Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality • Hacker News Board

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#381

Post by fennecbutt » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:19 AM UTC

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

Yeah as someone who (unfortunately) has the habit of exercising on and off that's what I heard/did as well: cardio where you're pushing yourself a little, but not so hard you feel like you want to stop right now or that you couldn't have a chat with someone running beside you.

Its weird though because HIIT is meant to be amazing for your body as well.

I suppose a mixture of both is good, and if I really think about it, we pretty much evolved to do that - low energy wandering to find prey, medium energy to chase prey and exhaust it, brief high intensity to catch up and finish the job. Then you get dinner.

Man, I should go back to the gym.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#382

Post by agumonkey » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:23 AM UTC

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

It took me some time to readjust my brain to stop aiming at extremes and focus at ~harmony. Doing exercise that don't burn you most of the time. Maybe later my body will be able to take a bigger hit, but in the mean time I'll take the slow maintenance mode.

Another trick was to focus on the whole body, I had a bad back but ran all my life like this, I now do light deadlift to restore better posture and better range of motion. Bad posture will make your muscle shrink and impede your running too.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#383

Post by BytesAndGears » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:27 AM UTC

vasco wrote: post #301

imtringued wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except roads for car drivers and then people wonder about this mysterious infinite latent demand for free roads that they call "induced demand". The demand for things that cost nothing is infinite.

Roads have huge utility to society. Unless you want the ambulance to go get you on a unpaved mess and take you back to the hospital banging all over the back. Or that they fetch you by bycicle.

Well obviously roads have benefits. Nobody is saying to abolish roads. But the marginal benefits of more road density really fall off beyond the minimum of “having a road”. Compare two options within a city

1. Redesign a 2-lane (each direction) highway into a 4-lane highway at the cost of several hundred million tax dollars, over the course of a few years.

2. Leave the highway smaller. Re-zone a city to allow small shops within residential neighborhoods, and up-zone all residential land to allow up to 4-story townhomes and condos. Spend tens of millions of tax dollars building a robust cycling highway, and make it safe for people to accomplish basic errands within a close proximity to their home.

For #2, spending of tax dollars is less and people are healthier. You still have roads, but people need to drive on them much less often.

So when the next city proposes an $840M highway revamp [1], consider how you could spend 10% of that funding to increase mobility around the city for residents ($84M could build a lot of safe separated bike highways). While at the same time allowing private development to make natural improvements to neighborhoods by opening new corner stores and shops along bike routes

[1] https://www.i395-miami.com/

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#384

Post by underwater » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:28 AM UTC

bpizzi wrote: post #353

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

There's also value in spending some time in zone 5 [1]: this is where the heart is really trained as a muscle, and where the cardiovascular system is pushed to its limit (the famous vo2max: increasing vo2max is done in zone 5, for ex. with HIIT [2]). Zone 2 is all about giving the mitochondries a chance to get better at providing a steady energy flow over a long time, mainly by optimizing for burning fat as fuel inst…

You’re right, but for someone who doesn’t like running and isn’t a runner, keeping it simple and saying run slow is more helpful.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#385

Post by nxobject » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:28 AM UTC

wjnc wrote: post #321

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

A part of become a good runner is letting go of expectations. There is a lot of quasi meditative written on the topic, but even if that’s not your thing: even if you walk/jog/walk to retain a constant, middle to low heart rate you could easily have the same effort as a trained runner doing some great mileage. The humbling part is part of the experience. Stay away from anything with speed for the first thousand miles.…

I first trained to run long distances using a run-walk method for equal distances, which I then shortened – it took some convincing from an experienced runner that I wasn't "cheating", but when I realized that I was able to run at enough overload to train no matter what, it then clicked: it's about staying in motion; it's running, not sprinting, which are two different things indeed.

I now cycle for the same reasons as you do, although it's not as consistently intense as I would like.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#386

Post by dailykoder » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:44 AM UTC

snemvalts wrote: post #337

dailykoder wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike this black n white rhetoric from both sides. "Just do some workout" - "no this doesn't work for me". Yes, workout does help, but mental illness is still real. Both sides should try to be more sensitive and more understanding in my opinion. I can't fix my social anxiety through workout. But I sure can feel better about myself when doing it and then approach those anxieties with more confidence, but the anxie…

I'm speaking from experience regarding mental illnesses and exercise. And I never discounted medication. Just that exercise is critically underprescribed, I'm fairly sure it would work better for milder cases compared to meds. Not to mention the other health benefits listed in the thread. Same way an opioid pill is still prescribed in cases of cancer or severe pain. Just that there are probably better, milder alterna…

I am 90% on your side (my experience is just that most doctors or therapists ask for my workout before considering meds). The truth is just that every mental illness is different.

So yeah, my takeaway is we should embrace workout, or maybe not necesserily straight workout, but just simple movement/exercise, more than meds. Especially here in germany I notice a very bad/prejudice mindset about doctors. I myself had very good experience. Either just because of pure luck or because I went to them, because I geniuenely believe that they are professionals who can help me. And that's what they (most of the time, not always) did.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#387

Post by robwwilliams » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:47 AM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #129

s1artibartfast wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not cardiovasuclar, but the top 2 causes of death in the US are tied to obesity, which takes zero time to reduce. You just have to not eat, which is actually time positive. Most humans are just incredibly bad at impulse control.

There was a relatively recent study that found that BMR has actually been dropping over the last 30 years. The difference in men was large enough (7% iirc) that it would explain most of the obesity epidemic. Why it's dropping is still a n mystery though. Nevertheless, the solution is still the same: eat less. The study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10445668/

Thanks for the link to this very strong and now open study.

The authors suggest that the decreased consumption of saturated fats over the last 30+ years is likely to contribute to the reduction in basal metabolic rate and gains in weight. The mouse model component of the study provides some support.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#388

Post by indymike » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:48 AM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #168

Weird that people seem to assert that causality is not established? There are hundreds to thousands of studies that show that pretty much all markers for mortality and morbidity go down with excercise, i.e. put someone regulalrly on a treadmill for a couple of month and pretty much all health markers improve. People implying that the study shows only correlation really don't seem to understand how we establish causal…

> People implying that the study shows only correlation really don't seem to understand how we establish causality in science.

This is where explaining how causality is established really helps people understand what they are reading better, especially when confronted with something that is not light reading and summarizes a much larger, even heavier read. In other words, instead of saying people don't understand, maybe help people to understand.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#389

Post by K0nserv » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:52 AM UTC

danielbln wrote: post #351

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

I've been streak running (so running at least a mile per day with no exceptions, mostly 5ks during the week, 10-20k on weekends) for almost 8 years (2817 days). The single best tip I give to everyone is "slow down! run slow!" Of course, almost no-one adheres to it unless they are already well practiced. It's just deeply ingrained in peoples heads that "only if it's hard or painful it must work". Then people check out…

I definitely went on this journey with my running. At first I would run very short distances at very high pace(zone 4/5), but I fell out of it. I picked up running again last year and ended up more in zone 3/4, but for the last six months I've been aiming for zone 2 in most of my runs.

I've had some knee pain recently so I've not been running much, focusing instead on knee strengthening exercise. On my last run I discovered this weird phenomenon were my knees stopped hurting if I ran faster with longer strides, it felt like I was "rolling through" each step which seemed less demanding for my knees. Perhaps my slow running style is just poor.

Re: Cardio fitness is a strong, consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality

#390

Post by zknill » Fri, May 03, 2024, 10:59 AM UTC

danielbln wrote: post #351

keybored wrote: post #266

Some of my peers are deep into running. I don’t get it. Running is sometimes fun for me but most often painful. Then I overheard one of them (the fittest) say to a budding runner that he [should] do mostly easy sessions. Okay what’s easy to him? He said that so slow that it can feel awkward and unnatural. What? Then I searched around and found out about Zone 2 and how you should do most of your work in that zone when…

I've been streak running (so running at least a mile per day with no exceptions, mostly 5ks during the week, 10-20k on weekends) for almost 8 years (2817 days). The single best tip I give to everyone is "slow down! run slow!" Of course, almost no-one adheres to it unless they are already well practiced. It's just deeply ingrained in peoples heads that "only if it's hard or painful it must work". Then people check out…

Two things:

1. You want to land on the mid-foot. Heel-striking puts a lot of pressure up you leg and joints as you are basically braking with every step. Forefoot strike puts a lot of pressure on your calf and achilles as you have to 'bounce' on every foot-strike to support your body weight. A mid-foot strike is the most efficient transition of energy into and back out of the ground for forward motion. Small steps help you to find a mid-foot strike, large steps (over-striding) will create a heel-strike.

2. For lots of people taking up 'running' they (naturally) believe that they should run. But for many, running continuously will be beyond their zone-2 cardio. It's much easier to start with a jog/walk and build up. In the UK we have a brilliant app called 'couch-to-5k' which is a progressive build from essentially no fitness (walking some distance) up to being able to continuously jog for 5k.