Studying the relationship between exercise and health

What are you researching?

“I’m researching why physical activity is good for health. We’ve long known that there’s a link between the two, and in the past decades the picture has become much clearer. Exercise really is good in many ways – it fights disease and promotes healthy ageing and mental health. But why? We want to understand how this works down at a molecular and genetic level. We’re looking at what happens inside the muscles during exertion and what happens in the whole body when molecules released from muscles affect the function of other organs.”

What are you studying, more specifically?

“One example is our research on the protein PGC-1 that, with exercise, enables muscles to cleanse the blood of certain substances that are harmful to the brain. Our demonstration of a concrete mechanism for the connection between physical activity and mental health drew a great deal of international attention. What’s more, the mechanism was somewhat unexpected – we’ve not seen muscles act as cleaning filters before.

Another important area for my research group is the regulation of muscle mass. From the age of around 35, we lose about 10 per cent of our muscle mass per decade if we don’t deliberately do something about it. Muscle weakness and atrophy are a huge problem that comes with ageing and with many kinds of disease. In this area, we’ve discovered a mechanism by which a certain gene controls muscular adaptations to both cardio and strength training.”

What do you ultimately hope to achieve?

“It’s thrilling to be part of this research, since what we understand about muscles has changed so much in such a short period of time, from being thought of as rather simple organs of movement to being vital endocrine organs that influence complex processes in all other organs. I hope and believe that our new insights will contribute to important medical advances, such as new treatments for muscle atrophy.”