13 ms·

Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

218 points by davidtanner 14y ago

micro_cam 14y ago
It is important to note that this is a study of people who happened to be stronger, not people who were randomly caused to be stronger (ie by randomly assigning workout routines). Larry Wassermann has a great write up on the distinction with regards to inferring causation vs association here: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/48/ http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/48/ It is good that they attempted to control for things like cardiovascular fitness but on there are also confounding factors like genetics and selection bias that are harder to look at (ie maybe the genetic variants that make it easier to build fast twitch muscles are what has the protective effect and increased strength training won't help someone without those genes). That being said I highly endorse bouldering and rock climbing in general as a way to build strength and move towards a healthy life style for people who don't enjoy typical gym workouts.
dbruce 14y ago
It's likely that healthier people are stronger on average....hence getting stronger by doing strength training will not change things.
- nosequel 14y ago
  So you are saying you didn't read the paper or abstract. They sort of covered that entire topic. This is about strength not "health", they took that into account in the study.
  - alexvr 14y ago
    By taking it into account, they probably excluded people with medical issues that would skew the results. The study isn't perfect, so this guy has a point: People with genes that make them naturally strong may have related genes that contribute to their overall health. And the converse may be true for weak people.
    - scottrogowski 14y ago
      There is no such thing as naturally strong... there might be some genetics in how quickly you can gain muscle strength but no one is born strong. To think of it conversely, if a limb becomes paralyzed, that limb will undergo extreme muscle atrophy no matter who it is. Also, they listed as a mean 83kg for bench press for the "upper third". This is not a very large amount of weight and is easily within the genetic limits of the grand majority of men.
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  - dbruce 14y ago
    You can't be serious. Took it into account? Before accusing people of not reading, consider they read it more closely than you. A study isn't "covering [an] entire topic" by just mentioning the word "confounding" and throwing a few possibilities of easily measurable factors around. This study is downright pathetic.
- davidtanner 14y ago
  The rationalization of a weak man?
jstanley 14y ago
In plain English: stronger people live longer.
- stewsnooze 14y ago
  I'm glad you wrote this comment. I was coming here to say my booze addled brain couldn't figure that bmj page out
- mojoe 14y ago
  Or targeted for popular consumption: Strong men are hard to kill
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > In plain English: stronger people live longer. You'll never get follow-up funding with a title like that.
  - jkuria 14y ago
    Why not? Do you need to say something confusing stated in esoteric medical terms?
    - mhurron 14y ago
      You do when you're looking for funding. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" If you present your paper "Healthy men who engage in a well rounded exercise regimen live longer, healthier lives" everyone is just going to go "well duh."
      - pekk 14y ago
        People in this literature will not have any problem understanding the jargon used here, and it's all meaningful, so this isn't at all a case of "baffle them with bullshit." You almost certainly use some kinds of technical jargon at your job, there is no need for this weird anger about research scientists using jargon in the same way. "Well duh" does not count as evidence for a claim, and the claim wasn't about a well-rounded exercise regimen but was rather more specific.
richardlblair 14y ago
I've never been one for strength training. I just like to run really hard for a short period of time... Guess I will need to change that.
- chollida1 14y ago
  Well it depends on how hard and how long you run. Sprinting is one of the best muscle building activities you can do. I thought it was crazy to try, but I swear it's added 50lbs to my deadlift with one sprint work out a week for 3 months. Going from 475 to 525 is a pretty incredible increase in my deadlift considering I was adding about 5lbs a month before.
  - bytefactory 14y ago
    I'd just like to add that while running is great, one of the most effective forms of running is HIITs (High Intensity Interval Training). Basically, you run at maximum speed (80-100% of your capacity) for short bursts (10-15 seconds when you're starting out), and at about 50-60% for the warm-up and cool-down periods before and after (around 2 minutes) [1]. You do a total of about 20 minutes of this (and believe me, this will destroy you the first few times). The results are drastic, and unlike with marathon running, you don't lose muscle, instead you gain it. You lose fat FAST and gain strength in the process [2]. Can't recommend it enough! Note: I thought that EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption) meant you burnt calories for the next 24 hours, but that's possibly not as significant as it appears :( [3] [1]: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=621 http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=... [2]: http://greatist.com/fitness/complete-guide-interval-training-infographic http://greatist.com/fitness/complete-guide-interval-training... [3]: http://ca.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_900/962_popular-metabolism-myths-part-2.html http://ca.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_900/962_popular-met...
    - lkozma 14y ago
      Interestingly, this is what Bruce Lee advocated too.
    - 14y ago
unoti 14y ago
I've been doing strength training (the program is called Stronglifts 5x5[1]) with freeweights for about 9 months now. I just turned 44, and I've never felt better, and I'm stronger now than I have ever been. The program I use describes 3 simple exercises to do 3 times a week, and each workout takes me 30-45 minutes. Very little equipment is needed. It's hard to find good information about this on the net that covers both what exercises to do, how to do them, and how to eat. This program covers all of that, taking you from lifting an empty bar right on up. It's totally free, with an option to pay if you want personal consultation. I used to have knee pain, and I don't anymore. I used to get a sore back from coding all the time, and I don't any more. I seriously recommend trying strength training. [1] http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-training-program/ http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-tra...
- BryanB55 14y ago
  I'm currently doing the 4 hour body workout which sounds similar. I've always been in pretty good shape but after trying some of these 30 minute workouts 3 days a week, I'm a firm believer that you don't need to be spending hours in the gym everyday mindlessly going through the repetitions like a lot of people are led to believe. The page you link to looks a bit like typical internet marketing sales letter spam so I'm a bit skeptical of it, but I'll give the download a try.
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- kyllo 14y ago
  This. I had a very similar experience, although I did Starting Strength followed by 5/3/1. Squats and deadlifts have done wonders for my low back and knee pain. Over two years of lifting, I have gained about 30 pounds, but my waist size has not changed, suggesting that the weight gain is nearly all muscle. There's no shortcut, all it takes is lots of barbell training and protein intake over time.
reasonattlm 14y ago
Hand grip strength. Pretty much all other measures of frailty - such as muscle mass. Time spent jogging. Time spent not sitting. Time spent being active. All of these correlate well with mortality. Causation is harder to prove on these longer timescales. e.g. more likely to be strong and exercising because you are more robust, or more likely to be more robust because you are strong and exercising. Or if both, as is likely, to what degree and circumstance. Is it being strong, or is it side effects of processes that are involved in building and maintaining muscle mass the old fashioned way - e.g. hormetic effects of regular exercise, that cause mild cellular stress and thus boost housekeeping processes to better maintain tissue? Studies in shorter lived animals support causative roles for exercise and maintained muscle mass in long term health. For other data points, one could look at, for example, the fact that calorie restriction (not normally noted in conjunction with building strength) considerably reduces age-related loss of muscle mass and strength through a range of not fully understood mechanisms.
- kyllo 14y ago
  I think the calorie restriction studies deserve scrutiny. Do people who practice calorie restriction live longer compared to otherwise fit, healthy people who do not practice it? Or do they just live longer compared to the average (which includes a significant component of obese and/or diabetic over-eaters)?
  - saalweachter 14y ago
    http://www.nature.com/news/calorie-restriction-falters-in-the-long-run-1.11297 http://www.nature.com/news/calorie-restriction-falters-in-th... This article actually answers both your questions: """ One reason for that difference could be that the WNPRC monkeys were fed an unhealthy diet, which made the calorie-restricted monkeys seem healthier by comparison simply because they ate less of it. The WNPRC monkeys’ diets contained 28.5% sucrose, compared with 3.9% sucrose at the NIA. Meanwhile, the NIA meals included fish oil and antioxidants, whereas the WNPRC meals did not. Rick Weindruch, a gerontologist at the WNPRC who led the study, admits: “Overall, our diet was probably not as healthy.” """ So, monkeys on a calorie restricted diet are not healthier than monkeys on a healthy, unrestricted diet, but are healthier than monkeys on a diet of monkey junk food.
mindcrime 14y ago
I used to dabble with some amateur powerlifting (I could deadlift 420 and squat about 340 at my peak), and I have to say, there's something really addictive about lifting weights and getting stronger. Knowing that it can decrease your chance of death makes it even more compelling. Sadly, I, like so many other people, "fell off the wagon" and more or less quit lifting, gained a bunch of weight, and now, a few years later, I find out I'm diabetic and I wind up in the hospital with a life-threatening condition known as DKA. Moral of this story: Get your ass in a gym and lift some weights! And step away from the buffet table. Don't be stupid like me. Especially for the younger folks here, and the people who are already in good shape, if you ever take one bit of advice from an "old guy" take this one: Take care of your body. When you're 20, even 30, it's real easy to assume that you don't have to worry about your diet, about exercise, etc... it all seems to come so easily, and it's SO easy to rationalize not going to the gym, eating that extra Snickers bar, drinking those couple of extra cans of Coke, etc. Don't do it. It will freaking catch up with you, sooner or later. Don't wait until you're 40 and lying in a hospital bed to think "Oh, maybe I should clean my diet up and get some exercise".
- sudont 14y ago
  Forgive the fact it comes from a shameless marketer. I've always thought "panic early" was good advice, though: http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/panic.pdf http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/panic.pdf
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Forgive the fact it comes from a shameless marketer. Why would that be something that should be forgiven? Marketing is awesome, and I - for one - am a huge Seth Godin fan. Great article, too. That's a great point about "panic when there's still time to do something about it". You should probably submit that to HN as a standalone submission, actually.
nnq 14y ago
Related brain-snack concerning muscle tissue and cancer: http://www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_medicine.html http://www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_m... From it: "skeletal muscle tissue is resistant to cancer, and furthermore, not only to cancer, but of metastases going to skeletal muscle" (not entirely true, you have rhabdomiosarcomas, though they are rare and may originate in connective tissues, but she's definetely on to something).
- hackinthebochs 14y ago
  I would guess its almost all because of the hormone myostatin. It's a negative growth regulator in muscle (perhaps other tissues as well). Myostatin is precisely why our muscles don't grow wildly out of control, and why it is so hard to grow a significant amount of muscle. Cell growth is tightly controlled by the level of myostatin and the levels of positive growth regulators. I wonder if myostatin or an analogue could have an affect as an anti-cancer compound.
ErikAugust 14y ago
Was thinking of putting together a HN/Digg style site for fitness links (example here: http://erikaugust.com/sportslinks/ http://erikaugust.com/sportslinks/)... Good idea? Or am I missing a site out there already (outside of the sub-Reddits)?
- jewbacca 14y ago
  Why "outside of the sub-Reddits"? Are they missing something you can offer? I'm only peripherally aware of the scene, but I know there's at least 3 massive, established online social fitness communities, for links and otherwise: http://reddit.com/r/fitness/ http://reddit.com/r/fitness/ http://4chan.org/fit/ http://4chan.org/fit/ http://forum.bodybuilding.com/ http://forum.bodybuilding.com/
3327 14y ago
here is my 2 cents. Im a coder, developer but I am ripped (sorry for the self love) I work out like crazy and actively surf / kitesurf, rockclimb. So my gym sessions have always had a purpose - to make myself stronger per the requirements of those sports. So my 2 cents - get of the whey protein. don't take it do not touch it. I have no scientific evidence but way too many people are on that and no long term studies. Only evidence is this: A good friend fellow athlete (sailor olympic level windsurfer) healthy as none other, got a heart attack at the age of 33. He looked into my eyes and said he never took anything (when i asked if he doped of any sort) and he only took whey. Made me get off it. Difference in phenomenal. You get "cut" lean, stronger muscles, just eat well. Not to mention your body gets conditioned to the "easy" absorption of nutrients that come from whey and gets lazy. There thats my 2 cents. TLDR - get of whey protein, you'll get stronger live longer.
- nosequel 14y ago
  Nice job, no scientific evidence, but your "friend" had a heart attack. Just pure amazing post my friend. Oh, so I don't fall into the same trap, here are scientific studies in favor of Whey protein: http://examine.com/supplements/Whey+Protein/#main_clinical_results http://examine.com/supplements/Whey+Protein/#main_clinical_r... TLDR - http://s3.roosterteeth.com/images/Ataxx50e4c5160c877.jpg http://s3.roosterteeth.com/images/Ataxx50e4c5160c877.jpg
  - 3327 14y ago
    Sorry, but this study is a joke. If you think this is a study that validates your belief go ahead. But I will take any seasoned athlete's take on something than a half assed study funded by who knows who. These things take years to prove and large studies over long periods of time. IF you want to justify your own whey protein habits with this thats just you. > my 2 cents means my two cents, you take it as you will. Hearing negative stuff is always hard but its the truth. So go looking around the internet for studies that are pro whey, and believe them and justify your habits and don't worry about my friend.
    - deleted 14y ago
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chaosphere2112 14y ago
To quote my wife (Biostatistics grad student), "The confidence intervals for cancer deaths are wussy."
tokenadult 14y ago
The most statistically astute comment posted here so far is the top-level comment by micro_cam https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5493772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5493772 pointing out that the study design here doesn't involve random assignment to strength training of any kind, but rather just observation of the study population over time. Sure, it's a good idea to be stronger rather than weaker. Moreover, it is plausible that exercises that tend to develop strength (as measured in the study) have health benefits above and beyond merely developing strength. There is certainly no reason not to exercise based on this finding. But there is also not a strong reason to predict a longer rather than shorter life from your personal strength measurement, even though the study did the usual kind of regression analysis to control for other independent variables. Simply put, this was not a treatment-control study design, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz so no inference of causation is supported here. The authors were careful to write the word "association" (which is honest), and the authors were careful to investigate all-cause mortality in this study population (which is thoughtful), but we don't know yet how much you or I can improve individual lifespan by doing strength-building exercises. AFTER EDIT: The comment by micro_cam, which deserves your upvote for getting me started on my comment, is especially astute because it mentions that this was not a genetically sensitive study design. To answer the question posed in one of the replies this comment received, that will eventually be an issue worth looking at, which sorts of "endophenotypes" gain the most benefit from what sort of exercise. But we are nowhere near that level of precision of investigation yet. The statement about limitations of the study at the end of the submitted article mentions more issues. Picking up on something I learned from the late Richard Feynman's comments on the Challenger explosion investigation, I would like to see a scatterplot of these data displayed over the calculated regression line, to see how much uncertainty still surrounds their model. As it is, the confidence intervals around the death rates for different categories of strength overlap considerably, so there are some strong people with the same mortality risk as some of the weaker people.
- SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  This is the problem with all cohort studies. Since there aren't strong controls, you can't determine causality. Fundamentally, this is why we know get consistently conflicting advice about nutrition: we take cohort studies as law instead of using them to form hypotheses that are tested with well controlled experiments.
wahsd 14y ago
Seems like "Association between muscular atrophy and mortality in men" would be more accurate and clear.
reedlaw 14y ago
What about the risk of osteoarthritis? See this discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2kzg/my_doctor_told_me_squats_are_the_single_worst/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2kzg/my_doctor_tol...
- jacques_chester 14y ago
  I have an osteoarthritic left knee. In my case the underlying cause was a misfiring vastus medialis, possibly due to an acquired trigger point. It would have happened simply by walking around as a fat guy. I get synvisc injections every 6 months and I've returned to training. Trigger point therapy seems to do the rest.
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jcfrei 14y ago
Starting Strength is one of the best books on building strength, written by Mark Rippetoe and Jason Kelly. they propagate (among others exercises): squats, which is a single exercise that trains about 60% of your body.
EA 14y ago
"We love CrossFit. It is great job security." - my physical therapist edit: my point being that from the PT's POV, the more intense the strength training, the more likely a serious injury will occur during training.
- marknutter 14y ago
  It's well known in weight-lifting circles that CrossFit is rife with problems. Intense strength training does not correlate with increased injury; bad form and instruction correlates with increased injury.
- matwood 14y ago
  the more intense the strength training Stop right there. Please don't conflate the scamish, lets forget form and get our clients hurt XFitters with actual strength training (which I've never seen an XFitter do). XFit is great that it excites some people who would not normally work out, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired.
scottrogowski 14y ago
One important thing to keep in mind is that the upper third average bench press measured was 83.8kg (~185lbs). That is still a light bench press by the standards of those in the fitness and bodybuilding industries. I would imagine that there is a limit to the longevity gains that could be made from muscle strength and that these gains might start to reverse for bodybuilders and other strength athletes due to the increased strain it is putting on your heart and other organs.
- Voluntaryist 14y ago
  That is PURE speculation on your part. Why would the added "stress" on heart and other organs all of a sudden become harmful? You aren't supporting that whatsoever.
guylhem 14y ago
Why are so many people discussing the evidence here? If one seriously believes the BMJ would let a questionable study be published, think again. I'm not saying everything that is published in high quality peer reviewed journals is absolutely true, but it is subject to so much scrutiny that is unlikely to have an evident flaw in the reasoning, or at least some that is not properly mentioned in the article or letters to the editor. Which leads us back to why are so many here angry at the conclusion - because many answer seem emotionally charged. Among the tools offered to you to try to increase your lifespan, and especially the "high quality" years, is physical effort. There is even a very positive message there - you don't have to be in a perfect physical form, or do sports, to get the gains- muscle mass alone is enough. If you have had health problem, say broken bones, reduce mobility, pain, whatever, you can still get some of the positive advantages of muscle mass with weight training - which can be done at home, in a gym, anywhere. You may not get as much benefits as somebody fully healthy (ex: if you hip is not working, it will be a problem to train both legs, etc.) but it is still better than nothing!!! Exercice, as in improving the muscle mass, is well known to have positive health effects. If one does not exercise, the blame is not to be put on the lack of time, but rather on the lack of proper prioritization.
- jack9 14y ago
  > If one seriously believes the BMJ would let a questionable study be published, think again. All studies are questionable. A good study is scrutinized, not qualified based on who issues them. This is not a double blind study (it's rather impractical to perform) and the conclusions are carefully worded. To say it's unlikely to have evident flaws, misses the point. > Exercice, as in improving the muscle mass, is well known to have positive health effects. THIS is NOT well known. You state a popular belief with a dubious lack of constraints. How long and how much lifting does it take to put a 200lb 35yr old adult male into heart failure? What about a 90yr adult malw? The specific evidence is lacking. Everyone who casually talks about musclemass thinks it's a tautological generalization, because they heard it from a doctor making a practical generalization for a patient (who's likely already sick). This study provides some (or not, depending on interpretation) specific evidence. Some regressions still need to be performed on the data to remove uncertainty and provide useful bands of data.
enraged_camel 14y ago
I'm not a scientist, and this is wild conjecture, but one possible reason why people who workout live longer is that working out boosts happiness (releases endorphins) and reduces stress, and both of those have been shown to contribute to a long life.
dalys 14y ago
I'd like to point out that when looking only at persons aged <60 OR persons with a BMI >25, the strongest (upper) third group did NOT have the lowest death rate in this study. Instead it was the "middle" group in both cases. Admittedly with not much of a difference from the upper group. And again, this study did not claim causation between strength and mortality, but association. Although if we just play with the thought and assume a causation between strength and mortality and if you are under 60 years of age or have a BMI over 25 and you want to minimize your mortality rate, your one-repetition maximum (1RM) strength goals in a lifting weight / body weight ratio would be x: Bench press: 0.7 < x < 1.1 Leg press: 1.4 < x < 1.9
boldpanda 14y ago
The writing in these research briefs is horrible. It's nearly impossible to even deduce what point they're trying to make.
albertsun 14y ago
Published 2008? Hacker News seems to be developing a strong interest in fitness and weight lifting.
- davidtanner 14y ago
  Fitness and strength training are extremely important for everyone.
antirez 14y ago
Just in case after reading this you want to start exercising, I strongly suggest the following two resources: * http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/faq http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/faq * http://simplesciencefitness.com/ http://simplesciencefitness.com/ I have been doing strength training for a couple of years now and I can ensure you that it changed my life: better health, better quality of life, better code (I'm more focused).
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candybar 14y ago
I'd be much more interested in the same study without adjusting for BMI, because adding muscular strength would increase one's weight when not accomplished by reduction in body fat. As it stands, it's not controversial or surprising, because body fat loss would make you stronger relative to your BMI, without any increase in strength.

218 points by davidtanner 14y ago

It is important to note that this is a study of people who happened to be stronger, not people who were randomly caused to be stronger (ie by randomly assigning workout routines). Larry Wassermann has a great write up on the distinction with regards to inferring causation vs association here: http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/48/ http://normaldeviate.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/48/ It is good that they attempted to control for things like cardiovascular fitness but on there are also confounding factors like genetics and selection bias that are harder to look at (ie maybe the genetic variants that make it easier to build fast twitch muscles are what has the protective effect and increased strength training won't help someone without those genes). That being said I highly endorse bouldering and rock climbing in general as a way to build strength and move towards a healthy life style for people who don't enjoy typical gym workouts.

dbruce 14y ago

It's likely that healthier people are stronger on average....hence getting stronger by doing strength training will not change things.

nosequel 14y ago
So you are saying you didn't read the paper or abstract. They sort of covered that entire topic. This is about strength not "health", they took that into account in the study.
- alexvr 14y ago
  By taking it into account, they probably excluded people with medical issues that would skew the results. The study isn't perfect, so this guy has a point: People with genes that make them naturally strong may have related genes that contribute to their overall health. And the converse may be true for weak people.
  - scottrogowski 14y ago
    There is no such thing as naturally strong... there might be some genetics in how quickly you can gain muscle strength but no one is born strong. To think of it conversely, if a limb becomes paralyzed, that limb will undergo extreme muscle atrophy no matter who it is. Also, they listed as a mean 83kg for bench press for the "upper third". This is not a very large amount of weight and is easily within the genetic limits of the grand majority of men.
- deleted 14y ago
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- dbruce 14y ago
  You can't be serious. Took it into account? Before accusing people of not reading, consider they read it more closely than you. A study isn't "covering [an] entire topic" by just mentioning the word "confounding" and throwing a few possibilities of easily measurable factors around. This study is downright pathetic.
davidtanner 14y ago
The rationalization of a weak man?

jstanley 14y ago

In plain English: stronger people live longer.

stewsnooze 14y ago
I'm glad you wrote this comment. I was coming here to say my booze addled brain couldn't figure that bmj page out
mojoe 14y ago
Or targeted for popular consumption: Strong men are hard to kill
jpdoctor 14y ago
> In plain English: stronger people live longer. You'll never get follow-up funding with a title like that.
- jkuria 14y ago
  Why not? Do you need to say something confusing stated in esoteric medical terms?
  - mhurron 14y ago
    You do when you're looking for funding. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" If you present your paper "Healthy men who engage in a well rounded exercise regimen live longer, healthier lives" everyone is just going to go "well duh."
    - pekk 14y ago
      People in this literature will not have any problem understanding the jargon used here, and it's all meaningful, so this isn't at all a case of "baffle them with bullshit." You almost certainly use some kinds of technical jargon at your job, there is no need for this weird anger about research scientists using jargon in the same way. "Well duh" does not count as evidence for a claim, and the claim wasn't about a well-rounded exercise regimen but was rather more specific.

richardlblair 14y ago

I've never been one for strength training. I just like to run really hard for a short period of time... Guess I will need to change that.

chollida1 14y ago
Well it depends on how hard and how long you run. Sprinting is one of the best muscle building activities you can do. I thought it was crazy to try, but I swear it's added 50lbs to my deadlift with one sprint work out a week for 3 months. Going from 475 to 525 is a pretty incredible increase in my deadlift considering I was adding about 5lbs a month before.
- bytefactory 14y ago
  I'd just like to add that while running is great, one of the most effective forms of running is HIITs (High Intensity Interval Training). Basically, you run at maximum speed (80-100% of your capacity) for short bursts (10-15 seconds when you're starting out), and at about 50-60% for the warm-up and cool-down periods before and after (around 2 minutes) [1]. You do a total of about 20 minutes of this (and believe me, this will destroy you the first few times). The results are drastic, and unlike with marathon running, you don't lose muscle, instead you gain it. You lose fat FAST and gain strength in the process [2]. Can't recommend it enough! Note: I thought that EPOC (Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption) meant you burnt calories for the next 24 hours, but that's possibly not as significant as it appears :( [3] [1]: http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=621 http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/fitness_articles.asp?id=... [2]: http://greatist.com/fitness/complete-guide-interval-training-infographic http://greatist.com/fitness/complete-guide-interval-training... [3]: http://ca.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_900/962_popular-metabolism-myths-part-2.html http://ca.askmen.com/sports/bodybuilding_900/962_popular-met...
  - lkozma 14y ago
    Interestingly, this is what Bruce Lee advocated too.
  - 14y ago

unoti 14y ago

I've been doing strength training (the program is called Stronglifts 5x5[1]) with freeweights for about 9 months now. I just turned 44, and I've never felt better, and I'm stronger now than I have ever been. The program I use describes 3 simple exercises to do 3 times a week, and each workout takes me 30-45 minutes. Very little equipment is needed. It's hard to find good information about this on the net that covers both what exercises to do, how to do them, and how to eat. This program covers all of that, taking you from lifting an empty bar right on up. It's totally free, with an option to pay if you want personal consultation. I used to have knee pain, and I don't anymore. I used to get a sore back from coding all the time, and I don't any more. I seriously recommend trying strength training. [1] http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-training-program/ http://stronglifts.com/stronglifts-5x5-beginner-strength-tra...

BryanB55 14y ago
I'm currently doing the 4 hour body workout which sounds similar. I've always been in pretty good shape but after trying some of these 30 minute workouts 3 days a week, I'm a firm believer that you don't need to be spending hours in the gym everyday mindlessly going through the repetitions like a lot of people are led to believe. The page you link to looks a bit like typical internet marketing sales letter spam so I'm a bit skeptical of it, but I'll give the download a try.
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kyllo 14y ago
This. I had a very similar experience, although I did Starting Strength followed by 5/3/1. Squats and deadlifts have done wonders for my low back and knee pain. Over two years of lifting, I have gained about 30 pounds, but my waist size has not changed, suggesting that the weight gain is nearly all muscle. There's no shortcut, all it takes is lots of barbell training and protein intake over time.

reasonattlm 14y ago

Hand grip strength. Pretty much all other measures of frailty - such as muscle mass. Time spent jogging. Time spent not sitting. Time spent being active. All of these correlate well with mortality. Causation is harder to prove on these longer timescales. e.g. more likely to be strong and exercising because you are more robust, or more likely to be more robust because you are strong and exercising. Or if both, as is likely, to what degree and circumstance. Is it being strong, or is it side effects of processes that are involved in building and maintaining muscle mass the old fashioned way - e.g. hormetic effects of regular exercise, that cause mild cellular stress and thus boost housekeeping processes to better maintain tissue? Studies in shorter lived animals support causative roles for exercise and maintained muscle mass in long term health. For other data points, one could look at, for example, the fact that calorie restriction (not normally noted in conjunction with building strength) considerably reduces age-related loss of muscle mass and strength through a range of not fully understood mechanisms.

kyllo 14y ago
I think the calorie restriction studies deserve scrutiny. Do people who practice calorie restriction live longer compared to otherwise fit, healthy people who do not practice it? Or do they just live longer compared to the average (which includes a significant component of obese and/or diabetic over-eaters)?
- saalweachter 14y ago
  http://www.nature.com/news/calorie-restriction-falters-in-the-long-run-1.11297 http://www.nature.com/news/calorie-restriction-falters-in-th... This article actually answers both your questions: """ One reason for that difference could be that the WNPRC monkeys were fed an unhealthy diet, which made the calorie-restricted monkeys seem healthier by comparison simply because they ate less of it. The WNPRC monkeys’ diets contained 28.5% sucrose, compared with 3.9% sucrose at the NIA. Meanwhile, the NIA meals included fish oil and antioxidants, whereas the WNPRC meals did not. Rick Weindruch, a gerontologist at the WNPRC who led the study, admits: “Overall, our diet was probably not as healthy.” """ So, monkeys on a calorie restricted diet are not healthier than monkeys on a healthy, unrestricted diet, but are healthier than monkeys on a diet of monkey junk food.

mindcrime 14y ago

I used to dabble with some amateur powerlifting (I could deadlift 420 and squat about 340 at my peak), and I have to say, there's something really addictive about lifting weights and getting stronger. Knowing that it can decrease your chance of death makes it even more compelling. Sadly, I, like so many other people, "fell off the wagon" and more or less quit lifting, gained a bunch of weight, and now, a few years later, I find out I'm diabetic and I wind up in the hospital with a life-threatening condition known as DKA. Moral of this story: Get your ass in a gym and lift some weights! And step away from the buffet table. Don't be stupid like me. Especially for the younger folks here, and the people who are already in good shape, if you ever take one bit of advice from an "old guy" take this one: Take care of your body. When you're 20, even 30, it's real easy to assume that you don't have to worry about your diet, about exercise, etc... it all seems to come so easily, and it's SO easy to rationalize not going to the gym, eating that extra Snickers bar, drinking those couple of extra cans of Coke, etc. Don't do it. It will freaking catch up with you, sooner or later. Don't wait until you're 40 and lying in a hospital bed to think "Oh, maybe I should clean my diet up and get some exercise".

sudont 14y ago
Forgive the fact it comes from a shameless marketer. I've always thought "panic early" was good advice, though: http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/panic.pdf http://www.sethgodin.com/bigmoo/free/panic.pdf
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Forgive the fact it comes from a shameless marketer. Why would that be something that should be forgiven? Marketing is awesome, and I - for one - am a huge Seth Godin fan. Great article, too. That's a great point about "panic when there's still time to do something about it". You should probably submit that to HN as a standalone submission, actually.

nnq 14y ago

Related brain-snack concerning muscle tissue and cancer: http://www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_medicine.html http://www.ted.com/talks/eva_vertes_looks_to_the_future_of_m... From it: "skeletal muscle tissue is resistant to cancer, and furthermore, not only to cancer, but of metastases going to skeletal muscle" (not entirely true, you have rhabdomiosarcomas, though they are rare and may originate in connective tissues, but she's definetely on to something).

hackinthebochs 14y ago
I would guess its almost all because of the hormone myostatin. It's a negative growth regulator in muscle (perhaps other tissues as well). Myostatin is precisely why our muscles don't grow wildly out of control, and why it is so hard to grow a significant amount of muscle. Cell growth is tightly controlled by the level of myostatin and the levels of positive growth regulators. I wonder if myostatin or an analogue could have an affect as an anti-cancer compound.

ErikAugust 14y ago

Was thinking of putting together a HN/Digg style site for fitness links (example here: http://erikaugust.com/sportslinks/ http://erikaugust.com/sportslinks/)... Good idea? Or am I missing a site out there already (outside of the sub-Reddits)?

jewbacca 14y ago
Why "outside of the sub-Reddits"? Are they missing something you can offer? I'm only peripherally aware of the scene, but I know there's at least 3 massive, established online social fitness communities, for links and otherwise: http://reddit.com/r/fitness/ http://reddit.com/r/fitness/ http://4chan.org/fit/ http://4chan.org/fit/ http://forum.bodybuilding.com/ http://forum.bodybuilding.com/

3327 14y ago

here is my 2 cents. Im a coder, developer but I am ripped (sorry for the self love) I work out like crazy and actively surf / kitesurf, rockclimb. So my gym sessions have always had a purpose - to make myself stronger per the requirements of those sports. So my 2 cents - get of the whey protein. don't take it do not touch it. I have no scientific evidence but way too many people are on that and no long term studies. Only evidence is this: A good friend fellow athlete (sailor olympic level windsurfer) healthy as none other, got a heart attack at the age of 33. He looked into my eyes and said he never took anything (when i asked if he doped of any sort) and he only took whey. Made me get off it. Difference in phenomenal. You get "cut" lean, stronger muscles, just eat well. Not to mention your body gets conditioned to the "easy" absorption of nutrients that come from whey and gets lazy. There thats my 2 cents. TLDR - get of whey protein, you'll get stronger live longer.

nosequel 14y ago
Nice job, no scientific evidence, but your "friend" had a heart attack. Just pure amazing post my friend. Oh, so I don't fall into the same trap, here are scientific studies in favor of Whey protein: http://examine.com/supplements/Whey+Protein/#main_clinical_results http://examine.com/supplements/Whey+Protein/#main_clinical_r... TLDR - http://s3.roosterteeth.com/images/Ataxx50e4c5160c877.jpg http://s3.roosterteeth.com/images/Ataxx50e4c5160c877.jpg
- 3327 14y ago
  Sorry, but this study is a joke. If you think this is a study that validates your belief go ahead. But I will take any seasoned athlete's take on something than a half assed study funded by who knows who. These things take years to prove and large studies over long periods of time. IF you want to justify your own whey protein habits with this thats just you. > my 2 cents means my two cents, you take it as you will. Hearing negative stuff is always hard but its the truth. So go looking around the internet for studies that are pro whey, and believe them and justify your habits and don't worry about my friend.
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chaosphere2112 14y ago

To quote my wife (Biostatistics grad student), "The confidence intervals for cancer deaths are wussy."

tokenadult 14y ago

The most statistically astute comment posted here so far is the top-level comment by micro_cam https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5493772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5493772 pointing out that the study design here doesn't involve random assignment to strength training of any kind, but rather just observation of the study population over time. Sure, it's a good idea to be stronger rather than weaker. Moreover, it is plausible that exercises that tend to develop strength (as measured in the study) have health benefits above and beyond merely developing strength. There is certainly no reason not to exercise based on this finding. But there is also not a strong reason to predict a longer rather than shorter life from your personal strength measurement, even though the study did the usual kind of regression analysis to control for other independent variables. Simply put, this was not a treatment-control study design, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hb3k0nz so no inference of causation is supported here. The authors were careful to write the word "association" (which is honest), and the authors were careful to investigate all-cause mortality in this study population (which is thoughtful), but we don't know yet how much you or I can improve individual lifespan by doing strength-building exercises. AFTER EDIT: The comment by micro_cam, which deserves your upvote for getting me started on my comment, is especially astute because it mentions that this was not a genetically sensitive study design. To answer the question posed in one of the replies this comment received, that will eventually be an issue worth looking at, which sorts of "endophenotypes" gain the most benefit from what sort of exercise. But we are nowhere near that level of precision of investigation yet. The statement about limitations of the study at the end of the submitted article mentions more issues. Picking up on something I learned from the late Richard Feynman's comments on the Challenger explosion investigation, I would like to see a scatterplot of these data displayed over the calculated regression line, to see how much uncertainty still surrounds their model. As it is, the confidence intervals around the death rates for different categories of strength overlap considerably, so there are some strong people with the same mortality risk as some of the weaker people.

SoftwareMaven 14y ago
This is the problem with all cohort studies. Since there aren't strong controls, you can't determine causality. Fundamentally, this is why we know get consistently conflicting advice about nutrition: we take cohort studies as law instead of using them to form hypotheses that are tested with well controlled experiments.

wahsd 14y ago

Seems like "Association between muscular atrophy and mortality in men" would be more accurate and clear.

reedlaw 14y ago

What about the risk of osteoarthritis? See this discussion: http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2kzg/my_doctor_told_me_squats_are_the_single_worst/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/s2kzg/my_doctor_tol...

jacques_chester 14y ago
I have an osteoarthritic left knee. In my case the underlying cause was a misfiring vastus medialis, possibly due to an acquired trigger point. It would have happened simply by walking around as a fat guy. I get synvisc injections every 6 months and I've returned to training. Trigger point therapy seems to do the rest.

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jcfrei 14y ago

Starting Strength is one of the best books on building strength, written by Mark Rippetoe and Jason Kelly. they propagate (among others exercises): squats, which is a single exercise that trains about 60% of your body.

EA 14y ago

"We love CrossFit. It is great job security." - my physical therapist edit: my point being that from the PT's POV, the more intense the strength training, the more likely a serious injury will occur during training.

marknutter 14y ago
It's well known in weight-lifting circles that CrossFit is rife with problems. Intense strength training does not correlate with increased injury; bad form and instruction correlates with increased injury.
matwood 14y ago
the more intense the strength training Stop right there. Please don't conflate the scamish, lets forget form and get our clients hurt XFitters with actual strength training (which I've never seen an XFitter do). XFit is great that it excites some people who would not normally work out, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired.

scottrogowski 14y ago

One important thing to keep in mind is that the upper third average bench press measured was 83.8kg (~185lbs). That is still a light bench press by the standards of those in the fitness and bodybuilding industries. I would imagine that there is a limit to the longevity gains that could be made from muscle strength and that these gains might start to reverse for bodybuilders and other strength athletes due to the increased strain it is putting on your heart and other organs.

Voluntaryist 14y ago
That is PURE speculation on your part. Why would the added "stress" on heart and other organs all of a sudden become harmful? You aren't supporting that whatsoever.

guylhem 14y ago

Why are so many people discussing the evidence here? If one seriously believes the BMJ would let a questionable study be published, think again. I'm not saying everything that is published in high quality peer reviewed journals is absolutely true, but it is subject to so much scrutiny that is unlikely to have an evident flaw in the reasoning, or at least some that is not properly mentioned in the article or letters to the editor. Which leads us back to why are so many here angry at the conclusion - because many answer seem emotionally charged. Among the tools offered to you to try to increase your lifespan, and especially the "high quality" years, is physical effort. There is even a very positive message there - you don't have to be in a perfect physical form, or do sports, to get the gains- muscle mass alone is enough. If you have had health problem, say broken bones, reduce mobility, pain, whatever, you can still get some of the positive advantages of muscle mass with weight training - which can be done at home, in a gym, anywhere. You may not get as much benefits as somebody fully healthy (ex: if you hip is not working, it will be a problem to train both legs, etc.) but it is still better than nothing!!! Exercice, as in improving the muscle mass, is well known to have positive health effects. If one does not exercise, the blame is not to be put on the lack of time, but rather on the lack of proper prioritization.

jack9 14y ago
> If one seriously believes the BMJ would let a questionable study be published, think again. All studies are questionable. A good study is scrutinized, not qualified based on who issues them. This is not a double blind study (it's rather impractical to perform) and the conclusions are carefully worded. To say it's unlikely to have evident flaws, misses the point. > Exercice, as in improving the muscle mass, is well known to have positive health effects. THIS is NOT well known. You state a popular belief with a dubious lack of constraints. How long and how much lifting does it take to put a 200lb 35yr old adult male into heart failure? What about a 90yr adult malw? The specific evidence is lacking. Everyone who casually talks about musclemass thinks it's a tautological generalization, because they heard it from a doctor making a practical generalization for a patient (who's likely already sick). This study provides some (or not, depending on interpretation) specific evidence. Some regressions still need to be performed on the data to remove uncertainty and provide useful bands of data.

enraged_camel 14y ago

I'm not a scientist, and this is wild conjecture, but one possible reason why people who workout live longer is that working out boosts happiness (releases endorphins) and reduces stress, and both of those have been shown to contribute to a long life.

dalys 14y ago

I'd like to point out that when looking only at persons aged <60 OR persons with a BMI >25, the strongest (upper) third group did NOT have the lowest death rate in this study. Instead it was the "middle" group in both cases. Admittedly with not much of a difference from the upper group. And again, this study did not claim causation between strength and mortality, but association. Although if we just play with the thought and assume a causation between strength and mortality and if you are under 60 years of age or have a BMI over 25 and you want to minimize your mortality rate, your one-repetition maximum (1RM) strength goals in a lifting weight / body weight ratio would be x: Bench press: 0.7 < x < 1.1 Leg press: 1.4 < x < 1.9

boldpanda 14y ago

The writing in these research briefs is horrible. It's nearly impossible to even deduce what point they're trying to make.

albertsun 14y ago

Published 2008? Hacker News seems to be developing a strong interest in fitness and weight lifting.

davidtanner 14y ago
Fitness and strength training are extremely important for everyone.

antirez 14y ago

Just in case after reading this you want to start exercising, I strongly suggest the following two resources: * http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/faq http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/wiki/faq * http://simplesciencefitness.com/ http://simplesciencefitness.com/ I have been doing strength training for a couple of years now and I can ensure you that it changed my life: better health, better quality of life, better code (I'm more focused).

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candybar 14y ago

I'd be much more interested in the same study without adjusting for BMI, because adding muscular strength would increase one's weight when not accomplished by reduction in body fat. As it stands, it's not controversial or surprising, because body fat loss would make you stronger relative to your BMI, without any increase in strength.