“Exercise Research at the University of Kentucky” Video TEXT
Alicia Gregory, Chad Rumford (UK Research Communications), Kody Kiser (UK Public Relations
and Marketing)
When it comes to health-related statistics, Kentuckians are used to bad news. We know
we have a weight problem.
Kentucky is one of 12 states with a 30 percent or higher prevalence of obesity.
11.4% of us have diabetes— more than the national average. But when Men’s Health
magazine ranked Lexington, Kentucky, the most sedentary city
in the nation, it was a shock. Scientists at the University of Kentucky aren’t
taking Lexington’s number-one ranking lightly—and they
say it’s a call to action. The UK College of Health Sciences is doing
exercise research on all levels—from the test tube to the
treadmill. Associate Dean for Research Charlotte Peterson says the goal is to …
[Charlotte Peterson] “get down to the nitty-gritty of how exercise is working, so we can help
people exercise efficiently and perhaps understand
the interplay between physical activity, nutrition, other
environmental stimuli they are being exposed to , to try to help them maintain their health.”
“For example, on the treadmill, they’re looking very carefully and modeling gate,
how your knees need to move and your angles so that when you’re
running you’re doing so with the least likelihood that
you’re going to injury yourself. And the same thing with the analysis of jumping
and changing direction—this is so important for sports
like basketball and soccer that are played by more and more people. And if you don’t
do so safely and are training properly, you’re really going
to be very prone to injury that changes your lifestyle so
dramatically that that will contribute to the sedentary problem that we are trying to
avoid.” [Peterson] “We have both aerobic, cycling
kinds of exercise studies going on at the college, as well as
weight lifting and resistance training, to try to understand the mechanisms that allow
your muscle to function most efficiently.
And we also have performance study that we are finishing up on older people, trying to
understand the influence of physical activity and cognitive
function.” The College of Health Sciences is part of
a unique collaboration called the Center for Muscle Biology.
This group of more than 100 faculty, postdocs and graduate students focuses on muscle weakness,
and has more than $14 million in grant funding.
[Karyn Esser] “As director of the center I am really quite excited because I think
there are tremendous opportunities in terms of helping deal with
chronic disease issues. So whether you’re talking about diabetes,
so whether you’re talking about cancer, so whether heart
disease, that while fixing the muscle won’t fix the primary disease, it actually may contribute
a lot to the wellness of the patient, and I think that’s
really where I see ourselves contributing significantly.”
Faculty at the College of Health Sciences also work with investigators from the Barnstable
Brown Kentucky Diabetes and Obesity Center. Dr.
Peterson and Dr. Phil Kern are partnering …
[Charlotte Peterson] “to understand the effects of exercise in terms of maintain insulin
sensitivity and preventing diabetes, and really try to understand
how obesity effects muscle function and how exercise
can counteract that.” Dr. Kern says our natural inflammatory system,
that was intended to protect us, just might be
contributing to our fat problem. [Kern] “It was kind of a surprise to me
early on when I first took fat tissue from a mouse and found it
expressed inflammatory proteins, proteins we normally associate with infection and cancer.
What is that doing there? …having inflammatory cells in our fat tissue might have been a
protective force once upon a time. If you just got gored
by a saber tooth tiger while defending your home, you
might want to have some inflammatory cells nearby in that superficial space to help fight
it off. Now of course nature never imagined we would
be anywhere near as fat as we are now. So now
perhaps a natural defense mechanism that’s in our tissue is going haywire more and more
as we get more and more obese.”
[Kern] “So, not everybody who gets obese becomes diabetic. As we get more and more
obese we develop this low-grade inflammation throughout
our tissues and that makes us more and more resistant
to the actions of insulin.” Dr. Kern is targeting inflammation with fish
oil. Omega 3 in fish oil protects your heart by lowering
triglycerides, but it’s also anti-inflammatory. [Kern] “We are actually taking people with
pre-diabetes and putting them on fish oil and placebo. And
then we are doing fat biopsy, muscle biopsy, and we are looking for changes in inflammation.”
[Karyn Esser] “Type 2 diabetes is clearly a big problem in this state and in the country.
And type 2 diabetes is characterized by decrease of sensitivity of the tissue to insulin, so
we have this hormone, insulin, that tells our tissues to
take sugars up and people become insulin resistant. Well, 80 to 90% of all insulin is stored in
skeletal muscle…So we argue that type 2 diabetes is at least in
part a muscle disease.” Clinical trials of new drugs and therapies
are an important part of UK’s muscle and obesity research. Dr.
Kern also leads the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.
In June, that center received the largest grant in UK’s history—$20 million from
the National Institutes of Health. The goal of that grant: speed up
the process of taking discoveries made in the lab to patients
in the doctor’s office. [Kern] “I think that is part of the rationale
behind clinical research is that you learn from your patients
and your patients inform the research. So in the clinic you’re seeing patients,
it helps you recognize problems, it helps you ask questions that
need to be asked.” So what can the average person do right now
to improve their health? Stand up and get moving.
[Karyn Esser] “I think most of us would say get out and walk your dog. If you’re
going to pick up your newspaper in the mailbox, maybe walk around
the block before you pick it up. I don’t think the requirements for exercise
is extreme. You don’t have to do hours in the gym…it’s about
building activity into your lifestyle. Taking the stairs instead of the elevator…I think
what people need to understand is by doing that, you’re making
a health decision.” ####