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Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
21–30 of 111 posts
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#2219 subjects, assigned sedentary or active based on habitual physical activity levels. Subjects were screened on basic health measures. The problem with this is that people are sedentary or active for a variety of health-related reasons that are not captured in any screen (esp. the crude one used in this study). As a predictive study, this is fine, sedentarism predicts a lot of bad things. But it doesn't, on its own,…
The principle of what you're stating is true, it could be correlational. But there's an enormous volume of evidence that exercise, especially intense exercise, is better for health than any other intervention, including more sleep, quality of diet, pills+supplements (except those that treat an active illness/disease of course). There's even compelling data showing that moderate drinkers who exercise live longer than…
> specially intense exercise
That sounds like a study that is pretty tough to control for, especially long term and at scale.
You'd need to find subjects that are provably capable of sustaining intense exercise as a habit if they wanted to but never did, and won't either for the years you'll be following them.
That won't work in the reverse, as people can be consciously or not self adjusting based on the health conditions you're trying to check.
PS: I'm remembering a friend who never liked running, but tried pretty hard after being pestered by their doctor and family, to discover that their knees are just not good and their whole lineage hated running for a reason. Intense exercise can be anything else, but people won't know their real health limitations until they actually do it for a while.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#23> mitochondria, which process energy within cells, showed a significantly decreased capacity to burn both sugar and fat in healthy individuals who get less than the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week. 150 minutes a week is about than 22 minutes a day. Like 11 minutes twice a day. This looks like a really low effort to rid oneself of the risk of early decline.
A studied showed that elderly asians have better health outcomes that their western counterparts in part due to their practice of sitting on the floor. The added exertion of standing up from the floor rather than a chair makes a material difference in their health.
Some of the health tests in Japan that elderly people take include a "standing to sitting on the floor and getting back up all unsupported" test. Scores are based on time, effort, emitted sounds (like grunts), hands-on-ground and whatnot. I don't know the specifics, but it is used as a "health measure."
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The principle of what you're stating is true, it could be correlational. But there's an enormous volume of evidence that exercise, especially intense exercise, is better for health than any other intervention, including more sleep, quality of diet, pills+supplements (except those that treat an active illness/disease of course). There's even compelling data showing that moderate drinkers who exercise live longer than…
> specially intense exercise That sounds like a study that is pretty tough to control for, especially long term and at scale. You'd need to find subjects that are provably capable of sustaining intense exercise as a habit if they wanted to but never did, and won't either for the years you'll be following them. That won't work in the reverse, as people can be consciously or not self adjusting based on the health condi…
A large volume of studies already exist.
That intense exercise is good, and even very good for you, is proven as far as reasonably possible given that we can't run deterministically controlled experiments.
More evidence may come out that adds nuance, but the effect size is so large that it becomes obvious in the data just from observation.
You can cycle or stationary bike if you have bad knees. There are plenty of exercises that are intense but easy on the joints.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be cool if one could safely adapt to modern life (lots of sitting, required focus over long sessions) without having to spend time exercising if they don't want to (to be clear, some people want to). Imagine if you could just take something to get all the benefits of exercise, without having to actually spend the time. That'd be pretty great for everyone if it truly was safe and without downsides (skeptical)…
What if we could just lay in a pod 24/7 taking peptides and nutrient supplements while having an endless stream of instagram reals beamed in to our eyeballs on our Meta Raybans. That way we would never have to do pesky things like go outside or move.
On the other hand, a pill to replace all the un-fun activity needed to stay in shape while having a family and office job would let you enjoy fun activity a lot more, and want to do those things more often, since they’re all more-fun and safer if you’re already in shape.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
A studied showed that elderly asians have better health outcomes that their western counterparts in part due to their practice of sitting on the floor. The added exertion of standing up from the floor rather than a chair makes a material difference in their health.
Some of the health tests in Japan that elderly people take include a "standing to sitting on the floor and getting back up all unsupported" test. Scores are based on time, effort, emitted sounds (like grunts), hands-on-ground and whatnot. I don't know the specifics, but it is used as a "health measure."
I remember reading somewhere that one of many long life markers is if you can go from sitting on your butt straight into standing without your hands or knees touching the floor.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#27> mitochondria, which process energy within cells, showed a significantly decreased capacity to burn both sugar and fat in healthy individuals who get less than the recommended 150 minutes of exercise a week. 150 minutes a week is about than 22 minutes a day. Like 11 minutes twice a day. This looks like a really low effort to rid oneself of the risk of early decline.
I've seen studies like this before. They'll suggest that as little as 15 minutes of exercise significantly improves health in some group they studied. My initial assumption was they added 15 minutes of additional exercise. No, they studied people who did literally nothing. Then had them exercise 15 minutes a day. As you might guess, their outcomes improved greatly.
HN is always so sarcastic on this point, but a large part of the population is not getting 15-30 minutes of actual exercise a day.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#2819 subjects, assigned sedentary or active based on habitual physical activity levels. Subjects were screened on basic health measures. The problem with this is that people are sedentary or active for a variety of health-related reasons that are not captured in any screen (esp. the crude one used in this study). As a predictive study, this is fine, sedentarism predicts a lot of bad things. But it doesn't, on its own,…
The principle of what you're stating is true, it could be correlational. But there's an enormous volume of evidence that exercise, especially intense exercise, is better for health than any other intervention, including more sleep, quality of diet, pills+supplements (except those that treat an active illness/disease of course). There's even compelling data showing that moderate drinkers who exercise live longer than…
>(Anything above ~15% bodyfat in men has negative implications for lifespan, and ~30% for women; when reviewed at scale)
Can you link evidence for this? I stay at 12% year around as male (confirmed via DEXA)
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#29Exercise is the key to a long healthspan.
Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production
#30I was busy building a sensorless maintenance calorie tracker.
Sometime back i posted this on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48614890
It also has "sedentary" detection which i find pretty useful for the phases when my activity level drops, reduced activity directly reflects in your maintenance calories which maybe useful to some.