Exercise is an essential element which contributes to the health of every person and positively affects the entire body. At the same time, from the perspective of biology, exercise becomes a significant challenge for the homeostasis of humans. The article “Integrative Biology of Exercise” by Hawley et al. provides an insight into how exercise affects people on the biochemical level.
Exercise has both strengths and weaknesses, all of which need to be considered before engaging in it. For instance, exercise is a considerable threat to the cardiovascular system homeostasis due to the fact that during it, people experience hypothermia, an increase in the body temperature (Hawley et al., 2014). Additionally, due to the high temperature, people also become subject to dehydration, and both of these elements become challenges to the cardiovascular system. Moreover, exercise causes the tissues and cells in the cardiovascular system to experience perturbations. To blunt the aforementioned threats, integrated redundant responses begin their activities. For example, fuel mobilization and neuroendocrine responses activate while support systems increase oxygen and substrate delivery to skeletal muscle. Mitochondrial biogenesis is also a part of the exercise process, and it gets coordinated by an inducible coactivator PGC-1a which regulates the expression of mitochondrial proteins encoded in the nuclear and mitochondrial genomes. Exercise increases the PGC-1a gene, which leads to the growth of functional mitochondria and a shift from carbohydrate to fat fuels. Exercise positively affects the wellbeing of people but can lead to trauma, inflammation, and harm to the cardiovascular system.
Hawley et al., in their article “Integrative biology of exercise,” demonstrate how exercise is linked to different biochemical processes in the human body. Exercise causes perturbations in cells and tissues of the body, including in the cardiovascular system, which can be potentially dangerous. During exercise, fuel mobilization and neuroendocrine responses are observed while mitochondrial biogenesis gets coordinated by the PGC-1a gene.
References
Hawley, J., Hargreaves, M., Joyner, M., & Zierath, J. (2014). Integrative biology of exercise. Cell 169(4), 738–49. Web.