Poor Little Mousies

August 31st, 2011 by Amy Gonsalves Leave a reply »

This one caught my eye because, well, it’s about exercise and heart disease.  Need I say more?  But then I read the article and they talk about mice having heart attacks.

See, this is why I’m not a fan of school.  They try and teach you one thing and you spend the next three days seeing poor little mousies in their little cages with their little wheels having little teensy tiny mouse heart attacks.  And by the time the little code reds or code blues or gee maybe it’s code cheese for mice then I’ve completely lost track of what I am supposed to be paying attention to.

Tell me I’m not the only one who does this.

ANYWHO, so the point is not at all about mice or mousies or little teensy hearts or little
wheels (that in my mind always squeak; do they really always squeak?).  It’s about ONE OF THE BEST BENEFITS OF EXERCISE EVER.

Nope, it isn’t being able to fit in my clothes.

It’s PREVENTING HEART DISEASE.

This is sort of new news because this particular study didn’t just re-prove that exercise helps prevent heart attacks… it was able to come up with reasons why, when mice exercised for four weeks, they were (1) protected from coronary heart blockage, (2) had less heart damage if they did have a heart attack, and (3) were protected in the same ways for 1-4 weeks after they stopped their exercise program.

(See, I’m back to smiling at the thought of little mousies being on exercise programs.  I can see the little mouse exercise instructor with a clipboard and towel around her neck in front of all the wheels, cheering the little exercising mousies on.  It’s amazing I get  anything accomplished in my day.)

It all comes down to the endothelial nitric oxide synthase present in the mousies’ bodies when they were exercising.   The more nitric oxide available in your body to help you out during a heart emergency, the better your chances of survival because nitric oxide helps dilate blood vessels and increase blood flow… exactly what your body needs if you are experiencing a heart attack.

I’m still stuck on the poor little mousies.  Do they feed them poor food choices to have a sufficient sample size of heart attack prone little mice?

I’ll have to go for a run and think about it.

Lucky for me, I can run on the ground and spare myself the squeaky wheel.

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