Instant Epigenetics
Exercise can delay the onset of diabetes by boosting the expression of genes involved in muscle oxidation and glucose regulation. A new study, published today (March 6) in Cell Metabolism, suggests that DNA methylation drives some of these changes, and that they can occur within just a few hours of exercise, providing a potential mechanism for how exercise protects the body from metabolic disease.
Or in other words, your DNA changes to help protect you from diabetes – all you need to do is exercise. But you need to always exercise:
Evidence of such transient epigenetic changes is exciting, said Ling, but the changes didn’t last long: within a few more hours of the initial increases in gene expression, the muscle methylation and expression levels returned to baseline. This begs the question of whether the effects will eventually stabilize with regular exercise, she said. “If you exercise a lot and you make these epigenetic changes, you wouldn’t just change your [short-term] expression, but [in the] long-term, change your genome. And maybe you will be more protected from diabetes due to epigenetic change.”
http://the-scientist.com/2012/03/06/exercise-alters-epigenetics/