For mice, there is excellent news: Gretchen Reynolds reports in the New York Times that exercise has been shown to reduce or eliminate almost every detrimental effect of aging in mice that had been bred to age prematurely. Reynolds reports that researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario divided the mice, which had been genetically bred to be old (with shrunken muscles and brains) at eight months, into two groups. One group of mice was allowed to run on a wheel for 45 minutes three times a week, and required to maintain pace equal to a person running a 50- or 55-minute 10K. The researchers found that at eight months, when their sedentary lab mates were bald, frail and dying, the running rats remained youthful, with full pelts of dark fur, almost all of their muscle mass and brain volume.
Read more from Gretchen Reynolds.
Read an abstract of the study here.