Exercise Effects on Tolerance to Radiation

Abstract

As a whole, the effect of moderate exercise of 8 consecutive hrs. a day, or of 12 hrs. a day in equally spaced periods of 3 hrs., was to decrease slightly, if at all, the tolerance of mice to whole-body irradiation. After a radiation dose which was 100% lethal, 7 out of 30 mice failed to tolerate 3 consecutive days of exercise for 8 hrs. per day. Those surviving the exercise period showed no difference in survival time from their irradiated controls. Phenobarbital sedation after irradiation failed to increase the radiation tolerance of mice. It is concluded that radiation lethality does not parallel rate of O2 utilixation under the conditions of these expts.