{"id":988,"date":"2019-07-11T12:03:11","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T16:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/?p=988"},"modified":"2026-05-01T13:04:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T17:04:20","slug":"study-shows-that-exercise-before-surgery-can-protect-muscles-and-nerves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/study-shows-that-exercise-before-surgery-can-protect-muscles-and-nerves\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Shows that Exercise Before Surgery Can Protect Muscles and Nerves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-499\" src=\"https:\/\/med.virginia.edu\/bims\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/390\/2019\/07\/Yan_smsq-1.jpg\" alt=\"Zhen Yan\" width=\"300\" height=\"240\" \/>UVA\u2019s Zhen Yan, PhD, a top expert on the cellular benefits of exercise, and his team are working to better understand how the body is damaged by the restoration of blood flow \u2013 known as ischemia reperfusion injury \u2013 and to find ways to improve outcomes for people who suffer it, including surgery and trauma patients and soldiers injured on the battlefield. They found that pre-injury exercise clearly reduced the damage to both muscle and nerve, but it did not significantly reduce the amount of oxidative stress. \u201cWe know exercise made the muscle and nerve tougher,\u201d Yan said. \u201cThe protection is very clear.\u201d\u00a0 [<a href=\"https:\/\/newsroom.uvahealth.com\/2019\/01\/15\/exercise_protects_muscles_nerves\/?fbclid=IwAR3JubBXP_rCt3khCFTNGKZjp0V_wwILCKgIWOX03DyIm57gD55MhdJzYPs\/\">Read more<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UVA\u2019s Zhen Yan, PhD, a top expert on the cellular benefits of exercise, and his team are working to better understand how the body is damaged by the restoration of blood flow \u2013 known as ischemia reperfusion injury \u2013 and to find ways to improve outcomes for people who suffer it, including surgery and trauma [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-highlights","tag-delete"],"acf":false,"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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