If you want to improve your health and don’t already exercise, starting to do so may be one of the biggest ways to ensure you age well
Strength training, for instance, can help us live longer, may reduce our risk of dementia, and makes us less likely to fall
Meanwhile, aerobic training, like jogging, walking, and swimming, is linked to better heart health in older age and might benefit our brains too
But access to exerciseisn’t spread equally. And even those who are able to work out may not feel they have the time or the energy to do so.
In cases like these, could an injection do some of the work for us?
Maybe, one day, a recent mouse study has suggested.
How might an exercise “patch”
The authors of the paper, published in Nature Ageing, had previously tried injecting muscle cells into mice to see whether it improved their muscle mass. This can help to slow or reverse conditions like sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss.
They found something unexpected during this experiment, though. Speaking to New Scientist, study author Ng Shyh-Chang said: “This thing was contracting under the skin continuously, and we thought, ‘This thing is like non-stop exercise.’”
The scientists then took samples of muscle stem cells from the mice and developed them into contracting muscle cells called myocytes. When they injectedthose into the animals (dubbed a “myograft”), a patch of tissue with its own blood networks formed near the injection site.
This area stayed pulsing, even when the mice slept.
And that action seemed linked to some of the benefits you’d expect from a heat-pumping workout.
For instance, mice given the graft developed more muscle across their whole bodies, saw better immune function, and appeared to have stronger bones and greater strength in their older age.
They even saw less chronic inflammation, which may be linked to worse ageing outcomes, than the control mice.
What’s more, the “patch” still seemed to be doing its job six months after first injection.
The idea still needs more research
Of course, animals are not people – what makes a mouse healthier might not improve our ageing.
Additionally, experts have pointed out that exercise carries certain benefits, like bone-loading, that a pulsing patch of muscle probably won’t manage to recreate. Plus, having a constantly-throbbing area of tissue (that isn’t our hearts) might feel really offputting.
Still, the researchers write, their method offers a “different approach toward [cell and gene-based therapy] CGT for ageing-related chronic diseases”.
