Don't Weight for Happy YOU Year Professor David J. Demko, PhD AgeVenture News Service, 12-23-02 Here we go again. New Year's resolution time. One theme that overshadows all resolutions is the promise to shed those extra pounds. Extra pounds gained during the holiday season, otherwise known as America's ever-expanding waist-land. The solution? Exercise ... and plenty of it. Is all that exercise worth it? Good question. University of Michigan researchers are working to understand the details of how exercise affects us beyond the well-known benefits of good health and healthy appearance. Kinesiology is their research tool. Kinesiology? That's the study of movement in the body from the cellular level to the whole body system level. Here's a look at how the kinesiology faculty at the University of Michigan's Center for Exercise Research (UMCER) are seeking answers to questions about exercise. In the future, will people get exercise benefits at the gym, or at the pharmacy? Read on, then you decide. Each of the UMCER researchers Marvin Boluyt, Katarina Borer, and Jeffrey Horowitz (photo) are tackling the "exercise enigma" from a variety of perspectives. These key questions are guiding their research. 1. How does exercise change the secretion of our hormones? 2. How does the obese body use its fuel during exercise? 3. How does the diabetic body use its fuel during exercise? 4. How does exercise affect obese and diabetic bodies? Boluyt examines the heart, specifically, exercise-induced heart growth, heart failure, molecular cardiology and aging of the heart. Examining the heart proteins of rats, Boluyt's research team studied which proteins are changed by exercise. Boluyt sees potential for development of a special medication that might offer the benefits of exercise for those who can’t exercise. Borer focuses on exercise and post-menopausal women such as the effects of exercise on the secretion of various hormones. Borer studies women to see what happens hormonally when they exercise and to examine whether hormone secretion changes when they exercise on an empty stomach versus shortly after a meal. The goal is to develop specific recommendations about ideal levels of exercise for burning calories, maintaining bone mass and heart health. Horowitz is primarily interested in the regulation of fat and carbohydrate metabolism. Horowitz wants to know how we use fuel and how that changes in a person with disease. His study participants exercised in the morning and then ate either low-fat or high-fat meals. Then Horowitz measured insulin sensitivity the next morning, discovering that insulin sensitivity improved the day after a single session of exercise regardless of what people ate in the hours thereafter. Understanding insulin sensitivity—that is, how effective insulin is at promoting use of sugars—is especially helpful for diabetics and those at risk for developing diabetes, as that disease involves trouble with regulating the uptake and use of sugar. Horowitz also is interested in how exercise affects cardiovascular risk factors, and how fat is cleared from the bloodstream. In this continuing study, volunteers drink a fat-filled shake in the morning, then either relax in bed all day or walk on a treadmill periodically throughout the day. The fat drink has isotopic tracers so Horowitz and his team can follow where the ingested fats go. Kinesiology is a complex field of study generating, perhaps, as many social issues as medical advances. However, the results of this line of research may very well effect wide-ranging changes in the way we live. If fact, you might say, "Kinesiology is an exercise in better living." See related articles in AgeVenture Headline News. See related articles in AgeVenture Lifestyle Features.