3 ms·
Is it really too much of a stretch that being physiologically fit positively affects other areas of the body than the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems
by shijie 7y ago
Is it really too much of a stretch that being physiologically fit positively affects other areas of the body than the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems?
For millions of years, the evolutionary winners of the human race were able to cognitively and physically outperform others. It makes intuitive sense that peak health has an “entourage effect” on other areas of the body.
- katzgrau 7y agoThat may be true but I also wouldn't be surprised if, in modern context, being fit can begin with something cognitive. In my own experience, when I've been out of shape, I felt that I wasn't living to my own expectation and felt some drive to improve. The exercise that followed seemed to improve my thinking too, so there was a bit of an upward cycle.
- t_mann 7y agoIt doesn’t seem unplausible, but that’s not the point of doing research. The causality could be the other way round (people who are mentally fit also enjoy sports more, or see more benefits in doing it), or it could be driven by unobserved variables, like influence from your family or friends that leads you to both study and work out hard. What you’re interested in is the treatment effect of doing sports vs not doing sports. With enough and the right kind of data you could try to estimate this effect while accounting for the potential endogeneity. Randomized experiments are a good way of generating such data, but even then the inference is tricky (subjects will know whether they are in the treatment or control group,...).