First, here’s the skinny on inflammation: As we age, low-grade inflammation—your immune system’s response to any sort of injury—begins to thicken the arteries and vessels that transport your blood, making it more difficult for your heart to do its job, explains Mark Hamer, PhD, an epidemiologist at University College London. The jury’s still out on why inflammation increases as you grow older, but it likely has to do with the loss of muscle mass and other physical changes that occur as your age, says Hamer. The good news? Hamer’s new research offers an easy way to overcome the blood-flow-gumming effects of inflammation: A bit of exercise. More from Prevention.com: Meals That Heal Inflammation While past research has identified exercise as a good way to reverse or reduce inflammation, most of those studies were short-term affairs, says Hamer. So his team wanted to find out whether exercise worked in the long run, so they kept tabs on the exercise habits and markers of inflammation on more than 4,000 middle-aged men and women for more than 10 years. The results: Regardless of BMI or weight, study participants who completed 2.5 hours of moderate exercise each week—about 20 minutes a day—lowered their markers of inflammation by at least 12%, Hamer says. Furthermore, those who began exercising midway through the study also significantly lowered their levels of inflammation, meaning it’s never too late to benefit from exercise, he says. So how does exercise cut inflammation? Your blood contains a type of protein molecule called “cytokine.” When you exercise, your adipose and muscle tissue release big bursts of cytokines into your blood stream, which Hamer says is likely the cause of the inflammation drop. To reduce inflammation, try to get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise a day, five days a week, Hamer advises. Almost any type of workout that raises your heart rate counts, he says, such as brisk walking, playing tennis, mowing the lawn, or even gardening. (For more easy exercise ideas, see The Health Benefits Of Moderate Exercise.)
