It's been proved - staying active keeps you young!

Physical activity helps delay ageing, it was found in a study of twins conducted at King's College, London. The results of the study, found in Archives of Internal Medicine, showed that people who are active in their leisure time tend to look biologically younger than other more sedentary types of the same age.

It's because key pieces of DNA called telomeres are apt to shorten more quickly in more sedentary people, which may signify a faster ageing process of the cells. Having an active lifestyle is related to lower rates for cancer, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Therefore, being inactive can not only make you ill but speed up the ageing process.

In the study 2,401 white twins were asked to complete questionnaires on their levels of physical activity and DNA was extracted from their blood samples These were examined for telomeres, which found at the ends of chromosomes protect the cells from damage. As people grow older these telomeres shorten, leading to cell damage and death.

The researchers were particularly interested in the white blood cells from the immune system and found that telomeres lost, on average, 21 parts called nucleotides every year.

The men and women with lower levels of physical activity tended to have shorter leukocyte telomeres than their more active peers.

Those who took only 16 minutes of exercise each week had telomeres which were 200 nucleotides shorter than those who took the maximum of 199 minutes a week of exercise including running, aerobics or tennis.

The lengths of the telomeres in inactive people who were up to ten years younger than the most active people tended to correspond with each other, on average.

Similar results were gained from directly comparing twins with different levels of physical activity.

The researchers concluded that that the cells of less active people may be more susceptible to damage from exposure to oxygen and to inflamation. Furthermore, a key benefit of exercise is to reduce stress levels which also affect length of telomeres.

The researchers wrote in the journal that "this conclusion provides a powerful message that could be used by clinicians to promote the potential ant-ageing effects of regular exercise."

Dr Jack Guralnik of the US National Institute on Aging said that more work is needed to test the correlation between ageing and physical activity and that additional factors may also be involved which have still to be researched.

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