Regular postexercise cooling enhances mitochondrial biogenesis through AMPK and p38 MAPK in human skeletal muscle

Abstract

This study investigated the effect of regular postexercise cold water immersion (CWI) on muscle aerobic adaptations to endurance training. Eight males performed 3 sessions/wk of endurance training for 4 wk. Following each session, subjects immersed one leg in a cold water bath (10°C; COLD) for 15 min, while the contralateral leg served as a control (CON). Muscle biopsies were obtained from vastus lateralis of both CON and COLD legs prior to training and 48 h following the last training session. Samples were analyzed for signaling kinases: p38 MAPK and AMPK, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma coactivator-1α (PGC-1α), enzyme activities indicative of mitochondrial biogenesis, and protein subunits representative of respiratory chain complexes I-V. Following training, subjects' peak oxygen uptake and running velocity were improved by 5.9% and 6.2%, respectively (P < 0.05). Repeated CWI resulted in higher total AMPK, phosphorylated AMPK, phosphorylated acetyl-CoA carboxylase, β-3-hydroxyacyl-CoA-dehydrogenase and the protein subunits representative of complex I and III (P < 0.05). Moreover, large effect sizes (Cohen's d > 0.8) were noted with changes in protein content of p38 (d = 1.02, P = 0.064), PGC-1α (d = 0.99, P = 0.079), and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor α (d = 0.93, P = 0.10) in COLD compared with CON. No differences between conditions were observed in the representative protein subunits of respiratory complexes II, IV, and V and in the activities of several mitochondrial enzymes (P > 0.05). These findings indicate that regular CWI enhances p38, AMPK, and possibly mitochondrial biogenesis.

Post-exercise cold water immersion does not alter high intensity interval training-induced exercise performance and Hsp72 responses, but enhances mitochondrial markers

“…Recently, Ihsan et al (2015) observed that regular CWI enhances molecules involved in mitochondrial biogenesis in the vastus lateralis. In that study, physically active subjects were trained using a treadmill for 4 weeks (three times per week) and had one of their legs cold water immersed while the other served as control.…”

“…This temperature and duration were chosen based in previous studies that investigated the effect of CWI after one bout of exercise (Bailey et al 2007 Fig. 1 Timeline of all experimental procedures before, during, and after the 4 weeks of weeks of high intensity interval training for both experimental groups Vaile et al 2008;Dunne et al 2013) and after a training period (Ihsan et al 2015). Water was stirred every 3 min through circular movements, avoiding temperature gradients.…”

“…Only few studies have evaluated the effect of CWI during endurance training (Yamane et al 2006;Halson et al 2014;Ihsan et al 2015) and the results are not consistent. Yamane et al (2006) reported that one leg post-exercise CWI over 4 to 6 weeks of training attenuated cycling performance improvements when compared to the control leg (no CWI).…”

“…Recently, Ihsan et al (2014) showed that acute post-exercise CWI can interfere with intramuscular muscle oxidative capacity-related signaling, evaluated by real-time PCR, which could facilitate improvements in endurance performance. In fact, the same group of investigators has recently shown that regular post-exercise CWI enhances intramuscular mitochondrial biogenesis-related signaling such as total protein content of adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase (AMPK), p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38 MAPK), phosphorylated-acetyl-CoA carboxylase (p-ACC), and mitochondrial subunits representative of respiratory complexes (C-I, C-III, and C-IV) (Ihsan et al 2015). The authors concluded that CWI is an effective strategy to improve changes in molecular signaling that lead to mitochondrial biogenesis and a possible enhancement of exercise performance.…”

Maternal High Fat Diet Alters Skeletal Muscle Mitochondrial Catalytic Activity in Adult Male Rat Offspring

“…Enzymatic activities for citrate synthase (CS), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), 3-hydroxyacyl-CoA dehydrogenase (HADH) and carnitine palmitoyl transferase-1 (CPT1) were determined as previously described (Ihsan et al, 2015). Briefly, tissue was weighed and homogenized in ice-cold homogenization buffer (25 mM TRIS-HCL pH 7.8, 1 mM EDTA, 2 mM MgCl 2 , 50 mM KCl, 0.50% Triton X-100) using a Qiagen TissueLyser II (Qiagen, Dusseldorf, Germany).…”