Plain language title: "Why physiological phenotyping is important for healthspan extension."

What is it about?

This experimental study extends our knowledge about physiological health-supporting mechanisms and clarifies why individuals respond differently to various exercise activities, such as aerobic and stretching. It also explains how circadian variations (morning/evening) affect their effectiveness, as indicated in other studies. Previous studies have challenged the common wellness and fitness paradigm that physical activities have a universally positive impact, regardless of individual phenotypes. When you visit resorts or fitness clubs, you are not typically phenotyped for appropriate physical activities, putting you at risk of incorrect management of your body and mind, with potential negative outcomes remaining unnoticed until later follow-up. At these clubs and resorts, you pay for all they offer, often with or without monitoring your pulmonary VO2, heart rate (HR), blood pressure (BP), and body composition assessments as precision estimates of individual cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory fitness at baseline and follow-up. However, many people mistakenly believe these fitness metrics provide valuable information about the impact of physical activity on their individual health, which is not correct. While physical, cardiovascular, and cardiorespiratory fitness metrics intersect with health, they do not equate to it. These metrics do not indicate how much health you expend to maintain your body and mind fitness during exercises and add little to predicting their impacts on future individual health states. For example, when your body faces physical challenges at fitness clubs and resorts, it increases blood supply to deliver oxygen and glucose, compensating for the increased metabolic activity in muscles. This can be indicated by increased pulmonary VO2, HR, and BP reaching optimal values within individual homeostatic ranges. However, these indicators do not provide information about actual blood supply to muscles, as BP can be elevated due to systemic vasoconstrictions in some individuals, restricting muscles from optimal metabolic regulation despite increased pulmonary VO2 and HR, thus putting them at risk for ischemia and subsequent inflammation. Consequently, you may leave fitness clubs with an unnoticed negative impact on your health, which will only become apparent later in life. Moreover, visiting a fitness club at times that do not match your circadian rhythms, which is closely connected with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal activity, can also lead to ineffective muscle metabolic regulation and similar health risks. Some individuals require high cortisol levels to benefit from high physical activities and need morning exercises, while others require low cortisol levels and benefit from evening exercises. Engaging in physical activities at incorrect times for your individual circadian rhythms is harmful to your health. This situation is further complicated for young women with different physiological phenotypes, as the phases of their menstrual cycle also impact their response to physical activities and interact with circadian cycle effects.

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Why is it important?

After reading this expert’s note, do you still count yourself among those believers in the current fitness and wellness procedures and programs as healthy or will you demand that the resort and fitness industry, along with companies managing digital health platforms and wearable technologies, make changes to protect your health from their imprecise offers?

Perspectives