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How ‘Exercise Hormone’ Helps Improve Your Weight and Health

While diet has the greatest impact on your weight, exercise is an important part of the total equation. It’s the ultimate levering agent for optimal health too. Exercise influences your biology in so many ways, it’s virtually impossible to pin down its benefits to one particular thing.

October 21, 2016 | Source: Mercola | by Dr. Joseph Mercola

While diet has the greatest impact on your weight, exercise is an important part of the total equation. It’s the ultimate levering agent for optimal health too. Exercise influences your biology in so many ways, it’s virtually impossible to pin down its benefits to one particular thing.

That said, recent research suggests a fat-burning hormone, released during exercise, plays a role.1,2,3,4 This hormone, irisin (aka, FNDC5), helps your body shed fat and keeps body fat from forming in the first place. As reported by Epoch Times:5

“Irisin appears to work by boosting the activity of genes and a protein that are crucial to turning white fat cells into brown cells. It also significantly increases the amount of energy used by those cells, indicating it has a role in burning fat.”

Tests show irisin is able to suppress fat cell formation by 20 to 60 percent. Normally, your body produces only small quantities of irisin. Exercise is the key to boosting its production.

Fat-Busting Hormone Also Improves Heart Function and More

Previous research into the effects of irisin — which is also classified as a myokine,6 meaning a cytokine or chemical messenger produced by muscle — suggests it has a number of beneficial health effects, including:7

Reducing arterial plaque buildup by preventing the accumulation of inflammatory cells, hence lowering your risk of atherosclerosis
Increasing the metabolic rate and energy expenditure in your myocardium (the thickest layer of your heart muscle)
Increasing mitochondrial biogenesis
 Inducing telomere elongation in cells.8 In humans, telomere length and integrity plays a role in diseases, disease susceptibility and aging.

Short telomeres are a risk factor for many diseases, including decreased immune function, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, atherosclerotic lesions and DNA damage