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Not exercising worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease study finds

318 points by nikolasavic 8y ago

js2 8y ago
There's a gentleman who spends an hour or so every night walking around the neighborhood. He's usually watching something on his phone as he walks, and he always smokes a cigar at some point. I've always wondered if he'd be better off not exercising and not smoking that cigar. I guess now I know.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  Well, cigars surely cannot be in the same category as something you inhale.
  - 8draco8 8y ago
    Of course they inhale. If not trough cigar then trough second hand smoking which is proven to be even more harmful.
    - eloff 8y ago
      How can second-hand smoke be "even more harmful" than smoking? That just doesn't make any sense...
      - grecy 8y ago
        Because you inhale the smoke without a filter. https://www.healthline.com/health/secondhand-smoke-facts https://www.healthline.com/health/secondhand-smoke-facts
        Izkata 8y ago
        This is a misunderstanding of GP's confusion, probably due to the effect being terribly named. What caused GP to raise the question, and why I mention the effect's name, is that secondhand smoke also affects the smoker themselves. So the total effect is always going to be worse for the smoker than the people around them - they get both the filtered and unfiltered smoke. However, your link is going for the consent angle - that the people around the smoker are being terribly affected by something they didn't choose. Note it also specifically states "nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke", not generally that secondhand smoke is worse. What's frustrating is that their reference is a dead link that redirects to an unrelated article, that doesn't include what's supposedly sourced from it, so it's hard to tell what their baseline for "25 to 30 percent greater risk" is, but I'm guessing it's nonsmokers with no exposure at all. That said, I also remember seeing some claims that the filters actually make it worse than commonly believed, that particles or fibers break off of the filters and damage the lungs directly.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  They're not really comparable. What good is being fit when you die in your 50s from lung cancer?
  - tgb 8y ago
    Comparing them is what this article is about. By the measure of all-cause mortality, exercise is more important than not smoking, according to these researchers.
  - cultus 8y ago
    Cigar smokers typically don't inhale. It's more of a oral cancer risk.
    - kazinator 8y ago
      Cigar smokers don't inhale through the cigar, but they inhale, just like second-hand smokers inhale.
      - cultus 8y ago
        It is less worse though. Cigar smokers do have quite a bit lower rates of lung cancer. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/tobacco/cigars-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/t...
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Probably not. If that combination means that although he's doing one thing unhealthy, yet getting two healthy things in return (exercise and stress relief), he's just getting more risk for a few other things.
vladharbuz 8y ago
The article's title is somewhat misleading. The study emphasises the level of fitness rather than the regularity of exercise. [0] > Question: What is the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and long-term mortality? > Findings: In this cohort study of 122 007 consecutive patients undergoing exercise treadmill testing, cardiorespiratory fitness was inversely associated with all-cause mortality without an observed upper limit of benefit. Extreme cardiorespiratory fitness (≥2 SDs above the mean for age and sex) was associated with the lowest risk-adjusted all-cause mortality compared with all other performance groups. > Meaning: Cardiorespiratory fitness is a modifiable indicator of long-term mortality, and health care professionals should encourage patients to achieve and maintain high levels of fitness. [0]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2707428?resultClick=3 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
- Boxxed 8y ago
  That's a little pedantic, even for HN, don't you think? "Oh, it's not the exercise that's important, it's the stuff that happens BECAUSE you exercise."
  - umanwizard 8y ago
    It's not pedantic, it's a real point. It's not clear at all that the relationship between exercise and fitness is as simple as you claim. Clearly, if a given person exercises more, they will be more fit. But there are also many other factors, including genetics, influencing fitness.
  - JamesBarney 8y ago
    Also if you're body starts to fail due to diabetes or kidney disease your cardiorespiratory fitness drops as well.
  - ec109685 8y ago
    Unhealthy people in general will do poorly at those tests. Even if you don’t exercise, but are active, you will do better than a sick person. The study’s benefit is that folks should get tested and if their fitness level is poor, figure out why. The conclusion isn’t, “I exercise and therefor i will live longer”
ilovecaching 8y ago
My work provides a gym, and I go there for at least an hour every weekday. I'd rather do poorly at work then skip exercising to be honest. I see some of the older employees coming in trying to reverse the effects of a sedentary lifestyle and I do not envy that position. It's crazy how people will deprioritze their health. It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. Of course, diet is also a huge factor as well. I stick to an intermittent fasting routine unless I can devote more time in the gym to bulking. I think fasting and caloric deficiency have some promising research behind it, and I think intuitively it makes sense that our ancestors would be eating only intermittently and probably never enough to put on a lot of weight. My nutritionist cautioned me, however, that there's still no scientific consensus and it still has a fad smell to it. It also takes quite a bit of mental discipline. Also, if you're struggling with getting fit, GET A PERSONAL TRAINER AND NUTRITIONIST. You could not do more with your money than get professional help in steering your body in a direction that works for you. At the end of the day, you have to do what's right for your physiology and these trained professionals no how to make that easy for you.
- kebert 8y ago
  >It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. I think your number one priority should be to avoid suffering.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Then one could just die and be done with everything.
    - perfmode 8y ago
      it’s always on the table. often we stay alive because dying would cause others suffering.
      - 8y ago
manmal 8y ago
Put bluntly, exercising creates new mitochondria in your cells. Since disease is often due to low cell energy (making cells underperform or malfunction), it makes sense that adding mitochondria (=adding ability to convert cellular energy) is very beneficial. Here is a quite technical paper on exercise and mitochondrial biogenesis: http://m.jbc.org/content/282/1/194.full http://m.jbc.org/content/282/1/194.full
- doombolt 8y ago
  I wonder if we can have a pill to maintain high level of mitochondria in all our cells in background. It seems that modern humans have a lot of power-saving traits which are active deterrent as of now when food is abundant, since they lead to obesity, muscle loss and mitochondria problems here. Other mammals don't seem to have such problems en masse.
  - collyw 8y ago
    Our bodies evolved to be a lot more active than the average person today. I would be surprised if it's the only thing that exercise helps and as such I would be skeptical about how beneficial a pill would be.
    - doombolt 8y ago
      Well, too bad, we need to find ways to change those settings.
      - collyw 8y ago
        Exercise can be pretty enjoyable if you find a way that suits you. Personally I can't stand the monotony of the gym, but I love mountain biking or white water kayaking. The later has benefited me in my life so much - it has taken me to amazing countries that I doubt I would have visited otherwise and I have made some amazing people through the sport. There is no way that a pill could compete with that.
  - manmal 8y ago
choot 8y ago
I wonder what if those who were not performing exercises were already not well in some ways which compelled them to not exercise in the first place.
liftbigweights 8y ago
What bullshit. So sick of these worthless "studies" and the media that peddles them for money. My grandparents didn't "exercise" a single day. They were the healthiest people I knew. They were just active. Walk a lot. That's it. Was the study funded by gym equipment association of america? Really? Worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease? Why CNN isn't labeled as a source of disinformation is beyond me. Anything with a ? or "study finds" by any "news" organization should be discarded.
- rpedela 8y ago
  Walking a lot = exercise
carlosrg 8y ago
People that are fit tend to take care of themselves in more ways, like for example, eating healthier food consistently. So I doubt it can all be simplified to exercise like the article claims.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Does it seem possible that the distinguished, experienced scientists and doctors who conducted the research thought to control for other factors, including well-known ones such as the effect of diet?
  - carlosrg 8y ago
    I'm not talking about the study itself, but about the CNN article.
CapitalistCartr 8y ago
I took a new job in January that is mostly desk-bound and promptly gained 10+ pounds (5kg). I'm at my heaviest ever: 170# (77kg). So last weekend I went hiking with some friends on a trip I instigated a couple months earlier, with no preparation. Its my favorite hobby, but my pack was too heavy, body too flabby. In the swamps of South Florida (Myakka for the locals), it was flooded and brutal and I about died. If I want to enjoy life, planning out body care is just one of the requirements. I've also noticed I'm tired more, sicker since this job started. I know why, same old story: Diet & Exercise.
- taway_1212 8y ago
  It’s also possible that you’re more tired and sick because of the workload’s burden on the body.
sambe 8y ago
This quote sets off alarm bells for sensationalism: "People who do not perform very well on a treadmill test," Jaber said, "have almost double the risk of people with kidney failure on dialysis." The quote doesn't appear to be part of the paper either. The first Google hit for all-cause kidney disease mortality says: "The absolute risk for death increased exponentially with decreasing renal function in these studies. The magnitude of the unadjusted increase in risk ranged from approximately 38% to >1100%" Those numbers are for non-dialysis patients. You'd expect the dialysis patients to be much worse due to the first sentence. The exercise paper says: "The increase in all-cause mortality associated with reduced CRF (low vs elite: adjusted HR, 5.04; 95% CI, 4.10-6.20; P < .001; below average vs above average: adjusted HR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.34-1.49; P < .001) was comparable to or greater than traditional clinical risk factors." I don't think low vs elite is a fair interpretation of "not doing very well", so I'd take 41% as the increase in risk. That is very much not double 38-1100%. You'd assume it's certainly not double the exponentially worse-off dialysis patients. You wouldn't think 504% was either, even if you are charitable to the quote. The findings seem interestingly strong. Overplaying them further should not be necessary.
antirez 8y ago
This approach is interesting because, if you ask people "do you go to the gym", you are faced with the fact that 90% of gym attenders actually do not train, but pretend to train. So instead the treadmill test is a much better predictor I guess since it meters the results of your training as athletic performance.
londons_explore 8y ago
Not exercising could be caused by some other underlying health condition. I have not yet seen a study which can say with good confidence "Exercise makes people healthier". Sure you can say "People who exercise are healthier", but establishing cause and effect requires an intervention experiment. I suspect the commonly held belief that exercise is good for health is true, but it still seems to be bad to publish it as advice so widely without the cause/effect established.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
raffael-vogler 8y ago
So the study measures relative fitness on the treadmill and associates that with cardio respiratory health - but isn't this pretty much just the two sides of the same coin? If you measure 1000 people's performance in some fitness exercise - isn't it obvious that the result will correlate with the observable health?
downandout 8y ago
...and then we see that exercising an hour per day (7.5 hours or more per week), which people trying to lose weight often do, can cause damaging calcium buildups in your heart, especially if you are a man [1]. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. I really hate these conflicting studies. [1] http://time.com/4987426/too-much-exercise/ http://time.com/4987426/too-much-exercise/
- rincebrain 8y ago
  That is, unfortunately, how science works in almost any nontrivial case - you get a number of studies that are contradictory or weak with simpler hypotheses, people modify them to account for the dissonance, run more experiments, rinse, repeat. It doesn't help that our observability of biological systems, while better than it's ever been before, is still p. bad in situ.
- learnstats2 8y ago
  7.5 hours or more per week of gym is an extreme amount that elite athletes might think twice about, not to mention that it's not recommended by anyone. Where is the conflict? That article itself says: “This [study] doesn’t apply to 99% of people”
  - downandout 8y ago
    I'm trying to lose weight. I am doing approximately 7 hours per week...an hour per day of exercise isn't particularly hard to reach. I apparently fall in the 1%, and I'm not remotely close to being an "elite athlete," nor do I feel like I'm do anything extreme.
  - grecy 8y ago
    > 7.5 hours or more per week of gym is an extreme amount that elite athletes might think twice about I personally have plenty of friends that run, swim or gym session for an hour 7 days a week. Elite athletes are doing more like 2-5 hours per day. My brother in law runs ultra marathons (just for fun), and runs somewhere between 1-3 hours every single day of his life. For fun.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
What I am missing here is what they call "performing badly on treadmill" I run a mile or two each day, but I am still obese and frankly old and unfit. What is the criteria they are using here? Five minute mile pace? Ten minutes? Can't actually walk a mile?
- brandonmenc 8y ago
  Probably a CPX test.
armada651 8y ago
> It's crazy how people will deprioritze their health. It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. My #1 priority is to achieve my goals and have fun. If that means I die earlier so be it. I do exercise in ways I find fun, but I will not go to a gym and lift weights just because it increases my chances of living long enough to enjoy my pension. The real challenge in life is not to live the longest, but to have lived a life worth living.
- toxik 8y ago
  Why, and what does that mean? Rampant hedonism? Human intellect fails miserably at justifying existence at any level. If we look at what people have valued historically, health does seem important.
  - comboy 8y ago
    You can switch fun to whatever you find meaningful or whatever you want to optimize for. Optimizing for longevity is one option, but you would never go full in on it (would you kill an innocent child to live one second longer?). So why would it be surprising that weight assigned to it varies among different people? Btw I agree with him, I think that's what you really want, but you want your fun. Not fun as perceived by other people. It does not necessarily mean pleasure.
  - systemizer 8y ago
    I think the point being stated is that exercising shouldn't be seen as a means to an end for living-the-longest-life.
- fizx 8y ago
  Do you also not brush your teeth? Strength training can be as simple as doing one of squats, pushups, or pullups every day. Work towards 2-3 sets of 10-20 reps. Add weight (or reduce assistance) as necessary. You've just made a huge difference in how your body feels, and it takes as much time each day as brushing and flossing your teeth.
  - 8y ago
Gatsky 8y ago
If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit basically. It's almost like breathing. The message is important, but I think we can just stop doing studies about how exercise is good. Researchers must love these kinds of studies because they are ALWAYS POSITIVE. And the media loves promoting them, I guess because they get a lot of clicks. Getting people to do more exercise - that is the hard part. More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed. There is going to be an extraordinary number of people transitioning from (admittedly unpleasant and impoverished) more active lifestyles to sedentary work in the next 50 years. Reducing the burden of disease in this group is essential.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  I personally think the research done on HIIT/HIIE-style[0] exercise has been pretty revolutionary. Sure the status quo remains: exercise=good, non-exercise=bad, but reality is more nuanced than that and something like HIIT helps people who feel they lack the time for "full" exercise to justify a minimal time commitment with proven and significant health benefits. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...
  - Gatsky 8y ago
    Yes! I agree the HIIT research is great and very interesting and impactful - they designed and implemented an intervention with a control group and measured other correlative variables including muscle biopsies. And as you say the results are actually useful for getting some people that don't have the time or inclination to run marathons. I would certainly distinguish this kind of research from the many redundant retrospective observational studies (often with self-reported exercise activity levels) of the kind linked in the original post.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
wslh 8y ago
Not sure how can they claim this. As an anecdote If I see around me and including my family, relatively healthy people, mainly women, live longer even if they don't do any exercise. Beyond the anecdote this is an observation that can be checked with basic stats information. These are averages! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...
- Buldak 8y ago
  I'm confused as to why you think the article you cite supports your claim.
  - wslh 8y ago
    I am saying that the article claims are ridiculous based on averages.
dhnsmakala 8y ago
I think these headlines promoting exercise for long term benefits might do more harm than good, people have a hard time doing things for super delayed gratification. I exercise because the immediate effects are evident on my mood and wakefulness. It just feels good to exercise. The first couple of weeks/months consistently going to the gym maybe took some more discipline, because everything feels weird at first. The elliptical. These machine contraptions. It's unfamiliar. But once you're used to it, it's smooth sailing. You don't have to be so strict about it...just do it until you're comfortable and then go when you feel like it. Another note, keep in mind it is MUCH easier to maintain fitness than to build it. When it comes to weight training, I was serious about it for a couple of years following a plan I found online. Since then, I lift weights a few times a month and have mostly maintained the strength/appearance from the time of consistency.
pnathan 8y ago
A book on barbell work for older (> 50y/o) adults defines a particular symptom set as "Sick Aging Phenotype". Diabetic, overweight, and physical inability are hallmarks of that symptom set. One of my aims as someone who spends his work hours sitting is to avoid that fate. This is largely within my capability. I can choose to invest regularly in my enjoyment of life down the road. I can't control all sorts of things in life; but I can control if I can find time to swing a kettlebell.
tim333 8y ago
Interesting survey but it doesn't really separate cause and effect - you could be rubbish on a treadmill because you are ill rather than via versa.
lilfatbitch 8y ago
No shit

318 points by nikolasavic 8y ago

js2 8y ago

There's a gentleman who spends an hour or so every night walking around the neighborhood. He's usually watching something on his phone as he walks, and he always smokes a cigar at some point. I've always wondered if he'd be better off not exercising and not smoking that cigar. I guess now I know.

wild_preference 8y ago
Well, cigars surely cannot be in the same category as something you inhale.
- 8draco8 8y ago
  Of course they inhale. If not trough cigar then trough second hand smoking which is proven to be even more harmful.
  - eloff 8y ago
    How can second-hand smoke be "even more harmful" than smoking? That just doesn't make any sense...
    - grecy 8y ago
      Because you inhale the smoke without a filter. https://www.healthline.com/health/secondhand-smoke-facts https://www.healthline.com/health/secondhand-smoke-facts
      - Izkata 8y ago
        This is a misunderstanding of GP's confusion, probably due to the effect being terribly named. What caused GP to raise the question, and why I mention the effect's name, is that secondhand smoke also affects the smoker themselves. So the total effect is always going to be worse for the smoker than the people around them - they get both the filtered and unfiltered smoke. However, your link is going for the consent angle - that the people around the smoker are being terribly affected by something they didn't choose. Note it also specifically states "nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke", not generally that secondhand smoke is worse. What's frustrating is that their reference is a dead link that redirects to an unrelated article, that doesn't include what's supposedly sourced from it, so it's hard to tell what their baseline for "25 to 30 percent greater risk" is, but I'm guessing it's nonsmokers with no exposure at all. That said, I also remember seeing some claims that the filters actually make it worse than commonly believed, that particles or fibers break off of the filters and damage the lungs directly.
newnewpdro 8y ago
They're not really comparable. What good is being fit when you die in your 50s from lung cancer?
- tgb 8y ago
  Comparing them is what this article is about. By the measure of all-cause mortality, exercise is more important than not smoking, according to these researchers.
- cultus 8y ago
  Cigar smokers typically don't inhale. It's more of a oral cancer risk.
  - kazinator 8y ago
    Cigar smokers don't inhale through the cigar, but they inhale, just like second-hand smokers inhale.
    - cultus 8y ago
      It is less worse though. Cigar smokers do have quite a bit lower rates of lung cancer. https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/tobacco/cigars-fact-sheet https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/t...
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
Probably not. If that combination means that although he's doing one thing unhealthy, yet getting two healthy things in return (exercise and stress relief), he's just getting more risk for a few other things.

vladharbuz 8y ago

The article's title is somewhat misleading. The study emphasises the level of fitness rather than the regularity of exercise. [0] > Question: What is the association between cardiorespiratory fitness and long-term mortality? > Findings: In this cohort study of 122 007 consecutive patients undergoing exercise treadmill testing, cardiorespiratory fitness was inversely associated with all-cause mortality without an observed upper limit of benefit. Extreme cardiorespiratory fitness (≥2 SDs above the mean for age and sex) was associated with the lowest risk-adjusted all-cause mortality compared with all other performance groups. > Meaning: Cardiorespiratory fitness is a modifiable indicator of long-term mortality, and health care professionals should encourage patients to achieve and maintain high levels of fitness. [0]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2707428?resultClick=3 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

Boxxed 8y ago
That's a little pedantic, even for HN, don't you think? "Oh, it's not the exercise that's important, it's the stuff that happens BECAUSE you exercise."
- umanwizard 8y ago
  It's not pedantic, it's a real point. It's not clear at all that the relationship between exercise and fitness is as simple as you claim. Clearly, if a given person exercises more, they will be more fit. But there are also many other factors, including genetics, influencing fitness.
- JamesBarney 8y ago
  Also if you're body starts to fail due to diabetes or kidney disease your cardiorespiratory fitness drops as well.
- ec109685 8y ago
  Unhealthy people in general will do poorly at those tests. Even if you don’t exercise, but are active, you will do better than a sick person. The study’s benefit is that folks should get tested and if their fitness level is poor, figure out why. The conclusion isn’t, “I exercise and therefor i will live longer”

ilovecaching 8y ago

My work provides a gym, and I go there for at least an hour every weekday. I'd rather do poorly at work then skip exercising to be honest. I see some of the older employees coming in trying to reverse the effects of a sedentary lifestyle and I do not envy that position. It's crazy how people will deprioritze their health. It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. Of course, diet is also a huge factor as well. I stick to an intermittent fasting routine unless I can devote more time in the gym to bulking. I think fasting and caloric deficiency have some promising research behind it, and I think intuitively it makes sense that our ancestors would be eating only intermittently and probably never enough to put on a lot of weight. My nutritionist cautioned me, however, that there's still no scientific consensus and it still has a fad smell to it. It also takes quite a bit of mental discipline. Also, if you're struggling with getting fit, GET A PERSONAL TRAINER AND NUTRITIONIST. You could not do more with your money than get professional help in steering your body in a direction that works for you. At the end of the day, you have to do what's right for your physiology and these trained professionals no how to make that easy for you.

kebert 8y ago
>It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. I think your number one priority should be to avoid suffering.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- coldtea 8y ago
  Then one could just die and be done with everything.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    it’s always on the table. often we stay alive because dying would cause others suffering.
    - 8y ago

manmal 8y ago

Put bluntly, exercising creates new mitochondria in your cells. Since disease is often due to low cell energy (making cells underperform or malfunction), it makes sense that adding mitochondria (=adding ability to convert cellular energy) is very beneficial. Here is a quite technical paper on exercise and mitochondrial biogenesis: http://m.jbc.org/content/282/1/194.full http://m.jbc.org/content/282/1/194.full

doombolt 8y ago
I wonder if we can have a pill to maintain high level of mitochondria in all our cells in background. It seems that modern humans have a lot of power-saving traits which are active deterrent as of now when food is abundant, since they lead to obesity, muscle loss and mitochondria problems here. Other mammals don't seem to have such problems en masse.
- collyw 8y ago
  Our bodies evolved to be a lot more active than the average person today. I would be surprised if it's the only thing that exercise helps and as such I would be skeptical about how beneficial a pill would be.
  - doombolt 8y ago
    Well, too bad, we need to find ways to change those settings.
    - collyw 8y ago
      Exercise can be pretty enjoyable if you find a way that suits you. Personally I can't stand the monotony of the gym, but I love mountain biking or white water kayaking. The later has benefited me in my life so much - it has taken me to amazing countries that I doubt I would have visited otherwise and I have made some amazing people through the sport. There is no way that a pill could compete with that.
- manmal 8y ago

choot 8y ago

I wonder what if those who were not performing exercises were already not well in some ways which compelled them to not exercise in the first place.

liftbigweights 8y ago

What bullshit. So sick of these worthless "studies" and the media that peddles them for money. My grandparents didn't "exercise" a single day. They were the healthiest people I knew. They were just active. Walk a lot. That's it. Was the study funded by gym equipment association of america? Really? Worse than smoking, diabetes and heart disease? Why CNN isn't labeled as a source of disinformation is beyond me. Anything with a ? or "study finds" by any "news" organization should be discarded.

rpedela 8y ago
Walking a lot = exercise

carlosrg 8y ago

People that are fit tend to take care of themselves in more ways, like for example, eating healthier food consistently. So I doubt it can all be simplified to exercise like the article claims.

forapurpose 8y ago
Does it seem possible that the distinguished, experienced scientists and doctors who conducted the research thought to control for other factors, including well-known ones such as the effect of diet?
- carlosrg 8y ago
  I'm not talking about the study itself, but about the CNN article.

CapitalistCartr 8y ago

I took a new job in January that is mostly desk-bound and promptly gained 10+ pounds (5kg). I'm at my heaviest ever: 170# (77kg). So last weekend I went hiking with some friends on a trip I instigated a couple months earlier, with no preparation. Its my favorite hobby, but my pack was too heavy, body too flabby. In the swamps of South Florida (Myakka for the locals), it was flooded and brutal and I about died. If I want to enjoy life, planning out body care is just one of the requirements. I've also noticed I'm tired more, sicker since this job started. I know why, same old story: Diet & Exercise.

taway_1212 8y ago
It’s also possible that you’re more tired and sick because of the workload’s burden on the body.

sambe 8y ago

This quote sets off alarm bells for sensationalism: "People who do not perform very well on a treadmill test," Jaber said, "have almost double the risk of people with kidney failure on dialysis." The quote doesn't appear to be part of the paper either. The first Google hit for all-cause kidney disease mortality says: "The absolute risk for death increased exponentially with decreasing renal function in these studies. The magnitude of the unadjusted increase in risk ranged from approximately 38% to >1100%" Those numbers are for non-dialysis patients. You'd expect the dialysis patients to be much worse due to the first sentence. The exercise paper says: "The increase in all-cause mortality associated with reduced CRF (low vs elite: adjusted HR, 5.04; 95% CI, 4.10-6.20; P < .001; below average vs above average: adjusted HR, 1.41; 95% CI, 1.34-1.49; P < .001) was comparable to or greater than traditional clinical risk factors." I don't think low vs elite is a fair interpretation of "not doing very well", so I'd take 41% as the increase in risk. That is very much not double 38-1100%. You'd assume it's certainly not double the exponentially worse-off dialysis patients. You wouldn't think 504% was either, even if you are charitable to the quote. The findings seem interestingly strong. Overplaying them further should not be necessary.

antirez 8y ago

This approach is interesting because, if you ask people "do you go to the gym", you are faced with the fact that 90% of gym attenders actually do not train, but pretend to train. So instead the treadmill test is a much better predictor I guess since it meters the results of your training as athletic performance.

londons_explore 8y ago

Not exercising could be caused by some other underlying health condition. I have not yet seen a study which can say with good confidence "Exercise makes people healthier". Sure you can say "People who exercise are healthier", but establishing cause and effect requires an intervention experiment. I suspect the commonly held belief that exercise is good for health is true, but it still seems to be bad to publish it as advice so widely without the cause/effect established.

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raffael-vogler 8y ago

So the study measures relative fitness on the treadmill and associates that with cardio respiratory health - but isn't this pretty much just the two sides of the same coin? If you measure 1000 people's performance in some fitness exercise - isn't it obvious that the result will correlate with the observable health?

downandout 8y ago

...and then we see that exercising an hour per day (7.5 hours or more per week), which people trying to lose weight often do, can cause damaging calcium buildups in your heart, especially if you are a man [1]. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. I really hate these conflicting studies. [1] http://time.com/4987426/too-much-exercise/ http://time.com/4987426/too-much-exercise/

rincebrain 8y ago
That is, unfortunately, how science works in almost any nontrivial case - you get a number of studies that are contradictory or weak with simpler hypotheses, people modify them to account for the dissonance, run more experiments, rinse, repeat. It doesn't help that our observability of biological systems, while better than it's ever been before, is still p. bad in situ.
learnstats2 8y ago
7.5 hours or more per week of gym is an extreme amount that elite athletes might think twice about, not to mention that it's not recommended by anyone. Where is the conflict? That article itself says: “This [study] doesn’t apply to 99% of people”
- downandout 8y ago
  I'm trying to lose weight. I am doing approximately 7 hours per week...an hour per day of exercise isn't particularly hard to reach. I apparently fall in the 1%, and I'm not remotely close to being an "elite athlete," nor do I feel like I'm do anything extreme.
- grecy 8y ago
  > 7.5 hours or more per week of gym is an extreme amount that elite athletes might think twice about I personally have plenty of friends that run, swim or gym session for an hour 7 days a week. Elite athletes are doing more like 2-5 hours per day. My brother in law runs ultra marathons (just for fun), and runs somewhere between 1-3 hours every single day of his life. For fun.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

What I am missing here is what they call "performing badly on treadmill" I run a mile or two each day, but I am still obese and frankly old and unfit. What is the criteria they are using here? Five minute mile pace? Ten minutes? Can't actually walk a mile?

brandonmenc 8y ago
Probably a CPX test.

armada651 8y ago

> It's crazy how people will deprioritze their health. It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible. My #1 priority is to achieve my goals and have fun. If that means I die earlier so be it. I do exercise in ways I find fun, but I will not go to a gym and lift weights just because it increases my chances of living long enough to enjoy my pension. The real challenge in life is not to live the longest, but to have lived a life worth living.

toxik 8y ago
Why, and what does that mean? Rampant hedonism? Human intellect fails miserably at justifying existence at any level. If we look at what people have valued historically, health does seem important.
- comboy 8y ago
  You can switch fun to whatever you find meaningful or whatever you want to optimize for. Optimizing for longevity is one option, but you would never go full in on it (would you kill an innocent child to live one second longer?). So why would it be surprising that weight assigned to it varies among different people? Btw I agree with him, I think that's what you really want, but you want your fun. Not fun as perceived by other people. It does not necessarily mean pleasure.
- systemizer 8y ago
  I think the point being stated is that exercising shouldn't be seen as a means to an end for living-the-longest-life.
fizx 8y ago
Do you also not brush your teeth? Strength training can be as simple as doing one of squats, pushups, or pullups every day. Work towards 2-3 sets of 10-20 reps. Add weight (or reduce assistance) as necessary. You've just made a huge difference in how your body feels, and it takes as much time each day as brushing and flossing your teeth.
- 8y ago

Gatsky 8y ago

If there is one universal truth of human biology, it is that exercise is good. It is good if you do a bit or a lot, if you are young, old, male, female, trans, pregnant, trying to get pregnant, single, married, divorced, depressed, a smoker, have cancer, have heart disease, have dementia, an astronaut, a pure mathematician, a plumber, tall, short, liberal, conservative etc etc. There isn't anyone that doesn't benefit basically. It's almost like breathing. The message is important, but I think we can just stop doing studies about how exercise is good. Researchers must love these kinds of studies because they are ALWAYS POSITIVE. And the media loves promoting them, I guess because they get a lot of clicks. Getting people to do more exercise - that is the hard part. More randomised studies of interventions to do that on a society level are needed. There is going to be an extraordinary number of people transitioning from (admittedly unpleasant and impoverished) more active lifestyles to sedentary work in the next 50 years. Reducing the burden of disease in this group is essential.

Someone1234 8y ago
I personally think the research done on HIIT/HIIE-style[0] exercise has been pretty revolutionary. Sure the status quo remains: exercise=good, non-exercise=bad, but reality is more nuanced than that and something like HIIT helps people who feel they lack the time for "full" exercise to justify a minimal time commitment with proven and significant health benefits. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_training https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_interval_traini...
- Gatsky 8y ago
  Yes! I agree the HIIT research is great and very interesting and impactful - they designed and implemented an intervention with a control group and measured other correlative variables including muscle biopsies. And as you say the results are actually useful for getting some people that don't have the time or inclination to run marathons. I would certainly distinguish this kind of research from the many redundant retrospective observational studies (often with self-reported exercise activity levels) of the kind linked in the original post.
Waterluvian 8y ago

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wslh 8y ago

Not sure how can they claim this. As an anecdote If I see around me and including my family, relatively healthy people, mainly women, live longer even if they don't do any exercise. Beyond the anecdote this is an observation that can be checked with basic stats information. These are averages! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_ex...

Buldak 8y ago
I'm confused as to why you think the article you cite supports your claim.
- wslh 8y ago
  I am saying that the article claims are ridiculous based on averages.

dhnsmakala 8y ago

I think these headlines promoting exercise for long term benefits might do more harm than good, people have a hard time doing things for super delayed gratification. I exercise because the immediate effects are evident on my mood and wakefulness. It just feels good to exercise. The first couple of weeks/months consistently going to the gym maybe took some more discipline, because everything feels weird at first. The elliptical. These machine contraptions. It's unfamiliar. But once you're used to it, it's smooth sailing. You don't have to be so strict about it...just do it until you're comfortable and then go when you feel like it. Another note, keep in mind it is MUCH easier to maintain fitness than to build it. When it comes to weight training, I was serious about it for a couple of years following a plan I found online. Since then, I lift weights a few times a month and have mostly maintained the strength/appearance from the time of consistency.

pnathan 8y ago

A book on barbell work for older (> 50y/o) adults defines a particular symptom set as "Sick Aging Phenotype". Diabetic, overweight, and physical inability are hallmarks of that symptom set. One of my aims as someone who spends his work hours sitting is to avoid that fate. This is largely within my capability. I can choose to invest regularly in my enjoyment of life down the road. I can't control all sorts of things in life; but I can control if I can find time to swing a kettlebell.

tim333 8y ago

Interesting survey but it doesn't really separate cause and effect - you could be rubbish on a treadmill because you are ill rather than via versa.

lilfatbitch 8y ago

No shit