Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise<\/a> (MSSE).<\/p>\n\u201cResearch on the adaptations to resistance training has historically been focused on muscle and bone, with very little known regarding the adaptability of the nerves,\u201d Editor-in-Chief Andrew Jones wrote in MSSE\u2019s current issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause nerve health and function deteriorate with both age and prolonged sedentary lifestyles, it is important to know if resistance training is an effective countermeasure to combat this degradation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShields and colleagues show that nerve function in older adults is trainable, which may also have long-term implications for nerve health, motor function, independence, and quality of life,\u201d Jones says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work could stimulate investigations into whether resistance training is an effective countermeasure for other, non-age related sources of nerve degradation (for example, nervous system disorders).\u201d<\/p>\n
For their study, the researchers sought to determine the effects of resistance training on nerve conduction velocity (NCV), and if changes in NCV are dependent on age. Testing 48 subjects ranging from 18 to 84 years old, the researchers recorded NCV in the forearm and maximal strength before and after four weeks of handgrip training in both arms (training was conducted three times a week).<\/p>\n
To measure each subject\u2019s NCV, the researchers used nerve conduction tests that stimulated the nerves in the muscles of the forearm and measured how fast it took to activate the muscle.<\/p>\n
In the post-training tests, every senior that performed the training showed improvement in their nerve conduction. A nerve contains both fast and slow motor neurons, and the fast neurons are the first to deteriorate, disconnect from muscle and become inactive with age. The researchers hypothesize that the training reactivated these fast neurons in the older participants, a process called reinnervation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you lose fast neurons, you also lose the fast muscle fibers that are activated by them, and then your power, or the speed at which you can produce force, decreases,\u201d says Jason DeFreitas, chair of the exercise science department and the nutrition and food studies department at Falk College.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can reactivate those lost neurons, you can produce force faster again and that has practical implications so that a slip or a trip doesn\u2019t become a terrible fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research team plans to conduct further studies to determine the role that exercise interventions play in mitigating age-related nerve deterioration, and if the reactivation of fast neurons translates to other parts of the body.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we\u2019re reactivating those neurons that started to die, that can play a significant role in the preservation of strength and avoiding disability with aging,\u201d DeFreitas says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat to me is the likely hypothesis, so that\u2019s the premise of the follow-up work we\u2019re conducting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Additional researchers from Syracuse University, Fairmont State University, Illinois State University, and Oklahoma State University contributed to the work.<\/p>\n
Funding for the work came in part from a doctoral research grant awarded through the Central States Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine.<\/p>\n
Source: Syracuse University<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Share this Article You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Simple resistance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4157,1372,589,163,85,46,28330],"class_list":{"0":"post-33670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-aging","9":"tag-exercise","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-nerves"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}