There are several hypotheses about how endometriosis develops, why some women have it and why others don't. (You can read more about this topic in the Endoblog's Pathogenesis section) The scientists of the research I am presenting to you today started from the hypothesis of inflammatory predisposition (susceptibility to inflammation) for the origin of endometriosis, which indeed suggests that physical activity has a beneficial effect on endometriosis. Let's see what the researchers concluded.
Montenegro and colleagues are a team of researchers from Brazil who have published their findings on this research in the scientific journal Reproductive Sciences. The authors' aim was to evaluate the usefulness of physical activity in both the treatment and prevention of endometriosis.
To do this, animal experiments were carried out, comparing a total of 7 groups of 10 rats per group, with the difference between the groups being the amount of exercise. The first group did no physical activity (no exercise), the second group did light exercise (once a week), the third group did moderate exercise (three times a week) and the fourth group did intense exercise (five times a week).
The rats were used to induce endometriosis, i.e. endometriosis was induced in their bodies. In three groups, physical activity was introduced before the induction of endometriosis to observe a possible preventive function.
The other groups started exercise after endometriosis induction to better assess the degree of therapeutic benefit.
Swimming was chosen as a physical activity because rats have an innate ability to swim, making it a less stressful activity for these animals.
Results:
It seems that swimming, as a physical activity following endometriosis induction, is effective in the treatment of endometriosis because the size of the lesions is reduced, independently of the frequency of physical activity. However, physical activity before endometriosis induction has not been shown to have a preventive effect on endometriosis.
At the end of the 10-week swimming period, the researchers observed increased levels of FAS gene expression (which plays an important role in cell apoptosis) and decreased levels of MMP gene expression, which is associated with cell migration and differentiation, in rats that started swimming after endometriosis induction.
This means that the proliferation, migration and differentiation of endometriotic tissues were also reduced. In addition, the level of oxidative stress detected in blood also showed a decrease in all exercise groups.
Only the immunohistochemical tests did not yield the expected results, as there was no significant difference in protein levels.
Exercise can play an important role in the treatment and prevention of endometriosis, but further controlled trials are needed to clarify the true role of exercise in women with endometriosis, the researchers added.
Although the presence of inflammatory processes in endometriosis has long been proven, the effect of exercise has not yet been studied. One of the limitations of the research is that only the effect of swimming has been studied and it has been tested in rats, so any conclusions drawn should be treated with caution.
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30231769
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