Training in youth pays off

Larissa Melville completed her traineeship in the editorial team of . After studying biology at Ludwig Maximilians University and the Technical University of Munich, she first got to know digital media online at Focus and then decided to learn medical journalism from scratch.

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MunichOpinions are divided on sport: some love it, others simply cannot pull themselves up to do it. Which group a person belongs to can possibly be influenced - with exercise in childhood. At least this is what a study with mice suggests.

Especially nowadays, when many people struggle with being overweight, sport is becoming an increasingly important topic. Theodore Garland from the University of California Riverside and his colleagues therefore conducted an animal experiment to investigate the extent to which regular physical activity at a young age influences the affinity for physical activity in adulthood. The researchers were also interested in whether early exercise also had a positive effect on the body mass index (BMI).

Impeller or not

In the study, male mice were used which, due to their genetic makeup, particularly liked to run in the exercise bike. Less sporty mice served as controls. Half of the animals from the two groups were given access to a running bike for three weeks as a child. This was followed by 52 days without a running bike. The rest of the mice were forced to lie on their lazy skin the whole time. After all, all of the now adult mice were allowed to use the exercise bike.

The result: Both the athletic and the less talented runners were significantly more active as adults compared to the “lazy” group if they had already been in motion as a child. And on top of that, they were slimmer too. "Although the positive effect only lasted for a week, a" mouse week "would correspond to nine months in humans," reports Garland.

"Our results support the hypothesis that sporting activity in adolescence promotes the tendency to exercise more than adults and also has a positive effect on weight," the researchers write.

School sport - shapes a lifetime

"The importance of physical education in elementary and middle school is shed in a new light," says Garland. If children regularly did sport in school, they might also be more likely to do sport as adults - and that could have far-reaching positive effects on health and well-being, adds the expert.

Exercise without an increase in appetite

Garland and his team hope to be able to give tailor-made training recommendations in the future - exercises that are effective but do not increase appetite. Because it is possible that certain exercises for a certain duration or with a certain moderate level of difficulty do not stimulate the appetite - at least for some - not significantly. "That would bring us one step closer to successful weight loss with the help of exercise," says Garland.

Sources:

Acosta W. et al .: Effects of early-onset voluntary exercise on adult physical activity and associated phenotypes in mice. Physology & Behavior. doi: 10.1016 / j.physbeh.2015.06.020

Press release from the University of California, Riverside on June 25, 2015

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