Dad Exercises, Son Benefits
A new study suggests that exercise-loving mice produce healthier offspring than sluggish male mice. While it’s uncertain whether the findings are valid in humans, they support the idea that some of the benefits of exercise or workout are somehow passed on to the next generation.
What does Research regarding exercise on mice say?
Exercising mice are helping themselves and their offspring.
A new study suggests that exercise-loving mice produce healthier offspring than sluggish male mice. While it’s uncertain whether the findings are valid in humans, they support the idea that some of the benefits of exercise are somehow passed on to the next generation.
What do scientists opine about lack of exercise?
Scientists already know that a parent’s lack of exercise or poor diet can affect offspring. For example, children born to mothers who were overweight during pregnancy were more likely to become obese and develop metabolic diseases such as cardiovascular disease in adulthood.
Another study found that offspring of male mice glutted on a high-fat diet failed to respond normally to glucose, a marker of type 2 diabetes.
Research on mice in The Ohio State University School of Medicine
To see if the reverse holds true, Kristin Stanford, a molecular exercise physiologist at The Ohio State University School of Medicine, and colleagues fed male mice a fat-rich diet for three weeks.
One group of mice had access to a wheel that ran an average of nearly 6 kilometers per night, while the rest had no exercise at all.
After dissecting some of the mice for sperm samples, the researchers mated the remaining mice.
Stanford and colleagues tracked the resulting offspring until they were 1 year old (or about middle age in mice).
While the offspring of both exercising and non-exercising fathers consumed high-fat foods and did not engage in any physical activity throughout their lives, the offspring of healthy fathers appeared to inherit their father’s metabolism.
The offspring of the running mice showed better responses to increases in blood sugar and had lower insulin level, both signs of a good metabolism.
The researchers report the results in a recent issue of the journal Diabetes. “Exercise completely counteracted the effects of a high-fat diet on offspring,” Stanford said.
Do offspring inherit their father’s metabolic conditions through small RNA molecules in the sperm?
The researchers suspect that these offspring may have inherited their father’s metabolic conditions through small RNA molecules in the sperm.
Previous research has linked these molecules to changes in the metabolism of the next generation. Indeed, the sperm of lazy fathers are loaded with fragments of transfer RNA.
When these molecules are intact, they are essential for synthesizing proteins. But how the molecular fragments work has been a mystery. They may have altered protein production. By contrast, the sperm of the exercised mice had relatively few fragments.
Stanford and colleagues are still unsure how RNA fragments affect offspring metabolism, but they speculate that the fragments alter the growth or development of offspring in early gestation.
Conclusion
While studying genetics we understand that the characteristics that a generation of a race develops is passed on to the next generation. The generation may be raised or degenerated. This all depends upon our actions. Hence we need to follow a healthy diet and exercise for fitness to enhance our dynasty.
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When fathers exercise, their future offspring may benefit, mouse study suggests