Professor Janet Lord

It's one of the factors that's causing this frailty.

Exactly.

So it's one of the things that's going to increase the risk of an older adult becoming physically frail.

Can you help us understand, Janet?

I can.

Again, lots of ways.

And as you said, we've known for a long time that the more physically active you are, you reduce your risk of a whole range of diseases.

You're likely to be longer lived and have a longer healthy lifespan.

And it's now becoming clear that this might be because exercise reduces inflammation.

And it does it in lots of ways.

So if you're being very physically active, you're less likely to have too much adipose tissue, too much fat.

So you've reduced one of those sources of that inflammation.

By doing that, you've reduced the risk of your vessels being damaged.

I told you earlier about inflammation reduces your muscle mass and strength.

So you've reduced one of the causes of you feeling more frail and less able to function physically.

The other thing that your viewers may not be aware of is that muscle itself actually can be anti-inflammatory.

I didn't touch on that earlier, but moving muscle produces cytokines that dampen the inflammation down.

Particularly, they educate immune cells to be anti-inflammatory.

And so the more your muscle is moving, the more it's producing helpful cytokines to dampen the inflammation.

And the more you sit, the less of those are being produced.