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Want Nice Skin? Then Take Up Exercise!It speeds up skin healing |
By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor
29th of November 2007, 10:30 GMT
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Sports practicing even at an older age means more than good looks: it improves the general functioning of the body, from heart and brain to immunity. But a novel research at the University of Illinois and published in the American Journal of Physiology shows that exercise makes you look younger also due to a healthier skin: moderate exercising lowers inflammation of damaged skin tissue.
"The improved healing response may be the result of an exercise-induced anti-inflammatory response in the wound." said co-author K. Todd Keylock, professor of kinesiology at Bowling Green State University.
Previous studies made at Ohio State University revealed a link between faster wound healing and moderate exercise, but this research comes with a physiological explanation.
"The new study points to another benefit to moderate exercise: decreased inflammation of damaged skin tissue. One of the proposed mechanisms whereby aging adds to delayed healing is that the aged have hyper-inflammatory response to wounding. The thought is that the exaggerated inflammatory response slows the healing process. So, in essence, what happened here is that the exercise reduced the exaggerated inflammatory response," said co-author Jeffrey A. Woods, a UI professor of kinesiology and integrative immunology and behavior.
Other processes too could be involved.
"Increasing blood flow during the time of exercise is one. We've shown in the past that has an effect on how certain immune cells - such as macrophages, function. And if exercise can help decrease the amount of inflammatory cytokines (molecules directing immune cells to the site of an infection) put out by macrophages, maybe that would help decrease the inflammation, and therefore, speed healing." said Keylock.
"Macrophages help fight any infection that may have gotten into the wound, and they also help the wound repair itself and get back to its original strength," he explained.
In case of inflammatory over-reaction, "the proinflammatory cytokines that the macropahges produce slow the rate of healing. And interestingly, macrophages are drawn to damaged tissue and hypoxic tissue, that is, tissue that has low oxygen content. Wounds, because of the damage to the blood vessels, typically are hypoxic, and macrophages are attracted to that. So one potential thing that exercise might be doing, although we would need to test this, is reducing hypoxia within the wounds. And it's known that hyperbaric oxygen therapy - which has been used with burn patients - speeds wound healing in some people." said Keylock.
Human trials would clear the issue. Keylock will also test all this in diabetic mice, as diabetes too causes delayed wound-healing and increased inflammation.
"The public-health message of this applies not just to older people, but also to diabetics, those who are obese and many different populations (like coronary heart disease) at risk of having high levels of inflammation," he said.
"Using this model, we may be able to get at whether exercise could have farther-reaching implications for tissue damage in general. There are probably some things unique to the skin, as opposed to these other tissues, so we can't make leaps of faith. But if we study the inflammatory process, the regenerative process in one tissue might have implications for other tissues." said Wood.
Moderate exercise can mean only a daily brisk walk.
"There's obviously the financial cost, which is important, the clinical impact of delayed wound healing in the aged population is priced at more than $9 billion per year in the United States. But the personal cost to people with poorly healing wounds is tremendous, because it means not only pain and suffering, but also means they're immobile or their mobility is limited for a period of time. So, faster healing wounds would mean getting them up on their feet again," said Keylock.
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