All things in moderation, does that include exercise?

No exercise is no good, but too much can cause problems also… I think there will be a few people keeping tabs on the work of Amanda Geraghty, a James Cook University PhD student, who is carrying out research to ascertain exactly what level of exercise is optimal.

Blame it on the free radicals, volatile little molecules in the body which are unleashed by exercise and have been implicated in a range of illnesses, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to accelerated ageing. If there are too many free radicals roaming around, they can overwhelm anti-oxidants in the body (the good guys), leading to an imbalance called oxidative stress. But here’s the difficulty: while science knows that exercise increases the production of free radicals, it has also shown that trained athletes are more resistant to oxidative stress.