The human heart has the capacity to regenerate itself. But it is at quite a low capacity. Young adults can renew one percent of their heart muscles every year, and this decreases with age.
Losing heart cells is linked to heart failure. Thus, finding interventions which can increase new heart cell formation is important and can help prevent heart failure.
We know that exercise is good for our heart health and researchers decided to test whether exercise can enhance the regenerative capacity of the heart.
=Q=
To test this, the researchers gave one group of healthy mice eight weeks access to monitored voluntary wheel running. Left on their own the mice ran five kilometres each day.
The other healthy group of mice remained sedentary.
The researchers then administered a labelled chemical which was introduced into a newly made DNA as cells prepared to divide.
They followed the labelled DNA in the heart muscle and they could see where the new cells were being produced.
To test this further and to see if the heart regenerated after a heart attack, the researchers found that after experiencing a heart attack the mice with wheel running access continued to run five kilometres a day voluntarily. Compared to the sedentary mice, this group of mice showed an increase in the area of heart tissue where new muscle cells were made.
This showed that exercise results in significant regeneration of the heart tissue.
A balance between loss of heart muscles due to injury or ageing and the regeneration of healthy heart cells results in a healthy heart and exercise is one way to make sure that the heart remains healthy.
Not only does exercise help the heart make new heart cells under normal circumstances but also after a heart attack.
Exercise is good for the heart and now we know why.
Source: Nature Communications
