Sedentary control mice were housed individually in static cages without running wheels.
And they found that the exercised animals' hearts resisted ventricular fibrillation better than a group of sedentary control rats did.
By the end, the rodents were lean, fit athletes, with hearts physiologically different than those of a group of sedentary control animals.
The prevalence of serious neck and lower back disorders among locomotive engineers was found to be nearly double that of the sedentary control group without such exposure.
Ten male long-distance trained runners (TR) and untrained sedentary control subjects (SED) ran for 1 h at 70% of heart rate reserve (HRR).
The sedentary control animals were housed in the same laboratory as the runners to ensure that, except for the treadmill sessions, the two groups shared the same environment and routine.
It "was striking," recalls Dr. Christian Werner, an internal-medicine resident at Saarland University Clinic in Hamburg, "to see in our study that many of the middle-aged athletes looked much younger than sedentary control subjects of the same age".
The mice were randomized to one of four 11 week treatments in a 2 × 2 design involving sleep restriction (by 4 h/day) vs. normal sleep and exercise training (1 h/day) vs. sedentary control.
A lifelong moderate-intensity aerobic training program was designed, in which aerobically exercised (E) and sedentary control (C) rats were studied at middle (8 months) and old age (18 months) by means of biochemical, immunohistochemical and behavioral assays.
A strong positive fMRI response, as measured by fractional cerebral blood volume changes relative to baseline (CBV%), was seen in the sedentary control group in such cortico-limbic regions as medial prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex.
Voluntary consumption of morphine was less in the male and female rat offspring born of the swimmer morphine-dependent mothers as compared with their sedentary control mothers during three periods of the intake of drug.
