5 ms·

The man who invented exercise - epidemiologist Jerry Morris

45 points by arihelgason 17y ago

robak 17y ago
how often do you excercise?
bootload 17y ago
"... And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. “We set about destroying this observation,” he says. “We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.” But they couldn’t. His paper (“Coronary heart-disease and physical activity of work”) finally appeared in The Lancet in 1953. His hypothesis, as he still called it, was greeted with general disbelief. What could exercise possibly have to do with heart attacks? ..." Not for me. I've got 160Km to go before I've marched, run & hiked my way through 1000Miles in just under 15 months.
tokenadult 17y ago
I've just been reading an autobiographical sketch that my paternal grandmother wrote in 1926, after her third year of college. She wrote quite a lot about what she did to maintain her good health--which she remembered as being very good throughout childhood. She acknowledged health benefits of physical exercise and considered it an advantage that she walked from home two miles to her college and then two miles back home each day. She also noted that she liked eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and not too much meat. She even reports her height (five feet and three inches) and weight (one hundred and fourteen pounds) at that age. It is apparent that in her milieu there were plenty of Minnesotans living in county seat college towns who knew exercise and good diet were good for health. Alas, she was the only one of my four grandparents who didn't live into my lifetime. She died about twenty-five years later while driving across Minnesota in the winter to pick up my dad from the same college. Before she arrived at her destination, her car slipped on the icy highway and crashed head-on with another car, killing both drivers. Epidemiologically, there is no doubt that exercise is beneficial for health. But of course it is not a cure-all. My dad was paralyzed for six years before he died when he slipped and fell on the ice on a different Minnesota winter day while going out shopping for a condolence card for a friend's funeral. That kind of concern is what keeps some people in their cars. After edit: I agree with the other person who just commented that this is a particularly striking paragraph in the submitted article: "And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. 'We set about destroying this observation,' he says. 'We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.' But they couldn’t." That, of course, is just what Richard Feynman recommended that a true scientist should do. "But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated." http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
tungstenfurnace 17y ago
Do people move about lots because they are healthy, or vice versa?
- tokenadult 17y ago
  The submitted article reports one of the first published findings by an epidemiologist showing that moving around a lot protects health, and is not just an outcome of being healthy in the first place. Since his work, there have been many more studies that reach the same conclusion, quite a few of them having been done in Canada as the provinces of Canada developed their health insurance programs.
  - tungstenfurnace 17y ago
    What's the scientific explanation of why exercise makes one healthy? (Otherwise it might just be a correlation. A study can only support one explanation over another; it can't generate an explanation.)
- chipsy 17y ago
  Lifestyle and environment definitely play into a "cycle of health." If you eat a huge burrito, your stomach will be kept so busy digesting it that you're not going to want to move around for hours afterward. If the air is smoggy, the weather unpleasant, or the streets pedestrian-unfriendly, going outside will be seen as a burden. If your feet and joints hurt when you run(which, as implicated in "Born to Run," is largely a product of our footwear) you will find it difficult to see pleasure in exercise. And so on. So if you have trouble getting excited about exercise, try to change other lifestyle factors at the same time. Edit: (This doesn't mean that exercise isn't helpful on its own, just that it may not be the easiest/best "health solution" to start with.)
nandemo 17y ago
He had inadvertently (...) stumbled on a great truth about health: exercise helps you live longer. Er, maybe he might have been the first to demonstrate scientifically the link between lack of exercise and specific illnesses. However, the ancient Greeks already knew that physical exercise leads to good health.
- miles 17y ago
  the ancient Greeks already knew that physical exercise leads to good health. Exactly. One can go even further back to the Chinese, etc: http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/history.html http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/history.html
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    The dates are incorrect for China (said the Chinese major). Actually, most of the widely known writers from China are no more ancient than the widely known writers from Greece, so "even further back," which I suppose you typed relying on the source you kindly linked to, is incorrect. Confucius's dates of traditionally September 28, 551 B.C.E. to 479 B.C.E. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius are somewhat in dispute, but the dates of Thales, ca. 624 BC to ca. 546 BC, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales are actually earlier. The source you link to doesn't get transcription spelling of Chinese words correct, either, so you can be sure the author is not familiar with Chinese history.
    - miles 17y ago
      most of the widely known writers from China are no more ancient than the widely known writers from Greece, so "even further back," which I suppose you typed relying on the source you kindly linked to, is incorrect. Actually, I was relying on early Taoist exercises for life extension predating comments on exercise I could find from Epictetus and other Greeks demonstrating their awareness of the beneficial effects of exercise. Whether or not Thales predates Confucius is irrelevant, unless either addressed the question of exercise (a quick Google search fails to uncover such a possibility). Mention should also be made of India: yoga is estimated to go back at least 5000 years, though I have not the energy or interest to go digging for evidence that they realized the connection between exercise and life extension.
anamax 17y ago
Contrast ""And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. 'We set about destroying this observation,' he says. 'We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.' But they couldn’t." With "hide the decline" and "trick".
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  A Google Scholar search for science articles with "trick" in the title: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=trick&num=10&as_subj=phy&as_subj=eng&as_sdts=5&hl=en&as_vis=1&as_occt=title http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=trick&num=10&#3... This intentional misreading is as misguided as assuming that we are all "hackers".
  - anamax 17y ago
    Yes "trick" can have benign meanings. Do you really want to argue that the "trick" in this case is benign? Where's the skepticism among the AGW folks? They were rewarded for finding "confirmation"....
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      Yes, in this case the word is clearly used as a synonym for "technique". Here's the original text: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=154&filename=942777075.txt http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=154&filen... Even if "hide the decline" was considered to be referring to something dubious, the use of "trick" would still clearly mean "technique". It would be like if a student was breaking into a school computer (i.e. "hacking") and used a tool in an ingenious manner (i.e. a "hack"). Someone could say "That's a cool hack" and it would be clear from the context that they're not complimenting the lawbreaking, but on the creative use of a tool. Maybe if you were later prosecuting that student in court then you'd take that "cool hack" phrase and try your best to sell it to the jury as referring to breaking the law to bolster your case, and maybe they'd buy it, but it would still be obvious to someone who understood the context and culture that it didn't mean what it was being purported to say.

45 points by arihelgason 17y ago

robak 17y ago

how often do you excercise?

"... And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. “We set about destroying this observation,” he says. “We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.” But they couldn’t. His paper (“Coronary heart-disease and physical activity of work”) finally appeared in The Lancet in 1953. His hypothesis, as he still called it, was greeted with general disbelief. What could exercise possibly have to do with heart attacks? ..." Not for me. I've got 160Km to go before I've marched, run & hiked my way through 1000Miles in just under 15 months.

tokenadult 17y ago

I've just been reading an autobiographical sketch that my paternal grandmother wrote in 1926, after her third year of college. She wrote quite a lot about what she did to maintain her good health--which she remembered as being very good throughout childhood. She acknowledged health benefits of physical exercise and considered it an advantage that she walked from home two miles to her college and then two miles back home each day. She also noted that she liked eating a variety of fruits and vegetables, and not too much meat. She even reports her height (five feet and three inches) and weight (one hundred and fourteen pounds) at that age. It is apparent that in her milieu there were plenty of Minnesotans living in county seat college towns who knew exercise and good diet were good for health. Alas, she was the only one of my four grandparents who didn't live into my lifetime. She died about twenty-five years later while driving across Minnesota in the winter to pick up my dad from the same college. Before she arrived at her destination, her car slipped on the icy highway and crashed head-on with another car, killing both drivers. Epidemiologically, there is no doubt that exercise is beneficial for health. But of course it is not a cure-all. My dad was paralyzed for six years before he died when he slipped and fell on the ice on a different Minnesota winter day while going out shopping for a condolence card for a friend's funeral. That kind of concern is what keeps some people in their cars. After edit: I agree with the other person who just commented that this is a particularly striking paragraph in the submitted article: "And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. 'We set about destroying this observation,' he says. 'We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.' But they couldn’t." That, of course, is just what Richard Feynman recommended that a true scientist should do. "But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated." http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf

tungstenfurnace 17y ago

Do people move about lots because they are healthy, or vice versa?

tokenadult 17y ago
The submitted article reports one of the first published findings by an epidemiologist showing that moving around a lot protects health, and is not just an outcome of being healthy in the first place. Since his work, there have been many more studies that reach the same conclusion, quite a few of them having been done in Canada as the provinces of Canada developed their health insurance programs.
- tungstenfurnace 17y ago
  What's the scientific explanation of why exercise makes one healthy? (Otherwise it might just be a correlation. A study can only support one explanation over another; it can't generate an explanation.)
chipsy 17y ago
Lifestyle and environment definitely play into a "cycle of health." If you eat a huge burrito, your stomach will be kept so busy digesting it that you're not going to want to move around for hours afterward. If the air is smoggy, the weather unpleasant, or the streets pedestrian-unfriendly, going outside will be seen as a burden. If your feet and joints hurt when you run(which, as implicated in "Born to Run," is largely a product of our footwear) you will find it difficult to see pleasure in exercise. And so on. So if you have trouble getting excited about exercise, try to change other lifestyle factors at the same time. Edit: (This doesn't mean that exercise isn't helpful on its own, just that it may not be the easiest/best "health solution" to start with.)

nandemo 17y ago

He had inadvertently (...) stumbled on a great truth about health: exercise helps you live longer. Er, maybe he might have been the first to demonstrate scientifically the link between lack of exercise and specific illnesses. However, the ancient Greeks already knew that physical exercise leads to good health.

miles 17y ago
the ancient Greeks already knew that physical exercise leads to good health. Exactly. One can go even further back to the Chinese, etc: http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/history.html http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/history.html
- tokenadult 17y ago
  The dates are incorrect for China (said the Chinese major). Actually, most of the widely known writers from China are no more ancient than the widely known writers from Greece, so "even further back," which I suppose you typed relying on the source you kindly linked to, is incorrect. Confucius's dates of traditionally September 28, 551 B.C.E. to 479 B.C.E. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius are somewhat in dispute, but the dates of Thales, ca. 624 BC to ca. 546 BC, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thales are actually earlier. The source you link to doesn't get transcription spelling of Chinese words correct, either, so you can be sure the author is not familiar with Chinese history.
  - miles 17y ago
    most of the widely known writers from China are no more ancient than the widely known writers from Greece, so "even further back," which I suppose you typed relying on the source you kindly linked to, is incorrect. Actually, I was relying on early Taoist exercises for life extension predating comments on exercise I could find from Epictetus and other Greeks demonstrating their awareness of the beneficial effects of exercise. Whether or not Thales predates Confucius is irrelevant, unless either addressed the question of exercise (a quick Google search fails to uncover such a possibility). Mention should also be made of India: yoga is estimated to go back at least 5000 years, though I have not the energy or interest to go digging for evidence that they realized the connection between exercise and life extension.

anamax 17y ago

Contrast ""And yet Morris sat on his data for years. If there were flaws in his theory, he was determined to find them before anyone else could. 'We set about destroying this observation,' he says. 'We brought in outside people with no blood in their veins, no interest, to destroy it.' But they couldn’t." With "hide the decline" and "trick".

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
A Google Scholar search for science articles with "trick" in the title: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=trick&num=10&as_subj=phy&as_subj=eng&as_sdts=5&hl=en&as_vis=1&as_occt=title http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?as_q=trick&num=10&#3... This intentional misreading is as misguided as assuming that we are all "hackers".
- anamax 17y ago
  Yes "trick" can have benign meanings. Do you really want to argue that the "trick" in this case is benign? Where's the skepticism among the AGW folks? They were rewarded for finding "confirmation"....
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Yes, in this case the word is clearly used as a synonym for "technique". Here's the original text: http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=154&filename=942777075.txt http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=154&filen... Even if "hide the decline" was considered to be referring to something dubious, the use of "trick" would still clearly mean "technique". It would be like if a student was breaking into a school computer (i.e. "hacking") and used a tool in an ingenious manner (i.e. a "hack"). Someone could say "That's a cool hack" and it would be clear from the context that they're not complimenting the lawbreaking, but on the creative use of a tool. Maybe if you were later prosecuting that student in court then you'd take that "cool hack" phrase and try your best to sell it to the jury as referring to breaking the law to bolster your case, and maybe they'd buy it, but it would still be obvious to someone who understood the context and culture that it didn't mean what it was being purported to say.