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Perceived Physical Activity and Mortality: Study

262 points by giffarage 8y ago

ordinaryperson 8y ago
Yes mindset is important. But having run 8 marathons I can tell you wishful thinking is not a substitute for training. You can’t really quantify fitness, there are too many subtypes (running? swimming? weightlifting?) This study used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I’m not sure they’re reliable indicators. The point of the article (as I understand it) is that positive thinking can influence your health. Fine. But let’s not get carried away: you’re not going to roll out of bed and complete an Ironman without training just because you think you can. EDIT: Mods have updated the title to better reflect the first underlying study (which focuses on mortality, not fitness). But 1) even with the focus on mortality, it's still hard to correlate PMA and mortality and not control for diet, exercise, history, genetics, etc. and 2) if PMA doesn't correlate w/fitness, it's hard to see how it can make you live longer (i.e., can you be morbidly obese and positive and live longer than an athlete with a bad mental attitude?) PMA is good. But I'm having a hard time believing you're going to live longer -- seems like there are 50 other factors that are more important.
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  My Dad, who had done 5 marathons, won the Ironman lottery to participate in the world championship. He still spent a year training all the time to finish it, and not at a competitive time. My point is that you are absolutely right.
- giffarage 8y ago
  The article focuses on risk of death with regard to fitness instead of an ability to perform in a sport.
  - ordinaryperson 8y ago
    Yes, you're right. The study is different than what the article says. The article is taking a leap of faith from that study to generalize, so, fair point. But even for that study, I'm a little skeptical of their results. There are so many factors that figure into mortality, it's hard to believe a positive attitude can really be singled out as significant. Diet? Age? Exercise level? Family history? Weight? Where does positive thinking sit on this list? Whether you're using it as a proxy for fitness or mortality I think it's a questionable correlation, IMHO.
- raverbashing 8y ago
  > used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I’m not sure they’re reliable indicators. Should be reliable enough You can't claim to be exactly fit if your pressure is 180/120 or if your BMI is high (unless you're obviously an exception - and most of those that complain about BMI aren't)
  - Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
    Blood pressure is useful, but I strongly dislike BMI. My weight hasn't fluctuated by more than 2kg in 10 years. 10 years ago I was playing competitive rugby, basketball and training for the former 3 times a week and was genuinely very fit. Now, I've got a decent amount of fat on me and am no-where near as healthy as I ought to be. Yet my weight and height haven't changed, so neither has my BMI. Nonetheless, I've lost a reasonable amount of muscle and instead put on a lot of fat. On the other hand, my blood pressure definitely has got worse.
  - ordinaryperson 8y ago
    BMI is only useful for large populations but terrible as a metric for individuals. For starters, it can't distinguish between muscle and fat. So anyone muscular is obese per BMI. More: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measure-of-health/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measu...
    - raverbashing 8y ago
      > So anyone muscular is obese per BMI. And that's why I said > unless you're obviously an exception Most of the time complaining about BMI is just an excuse for overweight individuals If needed body fat can be assessed separately.
    - dtech 8y ago
      Even for large populations BMI is a pretty mediocre metric since it is heavily influenced by length. The formula is kept simple `weight / height^2` to help 19th century doctors. A more accurate growth rate for healthy weight is something like `weight / heigth^2.5` [1] This oversimplification causes standard BMI treshholds to underestimate obesity for short people (<1.6m), and overestimate obesity for tall people (>1.8m). [1] https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html
- wodenokoto 8y ago
  I thought capacity for taking in oxygen[1] was a general indicator of fitness. But then again, I haven't looked into this since highschool 15+ years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max
  - ordinaryperson 8y ago
    What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs. My point is, there is no one universal definition of fitness. The most reliable measure I've heard of is belly fat, which you can measure with a calipers. But you can't wish away belly fat with positive thinking, so I think the writers of this article are taking this study a little too far, IMO.
    - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
      Belly fat would be a poor measurement of a lot of powerlifters fitness as well. The article seems to be mixing up "fitness" and "chance of death", which, while they are related, are probably not as directly correlated as they seem to be in the article.
      - ordinaryperson 8y ago
        Yes, the article seems to take liberties from the two studies it quotes. But I also am skeptical of the underlying studies. So many factors in mortality rate I'm having a hard time believing they were able to control for all of those (weight, age, diet, exercise, family history, etc) and isolate "positive thinking."
    - always_good 8y ago
      > What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs. Sounds like a myth people believe about weight lifters.
    - retsibsi 8y ago
      Belly fat sems like a very unreliable proxy too. You can definitely be skinny without being fit in any of the usual senses, and you can have a fair amount of fat while still having good cardio, strength, etc.
- azhu 8y ago
  There is a difference between wishful thinking and motivation enough to actualize. I agree that one will most likely not roll out of bed and complete a marathon, but do not underestimate the power of belief. If one believes strongly enough, I have no doubt that the human body unencumbered by obesity can complete an ironman with no training. It turns out that fostering and synthesizing such strength of belief requires either a lifetime of devotion to meditation, the usual physical training athletes do (many mental journeys happen in this process as well), or fantastic cosmic circumstance.
- matwood 8y ago
  Completely agree that in no way would this be a replacement for actual fitness. The point that the mental state of mind has some impact on fitness is important though. First, it makes sense if you think about it because we know mental stress definitely causes unhealthy physical states. Second, a healthy mental state leads to working out which leads to more fitness and healthier mental state, etc... It's a healthy cycle that is all connected, and for many people that first healthy mental state is the hardest part to change.
  - ordinaryperson 8y ago
    Agreed. It has an impact. And it helps you break through walls in training. But I think the authors of this article, who cite a previous study got a little carried away. They cite a paper where researchers measured cleaning ladies after 4 weeks? You're not going from zero to hero in 4 weeks. How they ate over that period probably had a far larger effect on their overall health than mental positivity.
    - appleiigs 8y ago
      And the lecture probably got them to be more health conscious over that period.
  - titzer 8y ago
    > The point that the mental state of mind has some impact on fitness I don't think the study actually supports this; more likely mental state impacts stress hormone levels which change blood pressure, heart rate, and immune system activity. That is not the same as physical fitness.
- deleted 8y ago
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- donquichotte 8y ago
  I am glad you are bringing this up. It's impossible to cheat and skip training. I started running alpine trail (ultra) marathons three years ago, and every time I go for a >40km run in the Alps, the hammer of reality just comes down fast and hard on both mind and body. In the beginning I have grand plans of finishing near the peak of the Gaussian distribution of my age group. After 10km I am cursing myself for not training more. After 20km I am just focusing on finishing, and after 30km on not dying.
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whack 8y ago
With the first study, I notice that they didn't take into account the participants' general attitudes and happiness levels. It's possible that the people who "thought they were more active", felt that way because they were more optimistic/confident/happy in general, which in turn leads to the reduction in mortality. The second study is more convincing, since it relies on randomly assigned groups. However, I don't think they measured the participants' actual level of activity during the course of the experiment? It's possible that the different interventions led to differences in activity level, during the experiment period, which led to the physiological improvements later seen. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical in not accepting the study's conclusion. It just seems too fantastic, that someone can lose weight and reduce their mortality, merely by deluding themselves on how active they really are.
- hshehehjdjdjd 8y ago
  Yes, a hidden factor seems far more likely. There is probably some secondary variable that affects both your mortality rate and your perception of your own fitness. This seems much more likely, even to the point of seeming obvious.
  - kiliantics 8y ago
    Stress has measurable physiological effects, e.g. cortisol levels
  - chiefalchemist 8y ago
    Feel like it might be being optimistic. I believe "positive outlook" at the very least has correlated with better health, longevity, etc. Feeling in better shape (and not actually being so) is a byproduct of optimism.
    - usrusr 8y ago
      "Being healthy makes people feel healthy" (and thus more optimistic/active/positive) would be the more occhamish interpretation of that correlation.
matte_black 8y ago
You need to be logging at least 150 workout days a year to be considered fit.
- Crontab 8y ago
  Interesting. Source?
- inertiatic 8y ago
  I workout less than 100 hours a year in 1 hour sessions and I'd consider myself pretty fit. My peers and any physicians I've visited also agree. I have to ask, by whose standard?
arkades 8y ago
The little review “suggesting that how fit you think you are affects your risk of death more than how fit you actually are,” seems to not have parsed the studies it claims to be quoting. “No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.).” This was -after- controlling for actual fitness (eg. BMI). That doesn’t mean “perception matters more than BMI,” it means “perception matters a lot in explaining the variance that remains after removing all the variability explained by actual fitness.” The second study wasn’t just about “activity perception.” It came with a positive message from authority figures, and offered an additional validation of an otherwise low-prestige job. Both of these things might contribute to a motivation-driven short term effect that has nothing at all to do with long term self-perception not long term mortality.
dhbradshaw 8y ago
People had a measure of fitness that was accessed by asking "how active / fit are you?" Researchers had a different measure of fitness. If the researcher's measurements are less predictive than people's estimates, one possible reason is that there's some powerful mental effect going on. However, a more parsimonious interpretation might be that self-perceived fitness was a better measurement than the one the researchers came up with. This isn't completely unreasonable because the subjects have access to more information about their own health than do the researchers.
- tgb 8y ago
  Agreed though the previous study had an intervention and so more directly supported the idea that the belief created benefits.
neuro_imager 8y ago
I can't believe this waffle qualifies for a Harvard medical school publication. Clearly the wooly-haired management and soft science types have overrun Ivy League Medicine.
- dang 8y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." So could you please not post like this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
rossdavidh 8y ago
While I don't doubt that thinking of yourself as fit helps (not least by encouraging you to remain more active), I have to wonder if people who feel physically unwell on a frequent basis are not more likely to think of themselves as not fit.
0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.). Knee-jerk, hobby-horse-compliant hypothesis: reduced levels of perceived activity are a symptom of below-average/impaired interoception [1], and effects of that deficit (less efficient homeostatic feedback, inability to recognize progressive injury and illness in its early stages) are responsible for the increased mortality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception > Interoception is contemporarily defined as the sense of the internal state of the body. It encompasses the brain’s process of integrating signals relayed from the body into specific subregions—like the brainstem, thalamus, insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced representation of the physiological state of the body. This is important for maintaining homeostatic conditions in the body and, potentially, aiding in self-awareness.
deleted 8y ago
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wufufufu 8y ago
I wish physical movement was somehow integrated with software engineering more. Weak solutions like standing desks don't make it the cardio equivalent of something like a cleaning job. It's sad that we sacrifice health for more money only to spend it on health-related issues we accumulate from our career choice. I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun.
- DamnInteresting 8y ago
  My attempt at a solution was to acquire a treadmill desk. It's certainly better than sitting all day, but I'm still nowhere near as fit as I was when I carried heavy ladders around a multi-story department store all day.
- eckza 8y ago
  > I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun. Fittingly Sisyphean.
  - wufufufu 8y ago
    Ha. And maybe the mass of the medicine ball is proportional to the size of the changes.
- tokyodude 8y ago
  Do people with cleaning jobs live longer and/or are they happier? It's certainly not the stereotype in my head but I have zero data. Do any jobs with lots of manual labor live longer, healthier, and happier?
  - gshakir 8y ago
    It depends if they are happy with their jobs. If they are going to be tired and miserable at the end of the day, the motivation aspect is not there.
  - hungerstrike 8y ago
chiefalchemist 8y ago
> "Our mindset affects our motivation." It effects more than motivation. Take stress for example. Under stress - e.g., "am I fit enough?" perhaps? - the body releases cortisol. To the best of my knowledge, cortisol has been linked to weight gain. Stress effect sleep, which has system-wide implications. Etc. The mind is the body and the body is the mind. The Western separation of the two is a myth that should be considered irrelevant at this point.
jg42 8y ago
I can't get the math to work to reach 475 million American adults. Our current population is only 347 million and the birthrate is about 1.25%. Running a total for the last 20 years or so I can't get more than 300 million adults or so. Any math folks that want to analyze the number of unique adults entering/leaving the US from 1990 to 2011?
- spicymaki 8y ago
  I think idea is the sample size of 60k was varied enough to represent a population size of up to 475M. More than enough to reflect the real population and then some.
blunte 8y ago
It's quite difficult to measure a potential reality that could be outside accepted reality using the tools of accepted reality. That is to say, there are so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science. Those who do not accept such possibilities naturally do not see proof of them, and those who do accept those possibilities may see them or even perhaps imagine that they see them when there may be a simpler explanation. I find it ironic that some rabidly religious people cannot accept any explanation for events other than what their book(s) tells them, while at the same time strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different books. Neither group sees their mirror image in the other...
- TheDong 8y ago
  > so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science Rather, science has explained many of these cases already. Humans are prone to confirmation biases, are really bad at probability, and have quite faulty memories. Those facts combined result in phenomenon that exist outside science because any time science sheds light upon them, it turns out that it is a construct of the human brain unrelated to reality. > strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different books Scientific people do not hold on to books with no evidence and accept challenge. Science is more about the methodology and reasoning than about the current conclusions. If a scientist is ignoring something counter to their books, it's because the books have provided more scientific evidence than the challenging opinion. There's a massive difference here, and simplifying science down to "it's like religion, but the bible is other scientist's books" is neither helpful nor accurate.
  - blunte 8y ago
    I did not simplify it as you state, and I certainly did not make a blanket statement. But regarding science and possibilities, how often in history had science said somethingwas not possible or real, and by rules of science at that time they were correct, but later with more understanding science began to allow the observed thing to be "real". Science, its definitions and rules, are ever changing and advancing. Thus it is fair to say that at any given time we are dumber than we will be in the future.
yk 8y ago
I would read that as "adhoc guess of people outperforms statistical model," so the model probably misses some factor that people just take into account. As an example, someone who knows that they have cancer and that therefore their health will rapidly decline in the near future will likely not report that they are leading a healthy and active live, even though data right know shows that they are trying to keep in good shape. Or a combination of many similar but less spectacular things. Not to belittle the researchers, but trying to outperform a brain that gets data about the individual situation 24 h a day is a quite hard task.
- paultopia 8y ago
  I was thinking something similar. Like some of the people who say they aren't active are people who experience pain or discomfort from activity, and hence consciously avoid it (and that's salient so they report inactivity); some deaths are resulting from whatever caused that pain. Or something like that.
- dcow 8y ago
  Outperforming the brain is different from making poor assumptions regarding data collection, isn't it? It sounds like in your example the model is not winning because of inaccurate setup but at the end you're conceding that humans might just be innately better than the model.
danschumann 8y ago
The brain has pretty direct contact to all the cells of the body. Regardless of overall activity, if the brain has an idea in mind, it can make it happen. There's a tribe in Africa that comes to mind. They studied them, because they don't eat that much and they do a ton of activity. It turns out, when they run, they just burn fewer calories than most people. So, intake, calories burned, overall health, it all seems to not follow a hard and fast rule, apart from the intention of the mind. Ignore politics for a second, the amount of time he spent on his feet and the amount of energy it must have required during the campaign, and how Trump's doctors say he's really healthy(assuming you believe them), but his diet looks pretty bad, but you know in his head, he's saying, "I'm the healthiest, I'm so healthy, my health is great, it's the best". Take-away from article? "I'm so healthy, I'm the healthiest, my health is huge, it's the best."
frabbit 8y ago
Perceived Physical Activity and Morality would also be an interesting study.
himom 8y ago
Wasn’t there a study of hotel cleaners whom had an overall increase in health because they were told their jobs already included exercise? This also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, whereby a “healthy” thinking person makes slightly different choices than someone else whom believes themselves to be “unhealthy.”
axilmar 8y ago
...or people can "feel" their general status and therefore those that think they will not live long didn't actually live long.
your-nanny 8y ago
>a representative sample estimated to reflect over 475 million US adults. Thems some odd numbers
- your-nanny 8y ago
  The number exceeds total us population. However if it's a count over time with entry if new persons into popukatiob then possible

262 points by giffarage 8y ago

Yes mindset is important. But having run 8 marathons I can tell you wishful thinking is not a substitute for training. You can’t really quantify fitness, there are too many subtypes (running? swimming? weightlifting?) This study used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I’m not sure they’re reliable indicators. The point of the article (as I understand it) is that positive thinking can influence your health. Fine. But let’s not get carried away: you’re not going to roll out of bed and complete an Ironman without training just because you think you can. EDIT: Mods have updated the title to better reflect the first underlying study (which focuses on mortality, not fitness). But 1) even with the focus on mortality, it's still hard to correlate PMA and mortality and not control for diet, exercise, history, genetics, etc. and 2) if PMA doesn't correlate w/fitness, it's hard to see how it can make you live longer (i.e., can you be morbidly obese and positive and live longer than an athlete with a bad mental attitude?) PMA is good. But I'm having a hard time believing you're going to live longer -- seems like there are 50 other factors that are more important.

stochastic_monk 8y ago
My Dad, who had done 5 marathons, won the Ironman lottery to participate in the world championship. He still spent a year training all the time to finish it, and not at a competitive time. My point is that you are absolutely right.
giffarage 8y ago
The article focuses on risk of death with regard to fitness instead of an ability to perform in a sport.
- ordinaryperson 8y ago
  Yes, you're right. The study is different than what the article says. The article is taking a leap of faith from that study to generalize, so, fair point. But even for that study, I'm a little skeptical of their results. There are so many factors that figure into mortality, it's hard to believe a positive attitude can really be singled out as significant. Diet? Age? Exercise level? Family history? Weight? Where does positive thinking sit on this list? Whether you're using it as a proxy for fitness or mortality I think it's a questionable correlation, IMHO.
raverbashing 8y ago
> used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I’m not sure they’re reliable indicators. Should be reliable enough You can't claim to be exactly fit if your pressure is 180/120 or if your BMI is high (unless you're obviously an exception - and most of those that complain about BMI aren't)
- Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
  Blood pressure is useful, but I strongly dislike BMI. My weight hasn't fluctuated by more than 2kg in 10 years. 10 years ago I was playing competitive rugby, basketball and training for the former 3 times a week and was genuinely very fit. Now, I've got a decent amount of fat on me and am no-where near as healthy as I ought to be. Yet my weight and height haven't changed, so neither has my BMI. Nonetheless, I've lost a reasonable amount of muscle and instead put on a lot of fat. On the other hand, my blood pressure definitely has got worse.
- ordinaryperson 8y ago
  BMI is only useful for large populations but terrible as a metric for individuals. For starters, it can't distinguish between muscle and fat. So anyone muscular is obese per BMI. More: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measure-of-health/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/bmi-is-a-terrible-measu...
  - raverbashing 8y ago
    > So anyone muscular is obese per BMI. And that's why I said > unless you're obviously an exception Most of the time complaining about BMI is just an excuse for overweight individuals If needed body fat can be assessed separately.
  - dtech 8y ago
    Even for large populations BMI is a pretty mediocre metric since it is heavily influenced by length. The formula is kept simple `weight / height^2` to help 19th century doctors. A more accurate growth rate for healthy weight is something like `weight / heigth^2.5` [1] This oversimplification causes standard BMI treshholds to underestimate obesity for short people (<1.6m), and overestimate obesity for tall people (>1.8m). [1] https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/bmi.html
wodenokoto 8y ago
I thought capacity for taking in oxygen[1] was a general indicator of fitness. But then again, I haven't looked into this since highschool 15+ years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max
- ordinaryperson 8y ago
  What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs. My point is, there is no one universal definition of fitness. The most reliable measure I've heard of is belly fat, which you can measure with a calipers. But you can't wish away belly fat with positive thinking, so I think the writers of this article are taking this study a little too far, IMO.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Belly fat would be a poor measurement of a lot of powerlifters fitness as well. The article seems to be mixing up "fitness" and "chance of death", which, while they are related, are probably not as directly correlated as they seem to be in the article.
    - ordinaryperson 8y ago
      Yes, the article seems to take liberties from the two studies it quotes. But I also am skeptical of the underlying studies. So many factors in mortality rate I'm having a hard time believing they were able to control for all of those (weight, age, diet, exercise, family history, etc) and isolate "positive thinking."
  - always_good 8y ago
    > What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs. Sounds like a myth people believe about weight lifters.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    Belly fat sems like a very unreliable proxy too. You can definitely be skinny without being fit in any of the usual senses, and you can have a fair amount of fat while still having good cardio, strength, etc.
azhu 8y ago
There is a difference between wishful thinking and motivation enough to actualize. I agree that one will most likely not roll out of bed and complete a marathon, but do not underestimate the power of belief. If one believes strongly enough, I have no doubt that the human body unencumbered by obesity can complete an ironman with no training. It turns out that fostering and synthesizing such strength of belief requires either a lifetime of devotion to meditation, the usual physical training athletes do (many mental journeys happen in this process as well), or fantastic cosmic circumstance.
matwood 8y ago
Completely agree that in no way would this be a replacement for actual fitness. The point that the mental state of mind has some impact on fitness is important though. First, it makes sense if you think about it because we know mental stress definitely causes unhealthy physical states. Second, a healthy mental state leads to working out which leads to more fitness and healthier mental state, etc... It's a healthy cycle that is all connected, and for many people that first healthy mental state is the hardest part to change.
- ordinaryperson 8y ago
  Agreed. It has an impact. And it helps you break through walls in training. But I think the authors of this article, who cite a previous study got a little carried away. They cite a paper where researchers measured cleaning ladies after 4 weeks? You're not going from zero to hero in 4 weeks. How they ate over that period probably had a far larger effect on their overall health than mental positivity.
  - appleiigs 8y ago
    And the lecture probably got them to be more health conscious over that period.
- titzer 8y ago
  > The point that the mental state of mind has some impact on fitness I don't think the study actually supports this; more likely mental state impacts stress hormone levels which change blood pressure, heart rate, and immune system activity. That is not the same as physical fitness.
deleted 8y ago
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donquichotte 8y ago
I am glad you are bringing this up. It's impossible to cheat and skip training. I started running alpine trail (ultra) marathons three years ago, and every time I go for a >40km run in the Alps, the hammer of reality just comes down fast and hard on both mind and body. In the beginning I have grand plans of finishing near the peak of the Gaussian distribution of my age group. After 10km I am cursing myself for not training more. After 20km I am just focusing on finishing, and after 30km on not dying.

deleted 8y ago

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whack 8y ago

With the first study, I notice that they didn't take into account the participants' general attitudes and happiness levels. It's possible that the people who "thought they were more active", felt that way because they were more optimistic/confident/happy in general, which in turn leads to the reduction in mortality. The second study is more convincing, since it relies on randomly assigned groups. However, I don't think they measured the participants' actual level of activity during the course of the experiment? It's possible that the different interventions led to differences in activity level, during the experiment period, which led to the physiological improvements later seen. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical in not accepting the study's conclusion. It just seems too fantastic, that someone can lose weight and reduce their mortality, merely by deluding themselves on how active they really are.

hshehehjdjdjd 8y ago
Yes, a hidden factor seems far more likely. There is probably some secondary variable that affects both your mortality rate and your perception of your own fitness. This seems much more likely, even to the point of seeming obvious.
- kiliantics 8y ago
  Stress has measurable physiological effects, e.g. cortisol levels
- chiefalchemist 8y ago
  Feel like it might be being optimistic. I believe "positive outlook" at the very least has correlated with better health, longevity, etc. Feeling in better shape (and not actually being so) is a byproduct of optimism.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    "Being healthy makes people feel healthy" (and thus more optimistic/active/positive) would be the more occhamish interpretation of that correlation.

matte_black 8y ago

You need to be logging at least 150 workout days a year to be considered fit.

Crontab 8y ago
Interesting. Source?
inertiatic 8y ago
I workout less than 100 hours a year in 1 hour sessions and I'd consider myself pretty fit. My peers and any physicians I've visited also agree. I have to ask, by whose standard?

arkades 8y ago

The little review “suggesting that how fit you think you are affects your risk of death more than how fit you actually are,” seems to not have parsed the studies it claims to be quoting. “No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.).” This was -after- controlling for actual fitness (eg. BMI). That doesn’t mean “perception matters more than BMI,” it means “perception matters a lot in explaining the variance that remains after removing all the variability explained by actual fitness.” The second study wasn’t just about “activity perception.” It came with a positive message from authority figures, and offered an additional validation of an otherwise low-prestige job. Both of these things might contribute to a motivation-driven short term effect that has nothing at all to do with long term self-perception not long term mortality.

dhbradshaw 8y ago

People had a measure of fitness that was accessed by asking "how active / fit are you?" Researchers had a different measure of fitness. If the researcher's measurements are less predictive than people's estimates, one possible reason is that there's some powerful mental effect going on. However, a more parsimonious interpretation might be that self-perceived fitness was a better measurement than the one the researchers came up with. This isn't completely unreasonable because the subjects have access to more information about their own health than do the researchers.

tgb 8y ago
Agreed though the previous study had an intervention and so more directly supported the idea that the belief created benefits.

neuro_imager 8y ago

I can't believe this waffle qualifies for a Harvard medical school publication. Clearly the wooly-haired management and soft science types have overrun Ivy League Medicine.

dang 8y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." So could you please not post like this here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

rossdavidh 8y ago

While I don't doubt that thinking of yourself as fit helps (not least by encouraging you to remain more active), I have to wonder if people who feel physically unwell on a frequent basis are not more likely to think of themselves as not fit.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago

> No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.). Knee-jerk, hobby-horse-compliant hypothesis: reduced levels of perceived activity are a symptom of below-average/impaired interoception [1], and effects of that deficit (less efficient homeostatic feedback, inability to recognize progressive injury and illness in its early stages) are responsible for the increased mortality. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception > Interoception is contemporarily defined as the sense of the internal state of the body. It encompasses the brain’s process of integrating signals relayed from the body into specific subregions—like the brainstem, thalamus, insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced representation of the physiological state of the body. This is important for maintaining homeostatic conditions in the body and, potentially, aiding in self-awareness.

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wufufufu 8y ago

I wish physical movement was somehow integrated with software engineering more. Weak solutions like standing desks don't make it the cardio equivalent of something like a cleaning job. It's sad that we sacrifice health for more money only to spend it on health-related issues we accumulate from our career choice. I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun.

DamnInteresting 8y ago
My attempt at a solution was to acquire a treadmill desk. It's certainly better than sitting all day, but I'm still nowhere near as fit as I was when I carried heavy ladders around a multi-story department store all day.
eckza 8y ago
> I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun. Fittingly Sisyphean.
- wufufufu 8y ago
  Ha. And maybe the mass of the medicine ball is proportional to the size of the changes.
tokyodude 8y ago
Do people with cleaning jobs live longer and/or are they happier? It's certainly not the stereotype in my head but I have zero data. Do any jobs with lots of manual labor live longer, healthier, and happier?
- gshakir 8y ago
  It depends if they are happy with their jobs. If they are going to be tired and miserable at the end of the day, the motivation aspect is not there.
- hungerstrike 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago

> "Our mindset affects our motivation." It effects more than motivation. Take stress for example. Under stress - e.g., "am I fit enough?" perhaps? - the body releases cortisol. To the best of my knowledge, cortisol has been linked to weight gain. Stress effect sleep, which has system-wide implications. Etc. The mind is the body and the body is the mind. The Western separation of the two is a myth that should be considered irrelevant at this point.

jg42 8y ago

I can't get the math to work to reach 475 million American adults. Our current population is only 347 million and the birthrate is about 1.25%. Running a total for the last 20 years or so I can't get more than 300 million adults or so. Any math folks that want to analyze the number of unique adults entering/leaving the US from 1990 to 2011?

spicymaki 8y ago
I think idea is the sample size of 60k was varied enough to represent a population size of up to 475M. More than enough to reflect the real population and then some.

blunte 8y ago

It's quite difficult to measure a potential reality that could be outside accepted reality using the tools of accepted reality. That is to say, there are so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science. Those who do not accept such possibilities naturally do not see proof of them, and those who do accept those possibilities may see them or even perhaps imagine that they see them when there may be a simpler explanation. I find it ironic that some rabidly religious people cannot accept any explanation for events other than what their book(s) tells them, while at the same time strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different books. Neither group sees their mirror image in the other...

TheDong 8y ago
> so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science Rather, science has explained many of these cases already. Humans are prone to confirmation biases, are really bad at probability, and have quite faulty memories. Those facts combined result in phenomenon that exist outside science because any time science sheds light upon them, it turns out that it is a construct of the human brain unrelated to reality. > strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different books Scientific people do not hold on to books with no evidence and accept challenge. Science is more about the methodology and reasoning than about the current conclusions. If a scientist is ignoring something counter to their books, it's because the books have provided more scientific evidence than the challenging opinion. There's a massive difference here, and simplifying science down to "it's like religion, but the bible is other scientist's books" is neither helpful nor accurate.
- blunte 8y ago
  I did not simplify it as you state, and I certainly did not make a blanket statement. But regarding science and possibilities, how often in history had science said somethingwas not possible or real, and by rules of science at that time they were correct, but later with more understanding science began to allow the observed thing to be "real". Science, its definitions and rules, are ever changing and advancing. Thus it is fair to say that at any given time we are dumber than we will be in the future.

yk 8y ago

I would read that as "adhoc guess of people outperforms statistical model," so the model probably misses some factor that people just take into account. As an example, someone who knows that they have cancer and that therefore their health will rapidly decline in the near future will likely not report that they are leading a healthy and active live, even though data right know shows that they are trying to keep in good shape. Or a combination of many similar but less spectacular things. Not to belittle the researchers, but trying to outperform a brain that gets data about the individual situation 24 h a day is a quite hard task.

paultopia 8y ago
I was thinking something similar. Like some of the people who say they aren't active are people who experience pain or discomfort from activity, and hence consciously avoid it (and that's salient so they report inactivity); some deaths are resulting from whatever caused that pain. Or something like that.
dcow 8y ago
Outperforming the brain is different from making poor assumptions regarding data collection, isn't it? It sounds like in your example the model is not winning because of inaccurate setup but at the end you're conceding that humans might just be innately better than the model.

danschumann 8y ago

The brain has pretty direct contact to all the cells of the body. Regardless of overall activity, if the brain has an idea in mind, it can make it happen. There's a tribe in Africa that comes to mind. They studied them, because they don't eat that much and they do a ton of activity. It turns out, when they run, they just burn fewer calories than most people. So, intake, calories burned, overall health, it all seems to not follow a hard and fast rule, apart from the intention of the mind. Ignore politics for a second, the amount of time he spent on his feet and the amount of energy it must have required during the campaign, and how Trump's doctors say he's really healthy(assuming you believe them), but his diet looks pretty bad, but you know in his head, he's saying, "I'm the healthiest, I'm so healthy, my health is great, it's the best". Take-away from article? "I'm so healthy, I'm the healthiest, my health is huge, it's the best."

frabbit 8y ago

Perceived Physical Activity and Morality would also be an interesting study.

himom 8y ago

Wasn’t there a study of hotel cleaners whom had an overall increase in health because they were told their jobs already included exercise? This also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, whereby a “healthy” thinking person makes slightly different choices than someone else whom believes themselves to be “unhealthy.”

axilmar 8y ago

...or people can "feel" their general status and therefore those that think they will not live long didn't actually live long.

your-nanny 8y ago

>a representative sample estimated to reflect over 475 million US adults. Thems some odd numbers

your-nanny 8y ago
The number exceeds total us population. However if it's a count over time with entry if new persons into popukatiob then possible