Scientists studying the health benefits of a form of high-resistance breathing training have published new research showing how it can increase our exercise capacity. The technique was also shown to improve certain aspects of metabolism when practiced daily, and the researchers suggested it could be adopted to help push people towards more active lifestyles.
The technique at the center of this research is known as high-resistance inspiratory muscle strength training (IMST), which emerged in the 1980s as a way to treat patients with respiratory disease. The idea is to spend a short period of time inhaling through a handheld device that draws air in the opposite direction, creating resistance to strengthen the user’s diaphragm and other respiratory muscles.
Where conventionally this has involved 30-minute sessions, last year we saw some promising research results in sessions that were only five minutes long. What study showed that, when practiced daily, these short periods of breath training can lead to dramatic drops in blood pressure and improved cardiovascular health, with some benefits persisting even after the training program ends.
This new study by the same group of researchers sought to explore how IMST could be used to improve exercise tolerance in middle-aged and older adults. The scientists recruited 35 adults aged 50 and older and placed them in either a high-resistance training group or a low-resistance control group. Both groups were tasked with wearing the breathing device for about five minutes a day, for a period of six weeks.
After completing the program, the high-endurance group exhibited a 12 percent improvement in a time-to-exhaustion test on a treadmill, while performance among the low-endurance control group did not change. The scientists also observed altered levels of 18 different metabolites in the high-endurance group, mostly those that “play key roles in energy production and fatty acid metabolism,” according to lead researcher Kaitlin Freeberg of the University of Colorado Boulder.
Scientists see daily five-minute IMST sessions as a potential way to make exercise more appealing to older and middle-aged adults and ultimately encourage the adoption of healthier lifestyles.
“Developing novel forms of physical training that increase adherence and improve physical function is key to reducing the risk of chronic diseases with aging,” Freener said. “High-strength STEMI may be one such strategy to promote adherence and improve multiple components of health in older and middle-aged adults.”
The researchers are presenting their work at the annual meeting of the American Physiological Society. Experimental Biology 2022 meeting this week.
Source: American Physiological Society
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