On this Thanksgiving Day eve, a well timed article appeared today in the New York Times summarizing the results of a study conducted that reaffirms DailyEndorphin’s main mantra, the power of a daily bout of exercise. The study basically finds that a daily regimen of exercise, even amidst periods of overeating (which we don’t advise but realize it often happens during the holidays), will stunt many of its negative effects.

The following are a couple of key excerpts from the article:

The results were striking. After only a week, the young men who had not exercised displayed a significant and unhealthy decline in their blood sugar control, and, equally worrying, their biopsied fat cells seemed to have developed a malicious streak. Those cells, examined using sophisticated genetic testing techniques, were now overexpressing various genes that may contribute to unhealthy metabolic changes and underexpressing other genes potentially important for a well-functioning metabolism.

But the volunteers who had exercised once a day, despite comparable energy surpluses, were not similarly afflicted. Their blood sugar control remained robust, and their fat cells exhibited far fewer of the potentially undesirable alterations in gene expression than among the sedentary men.

“Exercise seemed to completely cancel out many of the changes induced by overfeeding and reduced activity,” said Dylan Thompson, a professor of health sciences at the University of Bath and senior author of the study. And where it did not countermand the impacts, he continued, it “softened” them, leaving the exercise group “better off than the nonexercise group,” despite engaging in equivalently insalubrious behavior.

Here’s the final kicker from the article as we enter not only the Thanksgiving holiday, but the holiday season in general over the next 5-6 weeks:

Of more pressing interest, though, is the study’s practical message that “if you are facing a period of overconsumption and inactivity” — also known as the holidays — “a daily bout of exercise will prevent many of the negative changes, at least in the short term,” Dr. Thompson said.

Go read the whole article and then why not engage your family, friends, and colleagues in a DailyEndorphin exercise challenge to help stunt the negative effects of overeating even just a little over the holiday season?

In the meantime, we wish everyone a Happy, Healthy Thanksgiving holiday!