Sadly (for those of us who don’t feel like exercising 2 hours a day) it looks like high-volume sports activity is one of the best ways to slow aging (at least by this measure).
We develop blood test-based aging clocks and examine how these clocks reflect high-volume sports activity.
Methods
We use blood tests and body metrics data of 421 Hungarian athletes and 283 age-matched controls (mean age 24.1 and 23.9 years, respectively), the latter selected from a group of healthy Caucasians of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to represent the general population (n = 11,412). We train two age prediction models (i.e., aging clocks) using the NHANES dataset: the first model relies on blood test parameters only, while the second one additionally incorporates body measurements and sex.
Results
We find lower age acceleration among athletes compared to the age-matched controls with a median value of -1.7 and 1.4 years, p < 0.0001. BMI is positively associated with age acceleration among the age-matched controls (r = 0.17, p < 0.01) and the unrestricted NHANES population (r = 0.11, p < 0.001). We find no association between BMI and age acceleration within the athlete dataset. Instead, age acceleration is positively associated with body fat percentage (r = 0.21, p < 0.05) and negatively associated with skeletal muscle mass (Pearson r: -0.18, p < 0.05) among athletes. The most important blood test features in age predictions were serum ferritin, mean cell volume, blood urea nitrogen, and albumin levels.
Conclusions
We develop and apply blood test-based aging clocks to adult athletes and healthy controls. The data suggest that high-volume sports activity is associated with slowed biological aging. Here, we propose an alternative, promising application of routine blood tests.
I couldn’t tell how they removed the possibility that the athletes were genetically “better” which allowed them to be athletes who exercised so much and which also provided the superior blood markers. In other words, how did they determine that the exercise was causal?
Well that’s good news to me because I love working out. Just played an hour of basketball outside in the sun this morning and weight trained 5 days this week
I am dubious about these clocks. The best and well documented measure of longevity is VO2 Max. You can increase your VO2Max by adopting the Nordic protocol: 4 splits of HIIT, 4 mins @90% of HR Max three times a week. That’s 20 minutes, not 2 hours.
VO2Max is a balance between capturing and delivering oxygen (lungs, red blood cells, heart, capillaries) and using oxygen (muscles, mitochondria, fuel). Whichever is lower limits the vo2max.
Increasing vo2max quickly via HIIT is a normal part of “peaking” for an event. It isn’t the way to build the infrastructure for high performance (or health). HIIT is great and necessary but isn’t enough. And what can be gained quickly is lost quickly when not used.
Base layer (years): lots of volume of using oxygen to make energy to move the body.
bigger, stronger heart to push more blood at high HR, and that beats slowly at rest (my sleeping HR is 38)
more capillaries
more type 1 muscle fiber with lots of mitochondria
Second layer (months)
higher blood plasma volume
great red blood cell mass (to carry more O2)
Top Layer (weeks): HIIT / maximum but short efforts
tolerance of high lactate production
tolerance of higher co2
better neuromuscular recruitment
better efficiency/ form for using the produced power well
