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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

#51
post #45

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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.

> Once you're around 80 it'll wake up anyone

Source? I haven't been able to find info on this. I get resuls on nocturnal tachycardia and such. Nothing on elevating a sleeping person's heart rate and observing the result, though.

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

#53
post #35

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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.

I just named my dracula training program.

First, learn to sleep on your back

Second, attach the blanket to the bottom of the bed and learn to sleep with your knees up. Use the blanket to help.

Third, put some books under the legs (on the head end)

Keep adding books until you almost slide down, get used to it and add more books.

Eventually you wake up feeling like you did a proper leg day.

Keep at it and go for isometric nucleus overload. Every 6 weeks remove half the books for 2 weeks.

You will grow enormous legs and they will stay that way.

I suppose you could tie rubber bands to your arms in stead of the books but I haven't tried that. I'm sure it will make for a memorable period of your life. ha-ha

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

#54
post #49
post #41

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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…

Ok well here is a general longevity-related reason why resistance training is important.

Lifting weights also increases bone mass. As you get older, osteoporosis becomes more and more of a concern. You fall one day, and the less bone mass you have built up, the more likely it is that you will lose mobility. There is a strong link between reduced mobility and cognitive decline and also a cascade of other health problems. Old person + hip fracture = significantly increased mortality, and the way to prevent this is by building up bone mass while you still can.

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

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, typically "intense exercise" is implying HIIT style cardio. More and more studies have been indicating that even just a few minutes of intense exercise can outperform long/slow LISS type cardios. E.g. 5m all out effort is probably better, or at least equivalent, for health than a 30m moderate effort. The average person can likely hit the 80/20 benefit threshold at less than 30m/week.

> More and more studies have been indicating that even just a few minutes of intense exercise can outperform long/slow LISS type cardios.

For best results run fast and far. During my personal best marathon (3h 15min) my heart rate averaged in the 170 range

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

#57

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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.

Yeah pretty much the only way to scale exercise to entire populations and over entire lifetimes is to design it directly into the cities.

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

#58
I abhor exercise for the sake of it. Instead, I refuse to use a car to do anything but bring my family members to distant medical appointments, and the rare carpool'd vacation. Anything within ~ten miles of home I do with human power, sometimes augmented by stored electrical energy (cargo ebike; I contribute ~1/3 the Wattage). Thus, I get plenty of exercise throughout the day. We used to meet our needs by moving our bodies. Understandably, there are perceived benefits to outsourcing transportation, and very real consequences.

Exception is a morning plank to wake up my core, and sometimes forward bends with a weight. I don't like to do it, but I do feel better afterwards (like with cold showers), so I do it. Harder to do with longer exercise routines, which is why I addressed the cause of my unease rather than slapped on plasters.

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

#59
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

This is something I've visually observed all over Australia. The walkable areas are noticeably fitter. I don't think all of those people just happen to care about fitness more, they just spend more time moving to get between places rather than sitting all day.

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

#60
post #57

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.

Yeah pretty much the only way to scale exercise to entire populations and over entire lifetimes is to design it directly into the cities.

The crazy part is you don't even have to DESIGN it, the market is desperate to build walkable density because it's so much more profitable than anything else. You just have to LET landowners build upward.
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