Inflammation is not all bad.
It is a normal response to infection and stress. While necessary to fight disease and injury, it becomes a problem when inflammation is chronic. However, exercise can help us fight inflammation as associate professor and York University Research Chair Ali Abdul Sater explains,
“Inflammation is amazing, it’s a very important part of our normal immune response. What we’re concerned about is excessive inflammation. Heart disease, diabetes, many cancers and autoimmune diseases, all essentially begin because there was an inappropriate inflammatory response.”
Ali Abdul Sater
Researchers have known that moderate exercise improves the body’s response to inflammation and now they know one of the reasons it is helpful.
Exercise Trains Your Immune System to Fight Inflammation
Moderate, regular exercise trains your body to be able to produce macrophages that fight inflammation. Macrophages are white blood cells that fight infection and heal injuries. They are your first responders when it comes to healing.
Studies were done in sedentary mice, yes I know we are not mice, but all mammals share this aspect of the immune system. These studies show that after 6-8 weeks of moderate exercise, the cells were rewiring or changing the way the cells breathe, and how they use oxygen to be more effective at making macrophages in the bone marrow.
Now the researchers are using human immune cells and comparing exercise intensities to see what type of exercise is most beneficial to train your immune system to fight disease.
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Shayla
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