New study identifies exercise type for autophagy in humans

What's the news: Long-term resistance training improves autophagy, a cellular process associated with anti-aging.

Why should we believe it: This news comes from a meta-analysis published earlier this month. The scientists who performed this meta-analysis analyzed 26 studies assessing the autophagic response to exercise in humans. In total, this meta-analysis covered 519 participants of a broad range of ages and fitness levels.

Why is this a big deal? Autophagy is the clean-up process inside all your cells. It’s how cells recycle their own damaged or unnecessary components to maintain their function. When that process breaks down, you have problems. That’s why disabled authophagy was recently designated as a hallmark of aging.

There are various proven ways to stimulate autophagy and therefore slow down aging in humans, including fasting and pharmaceutical interventions such as rapamycin. Thanks to this new meta analysis, exercise has now been confirmed as an added effective way to stimulate autophagy.

So what specifically can you do now: Not all exercise stimulates autophagy equally. According to the study, "moderate- and vigorous-intensity endurance exercise showed no effect on autophagy" in animal models, and results in humans were inconclusive. On the other hand, long-term resistance training (3+ weeks) increased autophagy conclusively in humans.

That's not to say that moderate and vigorous endurance exercise is not beneficial in other ways. But if you are looking for long youthspan, and in particular, you want to increase autophagy in your body, it's worth starting a resistance training program today — and sticking with it tomorrow.