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Refuting the HN headline with a quote from the article: >Last month in The Lancet, researchers tested whether any amount of exercise could ameliorate the risk

Refuting the HN headline with a quote from the article: >Last month in The Lancet, researchers tested whether any amount of exercise could ameliorate the risk of premature death that comes with sitting for eight hours a day. Their epidemiological analysis found that 60 to 75 minutes of concerted daily exercise might to the trick.

lanius 10y ago
Yikes. I exercise 4 hours a week which isn't nearly enough, not to mention I sit for more than 12 hours a day.
- PeterWhittaker 10y ago
  See my other comment re the quality of this "refutation". You're doing fine (better than most) at 4 hours a week. Just sit less. Get up and move around more during the day. Consider both sitting and standing desks....
PeterWhittaker 10y ago
Refutes the headline? Only if you failed to RTFA. There are two critical points. Point the first, and IMHO the most important, is the rest of the paragraph that makes the "60 to 75 minutes" statement: the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive. In other words, the exercise was sufficient to reduce risks of mortality, but insufficient to actually improve health. That's a damning condemnation of the effects of excessive sitting if ever I've read one: Sit too long and your health is pooched, even if you exercise enough to survive. Point the second, the writer points out that exercise recommendations are a balance between what will bring the most benefit and what (most) people will actually do. Very few people will exercise 60 to 75 minutes a day... ...and I suspect that if they knew that that amount of exercise would have positive survival benefit but negligible health benefit they'd say to hell with it, and just keep sitting. Hence explicit and implicit recommendations from the article: Exercise 150 minutes a week (more if you can), sit less (a lot less).
- upofadown 10y ago
  >the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive. Well, yes, when you do a study based on mortality you get a result based on mortality rate. For all we know all the other studies mentioned in the article were also based on mortality. The article was being a bit dishonest by implying that mortality rate is a bad metric without addressing the issue of why that might be so in this case. The actual point is, as you point out, that sitting is bad. The headline is still wrong and pointlessly so.

lanius 10y ago

Yikes. I exercise 4 hours a week which isn't nearly enough, not to mention I sit for more than 12 hours a day.

PeterWhittaker 10y ago
See my other comment re the quality of this "refutation". You're doing fine (better than most) at 4 hours a week. Just sit less. Get up and move around more during the day. Consider both sitting and standing desks....

PeterWhittaker 10y ago

Refutes the headline? Only if you failed to RTFA. There are two critical points. Point the first, and IMHO the most important, is the rest of the paragraph that makes the "60 to 75 minutes" statement: the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive. In other words, the exercise was sufficient to reduce risks of mortality, but insufficient to actually improve health. That's a damning condemnation of the effects of excessive sitting if ever I've read one: Sit too long and your health is pooched, even if you exercise enough to survive. Point the second, the writer points out that exercise recommendations are a balance between what will bring the most benefit and what (most) people will actually do. Very few people will exercise 60 to 75 minutes a day... ...and I suspect that if they knew that that amount of exercise would have positive survival benefit but negligible health benefit they'd say to hell with it, and just keep sitting. Hence explicit and implicit recommendations from the article: Exercise 150 minutes a week (more if you can), sit less (a lot less).

upofadown 10y ago
>the people weren’t necessarily healthy, just alive. Well, yes, when you do a study based on mortality you get a result based on mortality rate. For all we know all the other studies mentioned in the article were also based on mortality. The article was being a bit dishonest by implying that mortality rate is a bad metric without addressing the issue of why that might be so in this case. The actual point is, as you point out, that sitting is bad. The headline is still wrong and pointlessly so.