ABOVE: Participants in the exercise study
THIBAUX VAN DER STEDE
Whether you’re peddling a bike, running on a treadmill, or hiking in the woods, regular aerobic exercise powerfully protects you from cardiovascular and metabolic disease. But the precise molecular mechanisms connecting regular activity to improved health have been unclear. A study published April 14 in Science Advances makes major gains in this understanding. Building off previous work on single bouts of exercise, researchers at Ghent University in Belgium found that when humans perform long-term training, histamine receptors are activated, improving a variety of cardiometabolic risk factors, from insulin sensitivity to aerobic capacity and blood vessel health.
“It’s awesome, it’s a very cool paper,” says University of Oregon exercise physiologist John Halliwill, who was not involved in the study. “This is one of a few studies out there finally looking at these molecular transducers, and this is the only one out there ...
