6 ms·

Exercise should be kept to a healthy minimum

31 points by havella 9y ago

DrScump 9y ago
... to minimize entropy. Is there a proven cause-and-effect relationship to actual mortality? Was this ever peer-reviewed? (2007 study)
NikolaeVarius 9y ago
Science has finally validated my life choices to sit inside a air conditioned room, lights on, windows covered, minimal physical activity, doing things that don't require brain power.
- copperx 9y ago
  > doing things that don't require brain power For a moment I thought that you were going to be either programming or reading.
  - tpeo 9y ago
    Depends on what kind of programming or reading. Writing out boilerplate code or just skimming text don't seem to require much brain power. Neither does a task which one is so used to that it becomes "effortless".
failrate 9y ago
I work out with a serious body builder and a serious power lifter. Both of them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get the greatest benefit.
- matwood 9y ago
  > Both of them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get the greatest benefit. Absolutely! I can only go full effort lifting for maybe 45 minutes. After that I'm just going through the motions. Another thing to remember is that gains do not come while you're in the gym. The gains happen during the rest periods between workouts, so resting is just as important as the workout.
- DrScump 9y ago
  "Hit it, and quit it."
brianwawok 9y ago
Well, find some 70 year olds near you that never exercised, and find some runners / triathletes. Choose which 70 year old you would rather be, and use that to chart your own path.
- threepipeproblm 9y ago
  This would involve a selection bias. For example, evidence is mounting that endurance athletes die earlier than non-endurance athletes. UPDATE: I have provided a more detailed account, with some citations, below.
  - loeg 9y ago
    > evidence is mounting that endurance athletes die earlier than non-endurance athletes. Please provide a citation for that extraordinary claim.
    - rrauenza 9y ago
      I recall seeing this as well... Maybe even posted on HN. A quick Google on marathon life expectancy: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20140401/too-much-running-tied-to-shorter-lifespan-studies-find#1 http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20140401/too-much...
    - abraae 9y ago
      Not intended to support the parent's assertions, but it has been established that endurance exercise increases the propensity for Atrial Fibrillation, a potentially dangerous arrhythmia of the heart. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638655/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638655/.
      - AppeasingRoko 9y ago
        Sure, but it also decreases mortality by reducing the risk for hundreds of diseases, including heart disease, the leading killer for over-65s. You have to balance pros/cons, obviously!
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> The entropy generated predicts a life span of 73.78 and 81.61 years for the average U.S. male and female individuals respectively, which are values that closely match the average lifespan from statistics (74.63 and 80.36 years). Can...this be changed?
tomq 9y ago
This study is completely disconnected from biological reality. Exercise is the only general-purpose life-extending intervention we know of with certainty. See for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise
- interfixus 9y ago
  "Some studies indicate that exercise may increase life expectancy and the overall quality of life" Or, as some would have it, "with certainty".
- 013a 9y ago
  There is also mounting evidence that running a consistent caloric deficit can increase your life expectancy [1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-the-secret-to-a-long-and-healthy-life-eat-less http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-the-secret-to-a-lon...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Aron 9y ago
I'm perfectly willing to believe it. From an Occam's razor perspective, exercise most directly and clearly is wear and tear. Stories about how the body overcome and benefits from that are more complicated, hence more likely wrong.
- 3131s 9y ago
  I don't see it as wear and tear. If you exercise correctly, everything from your bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles will become stronger. The athleticism and strength that come from exercising will be beneficial for aging people in preventing and recovering from accidents. Not to discount the possibility of harmful effects, but the other benefits of intense exercise (especially cognitive health benefits) are easily worth it for me.
  - ramparrt 9y ago
    Exactly this. Training principles are built upon the theory of supercompensation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation) - by using something you make it weaker and your body makes it stronger.
  - Aron 9y ago
    It's two separate things. The exercise is most directly damaging. The repair and improve process is a response. Our experience with things like bench press shows the response generally works on the measure of lifting iron. However, it's simpler and more demonstrable that exercise damages all your parts, than the theory that all your parts can be repaired and improved. Hence perhaps arthritic wear and tear, or damage to some part of the heart, etc.
    - AppeasingRoko 9y ago
      An entirely sedentary lifestyle has incredibly high mortality. Similarly so for extreme exercise/steroid abuse. By definition, there is a point in between which maximises longevity on average. This may not be the same as the point which maximises quality of life. How exactly does exercise "damage all your parts"? You need proof to back up that bizarre claim. Humans are evolutionarily designed to be long distance athletes.
nitins 9y ago
What will be the definition for this healthy minimum?
jimmywanger 9y ago
There is so much wrong with this article. I don't think anybody has a unit for entropy. They are falling a fallacy. Just because you entered the world, you have increased entropy. Every time you eat, you increase entropy. I can't believe this got published.
- raattgift 9y ago
  > I don't think anybody has a unit for entropy. S = k log w. [1] S has units of energy divided by temperature. > Every time you eat, you increase entropy. Globally, yes, but it is very common to take the entropy of a bounded system. One can talk about e.g. cardiac entropy - the number of microstates (e.g. differentiated cells or even their individual molecules) that can form the same state observable at the boundary of the heart. One can likewise talk about cellular entropy (the boundary being the cellular membrane), or about the entropy of an organism (the boundary being its outer surface, like the human skin and related exposed structures). The entropy of all of these is much lower than that of a container of 70 kg of water at 310 kelvins; you can swap a molecule of the water in one part of a container with that in another part without wrecking observables of the water at the boundary, repeating the process until you have moved every molecule of water. You can't swap many brain cells with liver cells and expect the organism not to die; you can't swap molecules from the cellular membrane with molecules with the genetic molecules in a cell and expect the cell not to die; and so forth. "Non-swapability" goes hand-in-hand with "low entropy". > Just because you entered the world, you have increased entropy Globally, with the boundary at the horizon of the observable universe, entropy always increases. As a human embryo grows into an adult, the entropy at the boundary of that individual's outer surface (mostly) increases, because the overall matter increases, with the increase in the number of differentiated cells offsetting the decrease in entropy from the non-swapability of cells that have differentiated into e.g. smooth muscle or glial cells. However, growing humans are still very low entropy. Once the mass of an adult human stabilizes, it makes sense to think of the entropy of fatty vs non-fatty tissues. Adipose is relatively high entropy (you can move bits of it from one cell to another without killing the cells or the adult human; this is a normal part of fat metabolism even, and moving adipose tissues around is routine in cosmetic surgery) compared with e.g. the kidneys. The skeletal musculature, grossly, is lower entropy than fatty tissues, because moving a large piece of a whole muscle from one joint to another (e.g in some orthopedic surgeries) affects the observables of the adult human (e.g. by changing his or her gait or the range of motion of the affected joint(s)). However, as one "bulks up", there is more skeletal muscle, so the entropy of each, and the overall entropy of the individual, increases. > I can't believe this got published. vs > They are falling a fallacy. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Divine_fallacy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Divine_fallacy A correlation between Boltzmannian entropy of an individual and the individual's lifespan is interesting. --- [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Boltzmann%27s_entropy_formula https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Boltzmann%27s_entropy_formula
batiudrami 9y ago
This [1] is a study which attempts to quantify the diminishing returns of exercise. Compared to no exercise, people who do 1-2 times the recommended 75 minutes of weekly intense exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise have a 31% lower chance of death across a median 14 year follow up period. Those who complete 2-3x the recommended amount had 37% lower and 3-5x a 39% lower chance. There was no sign of negative effects of 5-10x the recommended amount, however no additional benefit either. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730
JabavuAdams 9y ago
Why do I want to minimize biological entropy? What does this mean?

31 points by havella 9y ago

... to minimize entropy. Is there a proven cause-and-effect relationship to actual mortality? Was this ever peer-reviewed? (2007 study)

NikolaeVarius 9y ago

Science has finally validated my life choices to sit inside a air conditioned room, lights on, windows covered, minimal physical activity, doing things that don't require brain power.

copperx 9y ago
> doing things that don't require brain power For a moment I thought that you were going to be either programming or reading.
- tpeo 9y ago
  Depends on what kind of programming or reading. Writing out boilerplate code or just skimming text don't seem to require much brain power. Neither does a task which one is so used to that it becomes "effortless".

failrate 9y ago

I work out with a serious body builder and a serious power lifter. Both of them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get the greatest benefit.

matwood 9y ago
> Both of them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get the greatest benefit. Absolutely! I can only go full effort lifting for maybe 45 minutes. After that I'm just going through the motions. Another thing to remember is that gains do not come while you're in the gym. The gains happen during the rest periods between workouts, so resting is just as important as the workout.
DrScump 9y ago
"Hit it, and quit it."

brianwawok 9y ago

Well, find some 70 year olds near you that never exercised, and find some runners / triathletes. Choose which 70 year old you would rather be, and use that to chart your own path.

threepipeproblm 9y ago
This would involve a selection bias. For example, evidence is mounting that endurance athletes die earlier than non-endurance athletes. UPDATE: I have provided a more detailed account, with some citations, below.
- loeg 9y ago
  > evidence is mounting that endurance athletes die earlier than non-endurance athletes. Please provide a citation for that extraordinary claim.
  - rrauenza 9y ago
    I recall seeing this as well... Maybe even posted on HN. A quick Google on marathon life expectancy: http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20140401/too-much-running-tied-to-shorter-lifespan-studies-find#1 http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20140401/too-much...
  - abraae 9y ago
    Not intended to support the parent's assertions, but it has been established that endurance exercise increases the propensity for Atrial Fibrillation, a potentially dangerous arrhythmia of the heart. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638655/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2638655/.
    - AppeasingRoko 9y ago
      Sure, but it also decreases mortality by reducing the risk for hundreds of diseases, including heart disease, the leading killer for over-65s. You have to balance pros/cons, obviously!

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> The entropy generated predicts a life span of 73.78 and 81.61 years for the average U.S. male and female individuals respectively, which are values that closely match the average lifespan from statistics (74.63 and 80.36 years). Can...this be changed?

tomq 9y ago

This study is completely disconnected from biological reality. Exercise is the only general-purpose life-extending intervention we know of with certainty. See for yourself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise

interfixus 9y ago
"Some studies indicate that exercise may increase life expectancy and the overall quality of life" Or, as some would have it, "with certainty".
013a 9y ago
There is also mounting evidence that running a consistent caloric deficit can increase your life expectancy [1] http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-the-secret-to-a-long-and-healthy-life-eat-less http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170601-the-secret-to-a-lon...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Aron 9y ago

I'm perfectly willing to believe it. From an Occam's razor perspective, exercise most directly and clearly is wear and tear. Stories about how the body overcome and benefits from that are more complicated, hence more likely wrong.

3131s 9y ago
I don't see it as wear and tear. If you exercise correctly, everything from your bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles will become stronger. The athleticism and strength that come from exercising will be beneficial for aging people in preventing and recovering from accidents. Not to discount the possibility of harmful effects, but the other benefits of intense exercise (especially cognitive health benefits) are easily worth it for me.
- ramparrt 9y ago
  Exactly this. Training principles are built upon the theory of supercompensation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercompensation) - by using something you make it weaker and your body makes it stronger.
- Aron 9y ago
  It's two separate things. The exercise is most directly damaging. The repair and improve process is a response. Our experience with things like bench press shows the response generally works on the measure of lifting iron. However, it's simpler and more demonstrable that exercise damages all your parts, than the theory that all your parts can be repaired and improved. Hence perhaps arthritic wear and tear, or damage to some part of the heart, etc.
  - AppeasingRoko 9y ago
    An entirely sedentary lifestyle has incredibly high mortality. Similarly so for extreme exercise/steroid abuse. By definition, there is a point in between which maximises longevity on average. This may not be the same as the point which maximises quality of life. How exactly does exercise "damage all your parts"? You need proof to back up that bizarre claim. Humans are evolutionarily designed to be long distance athletes.

nitins 9y ago

What will be the definition for this healthy minimum?

jimmywanger 9y ago

There is so much wrong with this article. I don't think anybody has a unit for entropy. They are falling a fallacy. Just because you entered the world, you have increased entropy. Every time you eat, you increase entropy. I can't believe this got published.

raattgift 9y ago
> I don't think anybody has a unit for entropy. S = k log w. [1] S has units of energy divided by temperature. > Every time you eat, you increase entropy. Globally, yes, but it is very common to take the entropy of a bounded system. One can talk about e.g. cardiac entropy - the number of microstates (e.g. differentiated cells or even their individual molecules) that can form the same state observable at the boundary of the heart. One can likewise talk about cellular entropy (the boundary being the cellular membrane), or about the entropy of an organism (the boundary being its outer surface, like the human skin and related exposed structures). The entropy of all of these is much lower than that of a container of 70 kg of water at 310 kelvins; you can swap a molecule of the water in one part of a container with that in another part without wrecking observables of the water at the boundary, repeating the process until you have moved every molecule of water. You can't swap many brain cells with liver cells and expect the organism not to die; you can't swap molecules from the cellular membrane with molecules with the genetic molecules in a cell and expect the cell not to die; and so forth. "Non-swapability" goes hand-in-hand with "low entropy". > Just because you entered the world, you have increased entropy Globally, with the boundary at the horizon of the observable universe, entropy always increases. As a human embryo grows into an adult, the entropy at the boundary of that individual's outer surface (mostly) increases, because the overall matter increases, with the increase in the number of differentiated cells offsetting the decrease in entropy from the non-swapability of cells that have differentiated into e.g. smooth muscle or glial cells. However, growing humans are still very low entropy. Once the mass of an adult human stabilizes, it makes sense to think of the entropy of fatty vs non-fatty tissues. Adipose is relatively high entropy (you can move bits of it from one cell to another without killing the cells or the adult human; this is a normal part of fat metabolism even, and moving adipose tissues around is routine in cosmetic surgery) compared with e.g. the kidneys. The skeletal musculature, grossly, is lower entropy than fatty tissues, because moving a large piece of a whole muscle from one joint to another (e.g in some orthopedic surgeries) affects the observables of the adult human (e.g. by changing his or her gait or the range of motion of the affected joint(s)). However, as one "bulks up", there is more skeletal muscle, so the entropy of each, and the overall entropy of the individual, increases. > I can't believe this got published. vs > They are falling a fallacy. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Divine_fallacy https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Divine_fallacy A correlation between Boltzmannian entropy of an individual and the individual's lifespan is interesting. --- [1] https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Boltzmann%27s_entropy_formula https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Boltzmann%27s_entropy_formula

batiudrami 9y ago

This [1] is a study which attempts to quantify the diminishing returns of exercise. Compared to no exercise, people who do 1-2 times the recommended 75 minutes of weekly intense exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise have a 31% lower chance of death across a median 14 year follow up period. Those who complete 2-3x the recommended amount had 37% lower and 3-5x a 39% lower chance. There was no sign of negative effects of 5-10x the recommended amount, however no additional benefit either. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730

JabavuAdams 9y ago

Why do I want to minimize biological entropy? What does this mean?