Improvement of Oxidative Stress in Older Women Is Dependent on Resistance Training Volume: Active Aging Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Cunha, PM, Ribeiro, AS, Padilha, C, Nunes, JP, Schoenfeld, BJ, Cyrino, LT, Tomeleri, CM, Nascimento, MA, Antunes, M, Fernandes, RR, Barbosa, DS, Venturini, D, Burini, RC, Sardinha, LB, and Cyrino, ES. Improvement of oxidative stress in older women is dependent on resistance training volume: Active aging longitudinal study. J Strength Cond Res 36(4): 1141–1146, 2022—The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of resistance training (RT) performed with a higher versus lower training volume on oxidative stress (OS) biomarkers in older women. Thirty-eight older women (≥60 years) were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups: a group that performed 1 set per exercise (low volume [LV], n = 18) or 3 sets per exercise (high volume [HV], n = 20). The whole-body RT consisted of a 12-week RT program involving 8 exercises performed with sets of 10–15 repetitions maximum, 3 days per week. Advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP), total radical-trapping antioxidant parameter (TRAP), and ferrous oxidation-xylenol orange (FOX) were used as OS biomarkers. The composite Z-score of the percentage changes from pre- to posttraining of OS biomarkers according to groups was calculated. A significant main effect of time (p < 0.05) was found for AOPP (LV = −7.3% vs. HV = −12.2%) and TRAP (LV = +1.5% vs. HV = +15.5%) concentrations, without a statistical difference between the groups (p > 0.05). A significant group vs. time interaction (p < 0.001) was revealed for FOX (LV = +6.4% vs. HV = −8.9%). The overall analysis indicated higher positive changes for HV than LV (composed Z-score: HV = 0.41 ± 1.22 vs. LV = −0.37 ± 1.03; p < 0.05). Our results suggest that a greater volume of RT seems to promote superior improvements on OS biomarkers in older women.

Effect of Physical Activity/Exercise on Oxidative Stress and Inflammation in Muscle and Vascular Aging

“…This seems to be a key element of hormesis activation of antioxidant signaling pathways, resulting in an increase in antioxidant capacity [ 70 ]. In line with this, a very recent clinical trial has shown that a greater volume of resistance training can promote superior improvement on different oxidative stress biomarkers in older women [ 213 ].…”

Effects of Three Resistance Exercise Orders on Muscular Function and Body Composition in Older Women

“…However, the hypothesis that these occurred due to possible overtraining should not be dismissed. Although we opted for using a relatively high volume in the 24 weeks of RT because we had observed that this seems to be ideal for inducing optimal adaptations in the outcomes studied herein for this population [12,[23][24][25][26][27][28], the use of such training protocol might have exceeded the ideal training dose for some participants. Moreover, the presence of the ALT group, which performed the same EO throughout the 24 weeks of RT, allows us to believe that simply changing the EO after a 12-week training period does not influence the responses to training.…”

Moderate and Higher Protein Intakes Promote Superior Body Recomposition in Older Women Performing Resistance Training

“…This analysis is derived from data from the Active Aging Longitudinal Study, an investigation project that has analyzed the effects of supervised and progressive RT programs on older women's health indicators. Our sample was selected from experiments carried out between 2015 and 2019 (7,(27)(28)(29)(30)(31). For this study, were included only participants that followed similar experimental protocols.…”