Is Exercise Really Medicine?

Exercise is medicine” is a phrase you hear a lot and for good reason.

Regular exercise can help prevent and manage many chronic health conditions.

But I’ve been thinking about another way of looking at it - Exercise is also maintenance.

We don’t wait until we have cavities before brushing our teeth and don’t wait until we have skin damage before putting on sunscreen yet exercise is often something we turn to when there’s already a problem.

We need to lose weight. We’re unfit. Our blood pressure is high. We’re getting weaker.

But there’s an enormous amount happening beneath the surface long before those problems become obvious.

A recent review by Qiu and colleagues looked at exercise through the lens of 14 biological processes associated with ageing.

The research suggests regular exercise may help counter many of them, including changes related to mitochondrial function, inflammation, DNA damage and cellular repair.

And most of this is invisible.

You can’t see your cardiovascular fitness being maintained.

You won’t notice the muscle you didn’t lose.

You can’t see what’s happening inside your bones or cells.

Which is why judging whether exercise is “working” purely by weight loss or what you see in the mirror misses so much.

There’s another reason I like the maintenance idea.

Maintenance is never finished.

Missing the occasional workout matters very little. So does doing the occasional heroic one.

What matters is doing enough, often enough, over years.

Sometimes there doesn’t need to be anything wrong with you and sometimes you exercise simply because you want to look after everything that’s currently working well like your strength, your fitness or your ability to keep doing the things you enjoy.

Exercise can certainly be medicine but you don’t have to wait until you need the medicine.