Exercise is a very common method used to treat obesity-related health problems like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but scientists don’t understand exactly how it works to improve metabolic health.
In a study from the University of Michigan, scientists found that exercise can modify fat tissue in ways that improve health—even without weight loss.
They aimed to better understand the effects of exercise on metabolic health in people with obesity.
The team examined the effects of three months of exercise on people with obesity.
Thirty-six adults with obesity were placed into either a moderate-intensity exercise group (45 minutes, 70% of maximum heart rate) or a high-intensity exercise group (10 one-minute intervals at 90% maximum heart rate interspersed with 60 seconds of low-intensity active recovery).
Blood samples and biopsies of abdominal fat were collected the day after the 12-week sessions ended and again three days later. There was no exercise between these tests.
The team found that exercise can favorably modify abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue, the fat tissue just beneath the skin, in ways that can improve metabolic health—even without weight loss.
Surprisingly, moderate and high-intensity exercise yielded the same positive changes in fat tissue composition and structure, and fat cells shrank a bit even without weight loss.
The team says many of the changes in factors regulating body fat remodeling seen one day after exercise was no longer strong on day 4 of testing, and this underscores the importance of regular, sustained exercise.
Many adaptations to exercise training are effective in enabling a person to exercise longer or harder.
However, most of the benefits of exercise that improve metabolic health in people at risk for metabolic health complications or those who have metabolic disease stem from the response to each exercise session—and these responses to exercise are relatively short-lived, often lasting only a few days at most.
This is one of the big reasons why it is so important to be physically active most days.
The finding about moderate and high-intensity exercise yielding similar responses could be good news for people who prefer to avoid the more demanding high-intensity interval training or HIIT.
If you care about wellness, please read studies about how to protect your bones with exercise, and enurance exercise may affect your body’s largest artery.
For more information about wellness, please see recent studies about how to exercise if you have type 2 diabetes, and results showing this berry may hold the key to exercise endurance.
The study was conducted by Jeffrey Horowitz et al and published in The Journal of Physiology.
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