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Type of Exercise Affects Hormone Response: Study
Reuters Health
By Merritt McKinney
Monday, January 12, 2004
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The effect of exercise on hormone levels in men depends on the type of exercise and a person's physical fitness level, researchers report.
The findings could have implications for determining the best type of exercise for maximizing hormones that tend to diminish with age.
Mention steroids and an image of a pumped-up bodybuilder may come to mind. It's true that some athletes illegally use steroids to give themselves a competitive edge, but naturally occurring steroid hormones are important for maintaining strength, energy and sex drive.
With age, levels of some hormones, especially testosterone and a hormone called DHEAS, tend to decline. To ward off age-related ills, such as muscle loss and the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis, steroids can be prescribed, but these treatments can cause serious side effects.
A safer approach, according to a team of researchers in Canada, would be to figure out which exercises are the best for maximizing levels of naturally occurring hormones.
The jury is still out on the best natural way to boost hormone levels through exercise, but the researchers report that both the type of exercise and an individual's level of physical fitness have an effect on hormone levels in the body.
The new study involved 22 healthy men ages 18 to 55. Seven of the men participated in resistance training - more than 7 hours a week of weight training - while eight were endurance athletes who ran at least 75 kilometers (46.6 miles) per week. The other seven men did not exercise at all.
The investigators measured levels of several hormones - luteinizing hormone (LH), DHEAS, cortisol and testosterone - when the men were at rest, as well as after a 40-minute run and a weight-training session.
Overall, the type of exercise and a person's physical fitness level seemed to have a bigger effect on the hormone response to exercise than did the total amount of calories burned, the team reports in the February issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.
For example, the ratio of testosterone to cortisol -- a measure of the anabolic-catabolic balance of hormones -- was higher after the resting session and the run than after the resistance session, among all three groups of men.
Conversely, endurance-trained subjects had a higher increase in DHEAS after the run session than did resistance-trained men.
"This research demonstrates that hormonal responses to exercise depend on both initial training status and exercise type," explained lead author Dr. Mark Tremblay, who is the senior scientific advisor on health measurement at Statistics Canada in Ottawa.
"Not all people will respond to exercise in the same fashion," he told Reuters Health. Because of these differences, "biological changes that result from exercise will differ among people as well," Tremblay said.
Tremblay said that more research is needed to confirm the findings and to see whether the same is true in women.
SOURCE: Journal of Applied Physiology, February 2004.
Copyright 2003 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters, the Reuters Dotted Logo and the Sphere Logo are registered trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
Reuters Health
By Merritt McKinney
Monday, January 12, 2004
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The effect of exercise on hormone levels in men depends on the type of exercise and a person's physical fitness level, researchers report.
The findings could have implications for determining the best type of exercise for maximizing hormones that tend to diminish with age.
Mention steroids and an image of a pumped-up bodybuilder may come to mind. It's true that some athletes illegally use steroids to give themselves a competitive edge, but naturally occurring steroid hormones are important for maintaining strength, energy and sex drive.
With age, levels of some hormones, especially testosterone and a hormone called DHEAS, tend to decline. To ward off age-related ills, such as muscle loss and the brittle-bone disease osteoporosis, steroids can be prescribed, but these treatments can cause serious side effects.
A safer approach, according to a team of researchers in Canada, would be to figure out which exercises are the best for maximizing levels of naturally occurring hormones.
The jury is still out on the best natural way to boost hormone levels through exercise, but the researchers report that both the type of exercise and an individual's level of physical fitness have an effect on hormone levels in the body.
The new study involved 22 healthy men ages 18 to 55. Seven of the men participated in resistance training - more than 7 hours a week of weight training - while eight were endurance athletes who ran at least 75 kilometers (46.6 miles) per week. The other seven men did not exercise at all.
The investigators measured levels of several hormones - luteinizing hormone (LH), DHEAS, cortisol and testosterone - when the men were at rest, as well as after a 40-minute run and a weight-training session.
Overall, the type of exercise and a person's physical fitness level seemed to have a bigger effect on the hormone response to exercise than did the total amount of calories burned, the team reports in the February issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology.
For example, the ratio of testosterone to cortisol -- a measure of the anabolic-catabolic balance of hormones -- was higher after the resting session and the run than after the resistance session, among all three groups of men.
Conversely, endurance-trained subjects had a higher increase in DHEAS after the run session than did resistance-trained men.
"This research demonstrates that hormonal responses to exercise depend on both initial training status and exercise type," explained lead author Dr. Mark Tremblay, who is the senior scientific advisor on health measurement at Statistics Canada in Ottawa.
"Not all people will respond to exercise in the same fashion," he told Reuters Health. Because of these differences, "biological changes that result from exercise will differ among people as well," Tremblay said.
Tremblay said that more research is needed to confirm the findings and to see whether the same is true in women.
SOURCE: Journal of Applied Physiology, February 2004.
Copyright 2003 Reuters. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Reuters. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters, the Reuters Dotted Logo and the Sphere Logo are registered trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.
