About Me

My name is Ethan Ostrom, I am a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington School of Medicine in the Translational Bioenergetics Lab under the tutelage of Dr. David Marcinek. Our lab has a hodgepodge of scientists working on various projects all broadly related to aging skeletal muscle and mitochondrial function. I am interested in understanding how we adapt to exercise training at a molecular level and how aging affects these processes. Specifically I study how our muscles and mitochondria change with training to improve our health and mitigate age-related declines in physiological function.

Mitochondria use substrates from food like carbohydrate and fat to convert to energy (ATP) while simultaneously using Oxygen (O2) as the terminal electron donor in the Electron Transport Chain (ETC) to breakdown those fuel substrates and generate water. These organelles are a major source of cellular energy during exercise, and the primary driver for increasing oxygen demand with increasing workloads.

Exercise is perhaps one of the (if not THE) most potent intervention to delay disease progression and promote healthy aging. Obviously, exercise is not the only behavioral health intervention that can improve our health (diet, sleep, healthy social relationships etc.) but it is certainly a powerful tool in our toolbox. However, even in older populations that exercise regularly, functional decline is still present – no one is immune to father time. Given that, there are two critical lines of research that need further exploration to potentially improve our prescription of exercise to promote adaptation and healthy aging:

1) We need to identify and understand how we adapt to exercise to the fullest extent possible on every scale (from molecular and cellular physiology to integrated systems physiology).

2) We need to explore other interventions and drugs that improve our health in tandem with exercise (additive or synergistic effect).

These 2 prongs are the focus of my research. This can be broadly summarized as the intersection between the biology of aging and the biology of exercise.The exercise-drug interaction effect on health outcomes and trainability is particularly interesting in my opinion, and a field that is still very young with lots of interesting and important questions to address.

Before I came to UW, I completed my Ph.D. in Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University under the mentorship of Dr. Tinna Traustadóttir. There I studied the effects of age and sex on redox signaling mechanisms in humans in response to aerobic training. I have several publications stemming from this work (See Scientific Publications page). One critical finding from this work was that training can improve redox signaling function in older humans, but not to the same degree as young, all else being equal (training volume/intensity). This finding is the foundation for my current work at UW and a core reason for me becoming interested in exercise adjuvants (an adjuvant therapy is something given in tandem with the primary prescription in hopes to improve effectiveness of the primary intervention).

I completed my bachelors of science in Exercise Biology at UC Davis from 2008 to 2013, and a masters in Physical Education and Athletic Administration at Idaho State University from 2013 to 2015. During this time (2008 - 2015) I was also training and competing as a pole vaulter, first as an NCAA DI athlete at UC Davis, then as an unsponsored post-collegiate athlete trying to hack it professionally. Suffice it to say I did not ‘hack it’ and eventually retired in 2015. I worked as a research associate in a private orthopedic sports medicine clinic for a year between finishing my Masters and starting my Ph.D. There I helped several physicians in the practice with quality improvement research and got a taste of the inner workings of clinicians in a sports medicine setting. My background and academic experience is… varied to say the least, but the thread that connects all of these experiences is a love and deep interest in the biology of exercise.

For those laypeople who read research papers like mine, there is a ton of jargon and concepts heavy in ‘biology speak’, but I understand the importance of translating the science to help others improve their health and longevity in an evidence-based manner. Therefore, the purpose of this website is to present the relevant evidence for you to make better informed decisions about your health with these writings and educational content (its a great learning experience for me too!).

Currently, my own personal exercise experiences consist of running with my dog Ziggy in the mornings, and lifting in my home gym. Most of this training is to stay healthy, but occasionally I will run a race or climb a mountain. I like to talk about those adventures too, so it wont be all about the Science of You. I hope you will join me for the adventure and get some value out of my rambling.

-Ethan

Ziggy, German Short Haired Pointer - Mt. Rainier National Park, 2021

The best running buddy