It's not every day I get an email from someone in Taiwan about exercise, white blood cells, and menstruation. But in response to my post How Much Exercise Harms Your Immune System?, Guan-Da Syu from National Cheng Kung University Medical College dropped me a friendly note (if you can call an email with its own bibliography a "note") a few days ago. Syu is the lead author of the paper I'd discussed in that post, and he wanted to respond to some questions I raised.
The paper reported that after out-of-shape individuals engaged in sudden and intense exercise, their white blood cells died at an accelerated rate. An increase in reactive, oxygen-containing molecules seemed to be the culprit. But when those same people got consistent and moderate exercise--five days a week for 30 minutes--their white blood cells lived for longer. Furthermore, consistent exercise buffered the harmful effects of more strenuous ...
