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Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

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Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#41

Post by chongli »

strbean wrote: post #35
adam_arthur wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

I'd love to find out if electrical muscle stimulation while sleeping could effectively provide exercise without causing excessive sleep disruption. Could be a zero-effort supplemental form of exercise for sedentary people.

Carbon dioxide is produced as a metabolic waste product from exercise. Any sort of fat-burning you want to do is limited by the rate at which you can exhale CO2. This is why vigorous exercise is accompanied by heavy breathing. This includes not only cardiovascular training but also weight training. Lifting heavy weights will have you breathing very hard!

Unfortunately, if you don’t lift heavy (or if you use electrical stimulation that’s mild enough to sleep) then you’re not going to put your muscles into hypertrophy, so you won’t gain muscle mass either.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#42

Post by Schiendelman »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #33
sidewndr46 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The amount of time in the exercise advice keep getting shorter and shorter. The common advice when I was younger, in the USA, was an hour of exercise. Couldn't get enough people to do it. Then it was 30 minutes. Still couldn't get people to do it. Now the advice has been 15 minutes a day for a while, and we'll still not be able to get people to do it. The environment and culture needs to be structured such that peopl…

That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#43

Post by koolba »

makeitdouble wrote: post #22
adam_arthur wrote: post #19

Earlier 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…

> 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.

With modern 24/7 health tracking we’ll have tons of data in the next 50-100 years. Problem is we need that much time to see the net effect and will probably be too late for most of you reading this.

I wouldn’t wait for the results though. Best to start moving now assuming it’s probably good for you.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#44

Post by Insanity »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #9
nine_k wrote: post #3

> 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 lot of people who use a car to get around will spend most days doing literally no actual exercise. For someone who lives in a more walkable area, 22 minutes of exercise is just living live normally without actively "exercising".

I walk to the office during warm days, it’s about 30 minutes to get there. I get essentially an hour of walking just by commuting.

If I drive, it takes me 15 minutes (Toronto traffic is horrible). So doesn’t even gain me much in terms of time.

Just sad that temperatures here drop so low I don’t want to walk for half the year lol.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#45

Post by strbean »

Schiendelman wrote: post #40
strbean wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to find out if electrical muscle stimulation while sleeping could effectively provide exercise without causing excessive sleep disruption. Could be a zero-effort supplemental form of exercise for sedentary people.

It can't, because it isn't training your heart and cardiovascular system.

Well, it's causing muscle contractions. At high enough intensity, it should raise your heart rate. It's just a matter of what intensity level is tolerable during sleep (and the effect on sleep quality), no?

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#46

Post by econ »

makeitdouble wrote: post #32
adam_arthur wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

I am aware of that for exercising, but was ignorant of what "intense" actually means in this context. And you're right. Looking around, the simplest wording I get: > the intensity must be high. This means that you need to really exert yourself so you get out of breath. [ https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2026/05/exercise-a-very-lit... ] So if climbing the stairs gets someone out of breath it's intense (and I also see…

There (for example) is High intensity interval training.

What that is depends somewhat on who you ask but to give an example.

Take a normal exercise like cycling for 45 minutes.

If you do HIIT you cycle as fast as you can for 10-15 seconds (or until properly worn out) then rest long enough to be able to do it again. You only end up working out for less than one minute or just half a minute in total but you get similar if not better results than the 45 minutes workout.

So yes, running up the stairs as fast as you can until you feel like you are going to die would be high intensity. Take the elevator back down or you might die for real.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#47

Post by nine_k »

Schiendelman wrote: post #42
xboxnolifes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of time in the exercise advice keep getting shorter and shorter. The common advice when I was younger, in the USA, was an hour of exercise. Couldn't get enough people to do it. Then it was 30 minutes. Still couldn't get people to do it. Now the advice has been 15 minutes a day for a while, and we'll still not be able to get people to do it. The environment and culture needs to be structured such that peopl…

That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.

Indeed. In NYC I do 98% of my shopping by walking. I can reach my doctor by walking. My daughter used to walk to school because it was a 10 minutes walk (and an excellent school).

That would be impossible in a suburban setting; at best, one of these destinations would be within the theoretical waking distance, but without the walkways.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#48

Post by Schiendelman »

strbean wrote: post #45
Schiendelman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can't, because it isn't training your heart and cardiovascular system.

Well, it's causing muscle contractions. At high enough intensity, it should raise your heart rate. It's just a matter of what intensity level is tolerable during sleep (and the effect on sleep quality), no?

No, that would wake you up long before it had cardiovascular benefit. You need your heart rate up into zone 2 to 5 to really have a positive impact. That's 120 BPM plus for most people. Once you're around 80 it'll wake up anyone, even someone with very low cardiovascular fitness.

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#49

Post by strbean »

chongli wrote: post #41
strbean wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to find out if electrical muscle stimulation while sleeping could effectively provide exercise without causing excessive sleep disruption. Could be a zero-effort supplemental form of exercise for sedentary people.

Carbon dioxide is produced as a metabolic waste product from exercise. Any sort of fat-burning you want to do is limited by the rate at which you can exhale CO2. This is why vigorous exercise is accompanied by heavy breathing. This includes not only cardiovascular training but also weight training. Lifting heavy weights will have you breathing very hard! Unfortunately, if you don’t lift heavy (or if you use electrica…

With respect to this idea, I'm not particularly interested in either of those goals. More the general longevity and health improvements that come with regular exercise irrespective of weight loss or muscle gain [1].

I haven't been able to find much in the way of research on the tolerability of EMS during sleep. I would be surprised if the idea is actually feasible. It just seems like it would be such a big win if it was.

Personally, I frequently toss and turn and breath heavily, and wake up with a high heart rate. But then, my sleep quality is terrible and when I got a sleep study the sleep phase diagram looked like a seismograph reading during a 4 hour long earthquake, so...

1: https://theconversation.com/exercise-extends-life-even-witho... (Maybe not a great source but I think there is a wealth of evidence for this)

Re: Healthy but sedentary people show early decline in cellular energy production

#50

Post by Schiendelman »

nine_k wrote: post #47
Schiendelman wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a big part of why zoning is so dangerous. In most of the western world (Europe too on average), we pushed down population density so much that your typical destinations are much less likely to be within walking distance, so you don't walk.

Indeed. In NYC I do 98% of my shopping by walking. I can reach my doctor by walking. My daughter used to walk to school because it was a 10 minutes walk (and an excellent school). That would be impossible in a suburban setting; at best, one of these destinations would be within the theoretical waking distance, but without the walkways.

Absolutely. There's a reason body fat percentage in New York City is so much lower than anywhere else in the US!
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