Men and women burn fat different after completing vigorous exercise, a large study has found.
Researchers found the unexpected results in rats from the largest study to date on exploring how exercise affects the body.
The findings come from the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC), a years-long study looking at the molecular actions between vigorous exercise and health benefits.
More than 100 scientists collaborated across more than two dozen sites.
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They found the effects of exercise are extensive in the study subjects, rats, which share basic physiology with people. Since the bombshell results they are now studying more than 1,5000 people to investigate what happens in humans.
The team looked at 18 tissue types and blood and discovered both makes and females received health benefits after exercise, including stronger heart muscle, enhanced liver function, reduced inflammation in the lungs and gut and better immunity.
Researchers also saw mitochondria, which produce energy, were healthier after activity.
However, they noticed a remarkable difference in the fat tissue between the sexes.
Male and female bodies used up fat differently in the study
Rats ran on treadmills as scientists monitored measurements of proteins and chemical compounds. They then studied the animals that ran five days a week for one, two, four or eight weeks, comparing them to sedentary rats.
But there are limitations, researches say the discovery can’t automatically be applied to animals who are obese or other types of exercise, such as strength straining.
The findings reported overall, the fat in female rats was healthier before and after training, but male rats burned fat and kept it off, while females initially burned fat but at the end of the experiment the fat stores reverted to what they were in the beginning.
Another result found male rats that exercised lost fat, but females who did the same did not, although, they did not gain fat as their sedentary counterparts did.
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‘Truly gobsmaked’
“We saw both sexes mobilize their metabolism to get the energy they need,” said first author Gina Many. “But they get their energy in different ways. Females do so without drawing much from their fat stores, likely because those are critical to reproductive health.”
“These findings help set the landscape to understand disease risk and establish a basis for more personalized and targeted health interventions,” added Many.
Christopher Newgard, corresponding author and director of Duke Molecular Physiology Institute: “We found that fat tissue between males and females is very different even in sedentary animals.
“But then I was truly gobsmacked with how amazingly different the sex-dependent responses to exercise are. Males burn fat for energy while females preserve their fat mass. This is brought about by many differences in molecular responses lurking beneath the surface in fat from male compared to female rats. The dichotomy is truly striking.”
“This study really opened my eyes,” added Newgard. “The differences between the sexes are much more vast than I would have anticipated. This is changing the way I am approaching other studies, including one on insulin resistance in males and females. These findings provide a road map for those experiments.”
Joshua Adkins, a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory said: “Everyone knows that exercise is good for you, but no one knows exactly why.
“We don’t know what’s happening in the body that creates such great benefits.”
The research was published in Nature Metabolism on May 1.
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