Tongue Exercise Does Not Help with the Age-Related Decline of Tongue Muscle Function in Rats
Exercise in the form of strength training creates such broad changes in metabolism and produces such diverse benefits to health that it is interesting to see a specific example in which it doesn't help at all. That is possibly a path to better understanding which of the results of exercise are important, versus which are not, when it comes to functional improvement of specific tissues in later life. Many of the benefit of exercise are likely secondary effects produced by changes in skeletal muscle metabolism and myokine signaling on other parts of the body. Those effects will be largely absent in a study such as this, where only one small set of muscles are trained.
Exercise-based treatment approaches for dysphagia may improve swallow function in part by inducing adaptive changes to muscles involved in swallowing. We have previously shown that both aging and progressive resistance tongue exercise, in a rat model, can induce biological changes in the genioglossus (GG); a muscle that elevates and protrudes the tongue. However, the impacts of progressive resistance tongue exercise on the retrusive muscles (styloglossus, SG; hyoglossus, HG) of the tongue are unknown. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of a progressive resistance tongue exercise regimen on the retrusive tongue musculature in the context of aging. Given that aging alters retrusive tongue muscles to more slowly contracting fiber types, we hypothesized that these biological changes may be mitigated by tongue exercise.
Hyoglossus (HG) and styloglossus (SG) muscles of male rats were assayed in age groups of young (9 months old, n = 24), middle-aged (24 months old, n = 23), and old (32 months old, n = 26), after receiving an 8-week period of either progressive resistance protrusive tongue exercise, or sham exercise conditions. Following exercise, HG and SG tongue muscle contractile properties were assessed in vivo. HG and SG muscles were then isolated and assayed to determine myosin heavy chain isoform (MyHC) composition.
Both retrusive tongue muscle contractile properties and MyHC profiles of the HG and SG muscles were significantly impacted by age, but were not significantly impacted by tongue exercise. Old rats had significantly longer retrusive tongue contraction times and longer decay times than young rats. Additionally, HG and SG muscles showed significant MyHC profile changes with age, in that old groups had slower MyHC profiles as compared to young groups. However, the exercise condition did not induce significant effects in any of the biological outcome measures.
None the less, the fun, flavor, and pleasure for the person you use for exercise makes it worth pursuing ;)