Weekly football training slows aging and has a positive effect on our heart health

Football training works against aging and is good for the heart

It has already been proven in several scientific studies that you can stay fit and healthy through sports until old age. In a recent study has now shown that football training is particularly suitable. It initiates mechanisms that counteract aging and are good for the heart over the long term.

Sport keeps you young and healthy

On average, seniors today are more fit than ever before. A key reason for this is that it has become popular among older people to move regularly. Studies show that physical fitness keeps the heart and brain young. Sport is a way to stay younger than you are. In a recent study has now shown that football training is particularly well suited for it. It slows down aging and is good for the heart.

A new study has shown that football training at the cellular level initiates mechanisms that counteract the aging process and can have long-term positive effects on heart health. (Image: WavebreakMediaMicro / fotolia.com)

Long-term positive effects on heart health

Regular exercise reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease. Above all, football seems to have a particularly positive effect here.

For as the German Cardiac Society - Cardiovascular Research e. V. in a statement published by the Information Service Science (idw), football training at the cellular level sets in motion mechanisms that counteract the aging process and can have long-term positive effects on heart health.

This has PD Dr. Christian Werner (Saarland University Hospital, Homburg) reported at the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Munich.

Higher telomerase activity

According to the authors of the study, the influence of football training on markers of so-called cellular senescence, a technical term for aging and the related organic processes, has not yet been investigated.

Therefore, the international research team examined telomere length and telomerase activity among 140 young and older male soccer players and compared these with untrained study participants.

As the experts explain, telomeres are protective caps on the ends of the chromosomes, they become shorter and shorter with each cell division in the course of life. If there is not enough of them, the cell stops dividing.

Telomerase is a nuclear enzyme that restores telomeres. The enzyme activity of telomerase can be determined by the so-called TRAP method.

Blood samples analyzed in the study showed, among other things, that young football players had a higher telomerase activity than the physically inactive control group.

In addition, the scientists found in younger and older football players an increased activity in the context of telomere stabilizing TRF 2 (telomere repeat-binding factor 2), as in the physically inactive control group. (Ad)