Franchise Today streamlinebrands.com DIVE INTO YOUR ADVENTURE Every great swimmer started somewhere. Join the team that teaches a life skill and has a lifetime of passion and love for the water. Start your business with Streamline Brands today, the official swim school provider of USA Swimming. THE LITTLE THINGS Muscle, heart, immunity, brain: These are just a few things for which lifetime exercise is like bathing in the fountain of youth. Costill, for his part, suspects many of the most important age-de- fying functions still remain hidden from view within complex machinations of our genomic, cellular, and metabolic functioning. A review in 2018 in Frontiers in Endocrinology looked at nine “cellular and molecular hallmarks” of aging that appear modi- fiable by exercise. Some of these are familiar to science buffs. For example, “genomic instability” refers to the steady accrual of genetic damage across the lifespan. The problem is made worse by decreasing ability to repair DNA. The good news: Ev- idence is quickly accumulating that exercise can tune up these repair mechanisms. Another high-profile cellular hallmark of aging is “telomere attrition.” Telomeres cap our chromosomes like the plastic tips that keep shoelaces from unraveling. Unfortunately, each time a cell replicates, the telomeres shorten—eventually to the point where nothing’s left to keep our chromosomes from unraveling. “Although the potential mechanism is unclear, exercise exhibits a favorable impact on telomere length, especially in older peo- ple,” says Alexandre Rebelo-Marques, the review’s lead author and a researcher at the Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Bio- medical Research in Portugal. Among the other metabolic hallmarks he and his colleagues reviewed are loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, and stem cell exhaustion—items best left to the doctorate fra- ternity to fathom. Rebelo-Marques says the biochemical minuti- ae here may be challenging, but the takeaway is simple: Exercise is a “polypill” that slows down aging in myriad ways. “Looking at the big picture,” he says, “many paths lead to Rome, but the safest and most triumphant route should exten- sively rely on physical exercise. The motto is ‘Move for your life.’ Remember: Exercise is medicine.” Colonials 1776 member Jim Thornton is a National Magazine Award– winning writer and a Masters swimmer since 1984. Florida Aquatic Combined Team member Betty Lorenzi has set 39 individual U.S. Masters Swimming records, all in the 80-84, 85-89, and 90-94 age groups. Peter H. Bick 36 usms.org