We spend our best years wading through the rat race to secure our futures. We stress ourselves out and work all hours. Indeed, we even work through the hours we could have spent enjoying life’s sweetest leisure pursuits, exercising, or refining our eating habits.
When we finally retire, our long-overdue time to enjoy wealth and freedom coincides with the onset of declining bone density and reduced muscle mass, functional strength, and mobility.
It all seems a bit of a cruel joke. But I ask you this: when you’re 75, how would you like to enjoy the same physical abilities of a 35-year-old? Well, according to the latest buzz flying around the scientific community, it looks like you just might be able to.
A study was recently carried out by the University of Michigan Medical School. A team of researchers headed by Robert Wells looked into the long-term effects of exercise.
Studying the long-term effects of exercise can sometimes be a little tricky. Completely controlling the habits and environment of a human being exclusively for research purposes for periods in excess of 20 years is impractical, to say the least.
Things crop up, people move residence, change jobs, get injured or experience random life-changing events – all issues that interfere quite crucially with delicate research processes, and ultimately get in the way of producing definitive answers.
Wells tackled this problem by basing his research around another creature whose lifespan differs radically from our own: the humble fruit fly.
For this tiny insect, just one day is equivalent to a whole year for a human. By looking at the effects of exercise on fruit flies from one day to the next, Wells was able to manipulate the conditions and exercise programmes of a variety of different ages and categories of fruit flies.
One major objective of the study was to examine quality of life rather than longevity. In other words, the goal is to feel like you’re in your 30s well into your retirement. Like us, young flies exhibit high resistance to stress without suffering heart failure. Older flies on the other hand cannot, unless they are fit.
So how on earth do you get a fly fit? It’s hard enough getting a human to work out; getting a fruit fly moving seems as challenging as getting a human to flap his arms and fly.
Research assistant Nicole Piazza, however, had a plan. While we like to get fit on treadmills and cross-trainers, flies get to workout in a super fly fitness machine dubbed the ‘Power Tower’.
The machine consists of a collection of fly-housing test tubes contained within a wooden structure. The entire structure is raised several inches by a robotic arm, and then dropped onto shock absorbers.
The thud of the drop caused the fruit flies to fall to the bottom of the test tubes. Their natural instinct upon being nudged to the bottom of the test tube was to climb back up to the top. The process was repeated continuously, causing the flies to repeatedly climb up the sides of the test tubes, thus exercising.
This process might be compared to climbing a flight of stairs in pursuit of a hefty wad of cash, only for somebody to lower the floor again.
Of course, building a Power Tower of your own need not involve anything more high-tech than choosing to take the stairs instead of the lift, or positioning essential items around your home at distances that require you to take more total steps throughout the course of your day.
Instead of sitting down, pace up and down the room when keying in an SMS or talking on your mobile phone, and eat more fruit and vegetables to increase the frequency of your visits on foot to the local greengrocer.
These are just a few examples of how you too can, just like our little fruity friends, join in the buzz of inadvertent exercise.
The fitness flies followed their exercise regimen for two to three hours per week and the results on their health and stress resistance were profound. Even when exercise ceased after young and middle age, older flies demonstrated better health and high resistance to stress, just like a pensioner enjoying life with the vigour and gusto of young and middle age.
Since fruit flies are genetically identical to each other, Wells ultimately aims to identify the genetic difference between fit flies and sedentary flies caused by exercise, and develop treatments for humans that may mimic the effects of exercise in elderly patients.
We watch with interest, but remember that what you sow in physical activity now, you reap in wellness later on.
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