Exercise can reduce inflammation in obese people by changing the characteristics of their blood, according to new research.
The blood cells responsible for causing inflammation are formed from stem cells within the body.
This new research is the first to show that exercise alters the characteristics of these blood-forming stem cells and reduces the number of blood cells likely to cause inflammation.
These findings provide a new explanation of how exercise may improve health in adults with obesity.
Young, lean adults and young, obese adults were recruited for this study. Comprehensive physiological characterisation of all participants occurred before and after completion of a six-week exercise programme.
This consisted of three bicycling or treadmill running sessions per week, with each session lasting approximately one hour.
Blood was collected before and after the exercise training intervention to quantify blood-forming stem cells.
The results demonstrate that exercise reduced the number of blood-forming stem cells associated with the production of the type of blood cells responsible for inflammation.
Image Credit | iStock
