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

bjsm.bmj.com

291–300 of 556 posts

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> Nevertheless, the solution is still the same: eat less. Or make life harder! Quit the elevator. Quit the automatic transmission (and car). Quit the online shopping. Making some progress with self-checkouts and pointless lineups at airports. Less jokingly (hard to outrun a bad diet) but more pedanticly: drinking less (alcohol and calorific beverages) might be a better start than eating less.

[deleted]

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

#292

Sorta related: My boomer mother is experiencing cognitive decline, probably the early stages of dementia. Her doctor said that as we age, blood vessels in the brain can get starved for blood and eventually dry up, making them useless. This is the biological explanation of her loss of memory and difficulty thinking. I asked if there's anything that can be done to at least slow this decline. She said the best medicine…

There is a ton of research supporting this. It’s really important information.

Elsewhere in this topic I mentioned exercise helps me with depression. I’ve speculated that it’s due to simply making my brain work better. Depression often feels like your brain isn’t working. Sometimes it extends to your body. There’s more to it, but what exercise does to me feels a bit like turning the lights up a bit and taking some weights off (mentally and physically).

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

#293
post #247
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really doesn’t matter for most amateurs trying to improve their health whether the metric is accurate or not. The huge benefit of fitness trackers is that a metric is a metric is a metric. Eat less, exercise more, sleep soundly - you can’t go wrong, and if the metric is steps, or HR, or pace, or calories burned, or (in this case) estimated VO2max and seeing improvements in those metrics relative to a baseline is a…

The problem with the VO2max metric is that there is no measurement of it outside of a few lab methods, certainly not in a fitness tracker, so they're estimating. It makes more sense to look at the other metrics that it CAN easily measure, like heart rate recovery to get a quantifiable and repeatable measurement. I agree for amateurs accuracy is not necessary, but repeatability is. If I weigh myself today and the scal…

I myself did a lot of exercising during the last 1 1/2 years using an apple watch for measures and I would also go with the previous comment:

Even thought the VO2max is not accurate (especially not compared to actually lab data) it is a nice graph with a tendency which REALLY helps.

High differences might come from different estimation techniques and thus this value is not comparable among different brands but it seems to be for your own value and progress.

During a lazier time it depleted a bit, now its going up again.

Most other graphs don't show it that nice. E.g. your avg hearth rate will not make huge changes (and drop which, even if its good, doesn't feel that good).

Edit: I actually did a Lab test (not VO2max) but an exercise ecg with lactate measurements. I couldn't choose between running and cycling. The problem is: if you choose the bike they can measure the values while you continue riding. If you choose running you have to stop now and then while they take a blood sample. Even there it isn't 100% accurate and might yield different results based on the used method.

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

#294

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…

Nassim Taleb wrote in recent months about Zone 2, 3 and relevant statistical analysis.

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

#295

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 do love running and indeed it's better to jog slowly for longer time... though, to avoid injuries - please do exercises before and after because you can easily injure your (lower-)back and knees (talking from experience, chronic lower-back pain after ~20y of running…)

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

#296

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 always hated running, but I had always been doing it for exercise. Perversely, this meant if I moved inefficiently and made the movement harder, I was doing better. I characterized running as "competitive suffering". No pain no gain, right? And like you, I always did more than felt good, and figured that meant I was doing it right.

But I don't think that way now. I want to enjoy moving. I want to move playfully and powerfully and efficiently. Exercise until it feels good, not until it feels bad. Love the body you have and take care of it and build it up, rather than hate-exercising to change it.

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

#297
post #205

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…

Well, I don't doubt that cardio fitness decreases the chance for morbidity and mortality, but in this study they only established correlation. I think that in science we have to be extra careful just what we are saying. And saying that this study proves causality would be wrong. I am sure there are other studies that could (do?) prove it but this statistical analysis can only prove correlation.

We only have correlation for lots of important results. Smoking cigarettes is one example. Experiments are almost always better, and a lot of correlational research is terrible. But knowing something for sure doesn’t always require an experiment.

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

#298

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…

No sorry but this is not how causality works. When event B happens a thousand times after event A, you cannot conclude that A causes B. For example, there could be a confounder, that is, a third event that triggers A and then B (so not A triggers B, but this third event triggers B). See The Book of Why by Pearl for more information on causality.

You cannot conclude, but at the same time you should increase your probability of causality.

Keeping it unchanged is another kind of logical error.

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

#299

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 too hate to run. And I do it everyday. To me it's the time I get to be alone with my podcasts for an hour. Now I look forward to it every morning. I'm not sure in what zone I usually run, but my pace is usually around 6min/Km.

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

#300

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…

No sorry but this is not how causality works. When event B happens a thousand times after event A, you cannot conclude that A causes B. For example, there could be a confounder, that is, a third event that triggers A and then B (so not A triggers B, but this third event triggers B). See The Book of Why by Pearl for more information on causality.

But Pearls book explicitly argues for using correlational evidence to infer causation. The trick is to actually have a causal model and design observational studies that rule out as many alternative explanations as possible.
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