By Jason Martin and Gerard Clarke, APC Microbiome Ireland, University College Cork, Ireland
If exercise was available in the form of a pill, it would be a blockbuster drug such are the associated health benefits.
This includes benefits for stress-related disorders such as depression, a leading global cause of disability and a major burden on the individual, society as a whole and healthcare systems worldwide.
There is a lot we still don’t know about the benefits of exercise and our research is trying to bridge some of these knowledge gaps, particularly in relation to the biological pathways recruited by different durations and doses of physical activity.
Exercise is an acute stressor initially that ultimately manifests as positive adaptations, essentially adjusting the dial on the biological thermostat to a new set point and priming the response of a number of integrated physiological systems to support good mental health.
At Physiology 2021, We’re excited to bring together a panel of experts to increase the awareness of the mental health benefits of exercise and to map out the current biomarkers underpinning these observations. We are really looking forward to hearing their views and taking a deep dive into the potential mechanisms at play.
At the starting line in our symposium will be Dr Joseph Firth from the University of Manchester who will provide an update of the evidence supporting the mental health benefits of exercise.
Professor Bente Klarlund Pedersen from the University of Copenhagen will take up the baton to help us better understand the intriguing physiological language of muscle-brain crosstalk with an emphasis on myokines, factors produced and released by skeletal muscle cells in response to muscular contractions during exercise.
Professor Sophie Erhardt from the Karolinska Institutet will cover the ground around the role of tryptophan metabolism, as she answers the important question of whether exercise chases down excess production of kynurenine.
The potential involvement of the gut microbiome, the community of microbe’s resident in our gastrointestinal tract, in the health benefits associated with increased physical activity is a new frontier in exercise research.
Cassandra Gheorghe, a PhD student at APC Microbiome Ireland, will take on this topic and bring us to the finish line of the symposium with exciting new research funded by the European Foundation for the Advancement of Neuroscience exploring the responses of the microbiome-gut-brain axis to exercise interventions.
When thinking about how best to prescribe exercise Gheorghe says it is important to consider both the dose and the duration. Her research indicates that medium intensity exercise helps to reset gastrointestinal permeability and that this is something we need to consider when exploring the physiological benefits of exercise beyond the gut.
Dr Gerard Clarke is a lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioural Science and a PI in APC Microbiome Ireland at University College Cork. Dr Jason Martin is a senior postdoctoral Researcher in APC Microbiome Ireland. Their research on exercise is funded by the Irish Health Research Board (Grant number ILP-POR-2017-013).
Their symposium called Exercise, Stress and Mental Health: Moving from Current Biomarkers to a Role for the Microbiome-Gut-Brain-Axis will take place during our Annual Conference, Physiology 2021, at 10am on Thursday 15 July.