exerciser's eyes shine," says Alep, summing up his reasons why intense exercise is beneficial.

Recommendations and summary

Exercise actively for at least 30 minutes every day, at least until you start to sweat by the end of your workout.

If you want to be younger than your real age, go to search FitQ from the video catalogue up the categories cardio or HIIT and press the "play" button.

Read more

The full study in the journal Preventive Medicine: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743517301470

Short summary as news on the BYU website: https://news.byu.edu/news/high-levels-exercise-linked-nine-years-less-aging-cellular-level

WHO physical activity recommendations: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity

Cover photo by Gerry Sulp. Photo: coaches Britta Alep and Sandra Raju.