How Exercise Might “Clean” the Alzheimer's Brain
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
The lymphatic system is powered in part by the circulatory system and in part by physical activity (aka "exercise"). Fluid from the blood, minus certain blood products, goes out into the tissues and becomes interstitial fluid. Muscle action dramatically increases the rate at which it gets returned from the tissues to the blood.
This is the mechanism by which the body cleans up most tissues. Except for the brain. The brain has a separate mechanism whereby lymphatic fluid (aka interstitial fluid) gets flushed out, taking wastes with it, only during sleep. This is a primary function of sleep.
Personal firsthand experience suggests that exercise is frequently followed by napping precisely because these are separate systems. Exercise may start this process by flushing out other tissues, but your brain won't get flushed of wastes until you sleep.
If you want to benefit from this research, you will need to have good sleep hygiene in addition to exercising. From what I gather, aerobic exercise is likely to do more good from the perspective of powering the lymphatic system than weight lifting.
That was my impression as well after doing some research in this area a while back. Although I looked specifically at longevity and cardiovascular studies there was a peak benefit at about 2hrs per week after which virtually no more benefits were observed.
I finally got a heart monitor. So far, I get into "zone 4" for a few minutes every day. Zone 5? Not so much...
[1]: https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-dept...
I was using "zones" per the Strava app lingo. I rarely make zone 5, which would be 174+ heart rate. I spend a fair bit of time in the 160 range, though.
For example, 220-age suggests my maximum HR is 178 and my threshold HR (85% of this) is 151, but in fact my max HR (determined empirically) is 188 and my threshold HR (based on an actual threshold test) is 162.
I do a test every 3 months, as the zones can shift as you get fitter.
Running might use a different protocol, but the same principle applies.
* These days I base my training on a 3-zone system: low intensity, below aerobic threshold; medium intensity, between aerobic and anaerobic (lactate) threshold, and high intensity, above lactate threshold. This is the system preferred by researchers, as it's based on real physiological markers.
Translating the 3 zone system into the 5 zone: low intensity equates to zones 1-2, medium is zone 3 and zone 4 up to your (lactate) threshold value, and high intensity is everything above this, i.e. the top part of zone 4 and all of zone 5.
So 'vigorous' per the Mayo Clinic would be medium intensity on the 3 zone system.
Target HR = RestingHR + (MaxHR - RestingHR) x 0.85
So, if your RestingHR = 70 :
Target HR = 70 + (178 - 70) x 0.85 = 162
Marathons are meant to be run at the edge of Z3 so you avoid hitting your lactate threshold. Think of your ability to run in each zone as separate gas tanks. Your Z5 gas tank is very small. Your Z4 gas tank can be trained, but is still relatively small. Your Z3 gas tank is basically unlimited (ultra marathon pace, 50+ non stop miles possible for almost any healthy human). Cardio is not about suffering.
Most people should be fast walking to maintain Z3 rather than suffer it out in Z4 and Z5 when they are getting started.
Checking my last long bike ride, I see I maintained 120 heart rate for majority of it. Which means I spent most of the time in zone 2, and makes sense that would be easy to maintain. (Contrasted with my last commute, where I cover 270 ft of elevation in about 7 minutes, mostly at about 160 heart rate...)
And probably you too, given I have a hill around the same size on my commute that takes me around 7 minutes too.
My naive understanding is that I can push more time in higher heart rates and slowly pull up what I can do in the lower ones. That said, I'm just aiming to be consistently in the 6 minute time frame for that hill by next year. As things are, I'm quite winded if I hit the low 7 minute time frame. So, trying to pay attention to any methods I could use to make that better.
AFAIK your 'naive' understanding is pretty right on. I subscribe to the philosophy of spending as much time as possible in the "sweet spot" (search on that term), which is toned down just a bit from the best effort you can do in an hour.
You probably care about other benefits as well.
People often live too close to work for the bike ride to really be considered exercise, or too far, where they couldn’t feasibly fit it into their day.
I get it, doing exercise for free seems like a no-brainier, but not everyone’s life and exercise needs converge neatly to make it easy.
The cost of the gym will pay for a GPS watch and heart-rate monitor pretty quickly.
But I understand that some places might be too high density or unsafe to run, or the weather is too hostile.
I'm fortunate enough to live 10km from work, so I switch up between running AND riding the distance.
Because I have to watch out for traffic and pedestrians outside, and driving to a cycling/running path takes about 15 minutes anyway.
Because looking at healthy, fit people exercising gives me more motivation to get in shape.
Because I can devote more attention to my audiobooks than if I was exercising on the streets.
Because the gym is in my apartment complex, so I just go downstairs and walk 2 minutes to the gym.
Depending on the exertion you put forth, a different energy system is going to be utilized by the body.
* Deadlifts: ATP Creatine Phosphate
* Cardio: Aerobic
That shouldn't even pass the sniff test, yes? If you would like to test the theory, I'll run for 5 weeks, you deadlift, then we'll test our aerobic thresholds (or whatever else you'd like to do!) :)
Since I don't have a Science subscription, I can only read the summary, and they do not explain what type of exercise they required the mice do. So if someone with access can clarify, please do. But from what I know of similar "cleaning out" studies, the exercise is generally distance running. So weightlifting for a short period of time is probably not going to give you the benefit this study refers to, even if you're burning the same number (or more) calories, because you didn't do it for as long of a period of time.
Recommended reading: Why We Sleep
I've been thinking about this myself and I theorize that this all comes back, full circle, to your heart.
That is, both bodily and brain lymphatic fluid flushing mechanisms are driven by circulation - and the more efficient and powerful your blood circulation is, the more efficient and cleansing your lymphatic flushing will be.
And thus, your brains lymphatic flushing, while not directly driven by exercise, still benefits greatly from exercise due to the improvement in total circulation.
If your system has a backlog of built up wastes generally, that backlog is going to be a barrier to efficiency in any particular system.
it might be related to your comment too
One question- what is it specifically about sleep? Have we figured that out yet? And when you say "only", you mean "only" or you mean 99.9% of time?
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lymphat...
This is conjecture? I do hope its true though! A frequent debate I have with a friend is whether weight-lifting or running has better effects. He claims 1 hour of weight-lifting raises your metabolism by many multiples vs more aerobic exercise. Its always a bit hard to have these debates though since we are mostly armed with anecdotes and not facts.
I suspect the answer is always moderation - somewhere in between.
But that knowledge comes from 17+ years of firsthand experience (aka "anecdata") and reading (where I may not be able to cite my source anymore because I read it eons ago for personal reasons, not to try to win an internet debate). So I qualified it in hopes of keeping people off my back about citations etc.
So if you need citations for some reason, you will need to find them on your own. You might start with googling info about the benefits of walking and sources on how the lymphatic system works.
Not disagreeing with it on face value, mind you, but the actual research basically states that you can't just start exercising... you have to already been exercising (and not even all that much, like, ~5000 steps ~= 2 miles a day, some HIIT (less is more) + low rep heavy weight lifting one or twice a week) benefit from this.
So, all of us who are in our 30s now? The time is now.
Also, re: weight lifting, try to target all of your muscle groups right. Don't be the guy who skips leg day, don't be the guy who has a shitty core and is trying to squat 250+. Guys like Jeff Cavaliere are who to look at on how to do this right.
This is true for exercising regardless, TBH. The more you build up now, the less trouble you have maintaining it later.
>Both aerobic and resistance training exercise can provide weight-bearing stimulus to bone, yet research indicates that resistance training may have a more profound site specific effect than aerobic exercise.
> While there is a small effect of calcium supplementation in the upper limb, the increase in BMD which results is unlikely to result in a clinically significant decrease in fracture risk. The results do not support the use of calcium supplementation in healthy children as a public health intervention.
https://www.cochrane.org/CD005119/MUSKEL_calcium-for-improvi...
Or perhaps in both cases, the body must experience stimulus such that the tissues "know" they need to get at the necessary supplies coming in.
Why build muscles, or stronger bones, if the body overall never does anything to need them? It would be wasted motion from their point of view.
Here's the ones I use [1][2].
A quick summary: No gym, lifting is at home 3 days per week of 30 minutes each day. First form a habit, any kind of exercise will do. Sounds like you’re there. Once lifting, keep it compact and accessible, start with just a bench and adjustable dumbbells. He also only does a few minutes at a time, not a half hour block. Eat some protein.
Yes, almost any exercise is better than none. The earlier in life the better. Good core is super important in, well, anything including sitting on the chair. Hiit I consider very good based on effects on me, but would like to see some long-term results and its definitely only for people already doing some regular training.
But where do you get the low rep info? This is good for only very specific exercise goals, mainly bodybuilding. Not something most people should strive for. Arnold type body looks great on photos, but is utterly impractical for normal life, super hard to reach and maintain. Low rep means you are close to your limits, which is area where injuries happen a lot, and wear on all parts of the body happens much more (muscles love it, but joints and connective tissue disagrees, and spine has a say in the topic too). Wear is something you are not aware of till its too late and all kinds of pain start to manifest.
Lighter weights, more reps(15-20), shorter stops between them (30-60s), and you not only gain much better results in stamina (what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example or do multi-hour hike/anything else). Muscles grow like crazy too, if you have weights just right. Its much easier to keep good form of exercise when you are not at your limit.
I was with you until you got here. A typical high-rep range for compound work should be between 8-12. 12-15 for auxiliary work. Most lifters would consider a rep range of between 3-5 to be low-rep.
>and you not only gain much better results in stamina (what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example or do multi-hour hike/anything else
Heavy lifting actually trains both fast-twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, as it takes your entire muscle to lift heavy. The reverse can not be said for higher-repetition lifting. I've never trained in the mentioned rep range and anecdotally am able to do multi-hour hikes/anything else just fine. I find that the running/biking crowd loves to perpetuate this myth and generally does so with use of the phrase "meat-head".
Glad you don't disagree that its more injury-prone to lift heavy. Of course its all good if one has perfect form, but technically its impossible to keep it 100% of the time. Again anecdotally I had various smaller tendon/ligament issues when lifting at my max, every few months I had to stop for a week or two to heal. Since switching to what I described, I can do exactly the same, but no injury at all for 4 years.
But all bodies are unique, I found what works for me and my goals long term, if different approach works for you, stick to it.
The difference is that I made a statement which is scientifically accepted as true, followed by an anecdote to support it:
"Heavy lifting actually trains both fast-twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, as it takes your entire muscle to lift heavy. The reverse can not be said for higher-repetition lifting."
There's a reason why NFL running backs can run an entire game and still squat 600 lbs; basketball players are also some of the most active athletes but still put up huge lifting numbers. Reps in the 12-20 range do not increase muscular endurance any more than the 6-8 rep range. [1]
Also, professional athletes do both high rep and low rep weight training. The high rep build the strength but the low rep build the endurance to use the strength.
It does support my claims - but that was not the purpose of the study so you'll actually have to read beyond the abstract to see it
>Also, professional athletes do both high rep and low rep weight training. The high rep build the strength but the low rep build the endurance to use the strength.
I agree - which is why I don't believe that heavy weightlifting is detrimental to one's ability to do multi-hour hikes.
And yeah, I hope no one is claiming that weight lifting trains your aerobic system.
The issue is when people claim that weight lifting is detrimental to cardio-related activities, which is what OP seems to be insinuating.
Kind of a false equivalence. Firstly, I'm not sure that long, arduous hikes are very relatable to e.g. moving around in old age, whereas doing a single squat is absolutely comparable to getting out of a chair for anyone. Secondly, my guess is that you'd be utterly useless if you had to carry a pack whose weight equalised the difference between your respective bodyweights.
If that were true bodybuilders would do great at marathons and triathlons.
It takes more than leg and back muscle to do great at marathons and triathlons. Aerobic development, VO2 max, lactate threshold are just as important. Further, you would want less weight (muscle mass) in the areas that are not required for your marathon. That's why many professional bikers and marathon runners intentionally neglect gaining upper body muscle.
Weight lifting won't train you to run a marathon, but it certainly isn't detrimental towards multi-hour hikes. Don't move the goal-posts on me :)
No one gets "buff" on accident. No one gets to the size where they have trouble fitting through a door on accident (and without drugs).
>Low rep means you are close to your limits, which is area where injuries happen a lot
High reps = more movement, and just like a hard disk drive, more movement means more chances for failure. The injury that sent me to the chiropractor was a warm-up ~125lb Deadlift that I did with impromper form. Weight does not correlate with Injury risk.
>what good is it to be able to lift 100kg 3x times and you're done, when you need to move apartment for example
The "joints and connective tissue" (tendons aka grip) you mentioned prior is exactly what gets trained on heavy reps, and takes a LONG time to develop.
You don't see any logical fallacy in your statement? If more movement = simply more risk, then ultra-trail runners would be all in wheelchairs in 5 years. What you load on yourself on top of your weight makes huge difference. Give those ultras 10kg backpack and they will be having all kinds of knee/ankle issues in very short time.
Doing deadlift warmup with cca 55kg seems ridiculously high, I am not surprised you eventually had an injury. Really buffed up guys in my gym start with cca 30 kg only after proper warmup of whole body via some other way (I do it same way, usually on elliptic trainer for 5 mins).
Joints and tendons get trained with whatever you do, bodyweight can still do the trick if done properly. You are right it takes horrible amount of time, also healing injury can take months easily. I prefer sport climbing for those, flexibility required is substantial, and overall the sport is awesome on every single level, especially on the rock outdoors.
Whatever works for you long term, stick to it. You should know your body better than anyone else. I know amount of load made a big difference in injury risk for me, going lighter but still almost till muscle failure I have lost 0 of the power, and gained tons of endurance. But that's just me.
A regular bar is ~20kg by itself.
(And Arnolds body type is not possible without steroids, in any case)
Exercise too does help a little with insulin resistance (but not enough to repair the damage done by a diet high in sugar), plus people that exercise tend to also eat healthy.
STOP EATING SUGAR PEOPLE!
But sugar people are delicious! They're such sweethearts.
Under rest, 30% of fructose is converted to fat by the liver.
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=3873
The real reason to exercise (for health) is it improves your skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity - it's certainly not because you burn a ton of calories from the exercise,
Some people also suggest Alzheimer is a 3rd form of diabetes. I read a study that nasal applied insulin actually helps Alzheimer.
So, no slamming of sugar, just some preliminary evidence that may want to ask yourself if you really need to drink a liter or 2 liters of coke per day.
Those have been debunked. You're running on that same assumption, correct?
> we've been operating under the assumption that eating sugar is the primary cause of high blood sugar leading to insulin resistance
That's called Type 2 Diabetes. I don't know if that's an assumption?
> When you look at the glycemic index and glycemic load of foods, it's actually wheat that comes out on top.
Wheat is glucose though, not fructose.
Cutting soda out of your diet is probably better than having a naked sandwich.
I would say that switching to whole wheat from white bread is a positive, though.
1. Yes, those have been debunked. That's why I said "used to".
2. Most people assume dietary sugar creates high blood sugar. I'm stating that, like saying dietary fat makes you fat, it sounds intuitive but may not be true.
3. Yes, wheat is glucose. Why do you mention fructose? I didn't.
Whole wheat bread will raise your blood sugar, just like white bread.
And possibly more than soda. http://quittingsugar.com/2012/07/11/bread-and-coke-smackdown...
Consuming excess amounts of fructose will (via complicated metabolic pathways) produce a lot of uric acid by your liver. That's what's causing hypertension. This shows the metabolic pathway diagrammed out:
https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?t=3395
Pretty interesting.
Is there a competing theory?
> 3. Yes, wheat is glucose. Why do you mention fructose? I didn't.
Glucose is not sugar; fructose is. They take different pathways when metabolized. It's true that lots of white bread has added sugar, but that's not the wheat. I would say that if wheat is a silent killer, France would be in big trouble, and they're not.
Glucose is absolutely sugar. Fructose and glucose are both simple sugars (table sugar is sucrose, a disaccharide composed of glucose and fructose).
The starch in wheat is made up of long chains of glucose, which again, is a sugar. It sometimes has added sugar as well. Both those facts are true for both white and wheat bread.
RE: France, are you kidding me? French people do get fat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_France
Hypertension is another word for high blood sugar - that's what you were talking about. It's part of a larger related problem called, Metabolic Dysfunction/Syndrome
> Glucose is absolutely sugar.
Glucose is a complex carbohydrate. Sugar is not, it's a simple sugar.
Edit: As other's have pointed out, I am wrong: glucose is a simple carb - the fact remains that it is not fructose and still feel that this is important.
Fructose is metabolized in the liver via Fructolysis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructolysis
Glucose can be utilized by almost every living cell on earth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbohydrate_metabolism
And that big difference is why taking in cals. via sugar is different than taking it in via glucose, even though, as you say, glucose is just a long chain of simplier carbs.
> RE: France, are you kidding me? French people do get fat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_France
Fat isn't necessarily unhealthy; Metabolic Syndrome is the underlying problem.
It's all interesting stuff, huh?
Sucrose, "table sugar", is a disaccharide of one glucose group and one fructose group.
"Complex carbohydrate" is ill-defined, but I guess could refer to polymeric saccharides, a classification which wouldn't apply to sucrose, glucose, or fructose. In any case, you'd need a strange perspective to see glucose as a "complex carbohydrate": it's only got six carbon atoms.
Point taken.
The metabolism of the two are still, very different (glucose and fructose)
Citation? Everywhere I look says that it is a simple sugar.
With respect, please do some fact checking before restating whatever you think you know outside your area of expertise.
Lots of different issues are related, and I'm not going to say there can be a simple way to make it all make sense - for example: what is the symptom, and what is the disease?
I'm trying to share what I know to help others, not to stroke my own ego. If I make mistakes in typing things out, I apologize. I never said I was a doctor, and I appreciate the feedback.
I've been reading The Salt Fix (http://thesaltfix.com), it has references to many studies ... not sure what to think of it, but being confronted with a serious electrolytes deficiency lately and having the symptoms to go with it, I tend to believe it.
But, I do try to study up on the subject, since I am an athlete. If I bobbled two things up: calling glucose a complex carb, and mixing up high blood pressure with high sugar levels, I believe I believe I have already apologized and conceded that I was wrong. If it isn't clear, take this post as doing that again.
Like most of the world that switches to a "western diet", France is not immune to it. They've got McDonald's and junk food there too.
That said France has been a "paradox", as noted since the 1980s, due to their low incidence of coronary heart disease or other chronic diseases, in spite of their high consumption of dietary fat and cholesterol.
Of course, the French diet is only a paradox due to the American dietary guidelines being dead wrong. And as they switch more and more to the American diet, of course, they stop being a paradox.
That is not what most people assume. In fact sugar has never been vilified properly, which is why diabetics are still prescribed diets with sugar, which is basically murder.
But btw — this is not an assumptions, you can actually measure it at home. I got a glucose meter at home, got it for self experimentation. Whenever I eat something with sugar in it, my blood glucose spikes and even stays slightly higher than my average for several hours afterwards. Whenever I'm eating meat or green veggies however, I don't get any glucose or insulin response (you can measure your insulin response by noticing a lower blood glucose than the baseline).
You can also understand if you're a diabetic or pre-diabetic too by the time it takes your blood glucose levels to come back to the baseline (the level you were at prior to eating). If it takes 2 hours, you're still insulin sensitive enough. If it takes 4 hours, you're a diabetic, or well on your way to becoming one.
Self experimentation is actually easy in this case, you don't have to guess ;-)
In fact T2 diabetes is not a disease of high blood sugar, although the health care industry is yet to fully acknowledge it. T2 diabetes is a disease of hyperinsulinemia (i.e. high levels of insulin in your blood), which creates a vicious cycle that can lead to high blood sugar as a symptom, due to developing insulin resistance, which makes your pancreas dump more and more insulin into the blood stream, until the pancreas is no longer able to keep up with the required load of insulin, very high blood sugar levels being the symptom. At some point the beta cells of the pancreas begin to die too. And if you lose the function of your pancreas, that's T1 diabetes.
Interestingly T1 diabetics can also develop T2 diabetes by injecting themselves with too much insulin. People without a functional pancreas (T1) and with high insulin resistance (T2) are essentially screwed.
This is why treating T2 diabetes by giving patients synthetic insulin shots is like giving them poison, the same poison that's been making them ill, treating the symptom and not the disease.
To treat T2 diabetes, or pre-diabetes (which is prevalent in half of the US's population by now), you have to stop your body from producing so much insulin.
Many doctors claim that T2 diabetes is a degenerative disease that can only get worse (if you give them poison as treatment, of course) and yet many T2 diabetics have reportedly achieved full remission, completely getting rid of their medication, by switching to low carbs diets. Assuming they still have a functional pancreas of course.
---
So yes, it's without doubt that dietary sugar creates high blood sugar and T2 diabetes, but the way it does that (via hyperinsulinemia) is not common knowledge or treated properly ;-)
But to make things clear — we are talking of sugar as in the generally understood sense of sucrose and HCFS, whose consumption has been out of control and rising since the end of WWII at least, with obesity and diabetes rates to match it. And we can agree that anything based on white flour has been a problem too.
We are not talking about eating fresh apples (although apple juice is a problem). And fruits too are damaging on diabetes, anything with a lot of carbohydrates becomes damaging, so we'd better ensure that we don't get there.
Cutting out the sucrose, the HCFS and even the white flour is not such a drastic change. A few years back people couldn't imagine living without cigarettes either.
My grandparents lived without any sugar in their diets (countryside folks), my grandfather was eating 10 eggs per day and lived to 99 years old, working his land until 95.
Have you measured blood sugar after ingesting bread, and compared it to ingesting pure sugar? It might surprise you to know that a typical serving of bread will cause your blood sugar to spike MORE than even a very large amount of sugar.
The story is that fructose gets metabolized differently than glucose and for example leads to accumulation of fat in your liver and then your pancreas and it’s all downhill from there, I.e. having a fatty pancreas is correlated very well with insulin resistance and prediabetes.
And then the problem with sucrose and HCFS are is that they have both glucose and fructose and the foods containing them have no fiber to slow down the digestion, so it’s hitting that liver hard, with that fructose being converted directly in fat deposits.
I do agree that wheat is bad too. Personally I’ve cut wheat from my diet.
But don’t look at the glycemic index alone as that’s an oversimplification.
Also let’s get one thing straight ... you cannot live without fat, no matter what fat we’re talking about and anybody that claims otherwise doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And you can die without salt. In these cases the debate has always been about quantity.
But you can live without putting another gram of sugar in your mouth for your remaining life. Although it’s pretty hard to do because sugar is in everything these days, including packaged bread because it extends shelf life ;-)
Alcohol and opioids at least have a stigma, and most governments enforce marketing and public health information accordingly. Starch and sugar can never be appropriately demonized because they are "just food", and have some of the largest companies in the US behind them.
The advent of processed food has created 2 entire generations of obese, insulin resistant people. The marketing starts as young as possible, and it is normalized to not think twice about eating sugar all day.
I'm still trying to get over the fact that the FDA actually banned partially hydrogenated oil. Very surprising that they said no to the entire processed food industry in such a big way, to the benefit of consumers. I'm sure the food conglomerates went into it knowing they had other options like interesterified oils up their sleeves, though.
I don't really get this advice. I compound lift and when I was lifting regularly I peaked at 145kg/320lbs. I've never done focused core exercises with any regularity, I just focused on good form/posture and a neutral spine. Perhaps compound lifting itself is enough to build the core strength you need for squatting? Obviously I wouldn't recommend other people leave it out, but it doesn't seem to have done me any harm.
But if you are low-bar squatting, your back isn't going to be completely upright, and so keeping a significant weight at a angle requires muscular contraction. Your back is going to get worked.
In a perfect world, this is true - and I wish you continued good luck and health.
However, you should reflect on the mechanical advantages and levers that your body is capable of producing as it curves and flexes around a particular joint ...
500 lbs distributed nicely and evenly across all of your vertebrae works quite nicely ... but all you need is a little twist ... a little hiccup ... just two or three vertebrae coming into line instead of a gentle curve ... and you suddenly have multi-hundreds of pounds on one little lever.
Not to spoil it for you, but the squishy little disc loses.
I am a huge proponent of back squats without aids - like belts - for the purpose of developing natural core strength like what you have experienced, but it is very, very cheap insurance to work your abs/back/sides in addition.
Belts are aids in that they allow you to literally flex your stomach muscles and valsalva to a great degree - they provide no intrinsic support, instead providing something to brace your own muscles against. This is literally the argument one makes for core work! I also agree - it's important to learn to be able to squat without a belt, and I largely will with the exception of my heaviest sets of the day. It helps you appreciate the assistance and work on your own unaided valsalva.
If you do slip into this catastrophic scenario you're visualizing, being able to hold a static plank for 3 minutes isn't going to help that - you haven't trained the muscle at all to do what it needs to do at that moment - stop being static and move. Having the sheer grunt power and experience of having hundreds of lbs on your back for years is what's going to save you, and I'd argue that there's plenty of muscle groups that you've built up over the years to keep you safe in just such a circumstance - your spine isn't floating in a vat supported only by abs. I've dumped the bar, failed lifts, things have slipped, but I've never slipped a disc because I am strong enough to survive the load.
Do accidents happen and people get hurt? Absolutely, but both runners and old ladies slip discs too.
I would love to see some evidence of this. Here's Brian Shaw's workout routine. Without question one of the strongest men in the world, I see no dedicated core work:
http://deadliftworkouts.com/train-strongman-series-brian-sha...
Core work is not a bad thing, but it's not required.
When they asked me during orientation what my goals were, I said "Show up three times a week. I need to grow up, it is time to work out."
And that really is how I feel about the matter.
If you listen to Tim Ferriss' interviews and read his interview books ( Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titans ), you will notice a pattern: MANY of these highly effective people MAKE time to have intense work-out sessions.
All of the research and knowledge we currently have about human health and successful aging points to regular weight training and cardio training as the secret sauce for having a healthy mind and body as you age.
Going to the gym and working out isn't about having a hobby or enjoying it. It's about being an adult and taking care of yourself.
So grow up. Get to the gym.
Disclosure: I am a member of the gym I mentioned above but have no other affiliation with the gym.
Yet he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at 72, six months after mild symptoms started appearing. He passed less than two years later, and his personality & mind a year before that.
Just six years before that he was detailing vector calculus proofs with me at his dinner table.
I try not to be too cynical but I just can't help thinking of him and his bitter end when reading about these albeit preventative measures.
I think most people would consider my grandfather to be a near optimal outcome in terms of lifespan and keeping your mind nearly intact until you are very very old. The number you are citing isn't even average lifespan in US for instance (78 currently). If you take out most of the things which are out of our control from that average, or things which cause disproportionate amounts of negative entropy on your body and recalculate it (things like homicide, suicide, accidental death, people who smoke profusely, people who drink to excess, people with severe mental health issues, etc etc) the number is much much higher.
Most of my favorite forms of exercise (climbing, hiking, running) are pretty hard on my joints, along with several other risks like shin splints and pulley injuries. I know there's some capacity to strengthen tendons and ligaments, but I can't find decent data on what tradeoffs I'm making at what levels of activity. Replacing everything I do with swimming and intermediate-rep weight training would almost certainly offer a better tradeoff, but I want to at least work out what price I'm paying.
More important in many ways is knowing what pain is a sign to immediately stop, and take time off to recover from. Taking a week or two off now can prevent significant long term issues.
[1] Reduction of Movement in Neurological Diseases: Effects on Neural Stem Cells Characteristics
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.0033...
[2] Leg exercise is critical to brain and nervous system health
https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/06/07/neuroscience-leg-exe...
Our planet and thus our bodies are highly populated with viruses and bacteria. Our body is the best healthcare system we have and works continually to eliminate or quarantine harmful pathogens like Borellia (Lyme), Bartonella, Babesia, Erlichia, Chlamydia, malaria, epstein-barr, herpes, etc. The quarantined pathogens (from biofilms, bacterial starvation forms, etc) often reproduce during immune suppression and over time propagate across the body. Many of the 'deposits' in Alzheimers are composed of quarantined pathogens (lyme, chlamydia, etc) and fasting + diet + exercise can help minimize those.
Personal experience here: Incidentally, the non-Hodgkins Lymphoma symptoms of Wikipedia very strongly parallel Bartonella and Babesia symptoms. The immune suppression from those often raises viral antibodies to things like Epstein-Barr. Cultural/native medicines lacked microbiology, but had a much better understanding of the body as a whole just from visible physical and patient reported symptoms than most western medicine practice today. Most pathogen testing is poor due to low blood/urine density and most doctors are authoritatively ignorant and refuse to look at other markers like TNF-a, TGF-b, C3a, C4a, etc blood tests.
Steven Buhner has written a number of scientifically and medicinally based books on the bacterial/parasitic pathogens (he has a ton of references from China, Korea, Russia, Germany, India, and the US).
This is bullshit.
> Many of the 'deposits' in Alzheimers are composed of quarantined pathogens (lyme, chlamydia, etc) and fasting + diet + exercise can help minimize those.
This is also bullshit.
> Steven Buhner
He's a well-known crackpot.
Buhner protocols have helped many tens of thousands of people with tick borne diseases and is widely used by a number of lyme specialists throughout the world.
If you feel healthier eating processed food containing higher levels of pesticides, herbicides, etc then please continue to consume them. Be the center of your own black hole.
Yes, low carb can reduce chronic hyperglycemia and thereby keep insulin resistance at bay. I wouldn't be surprised if there were vascular benefits from avoiding processed foods as well. What's with the cherry-picking in your quote?
And I don't know who Steven Buhner is, but you rarely see ad hominem arguments in such raw form on HN these days, not to mention an overall response that adds so little and in such a rude tone. Please try harder or go elsewhere.
My Opa is also the most hardcore motherfucker I've ever met. It's not that he didn't exercise. He still heaves around 80 lb bags of sand, he's building a goddamn cottage almost by himself, he's still almost immune to pain. He's the toughest man I know, and even on the days he has trouble with fairly basic spatial tasks he can multiply three digit numbers in his head faster than I can write them down. His short term memory is still better than mine. He's still smarter than me. He's so stubborn he keeps falling off ladders every week because despite how much he has lost he just refuses. to. give. up.
I can't understate how fucking scary it all is. The man is unstoppable when he puts his mind to something. Time has not worn down his will even a tiny bit. He breaks bones more often now, but he shakes it off, does the PT, and it's like it never happened. But even that isn't enough when age decides to take you. If your spine wilts, all the exercise and work in the world will not save you. When you can't sleep more than two hours at a time, what do you do? You can't force yourself to sleep. You just slowly go nuts, a little more each day.
Aging is the real process of senescence, not just of getting older. Dementia, weakness, and frailty all seem increasingly like symptoms of a larger bodily/immune system degeneration. The inability to exercise, the constant pain, the constant sleep deprivation- those things could give dementia to a young man too. You can stave off the bodily decay until you start aging, but not after. Some lucky few, the Jeanne Calments[1], seem to be basically immune to senescence. They follow the path you'd expect, of a body slowly wearing out. The rest of us eventually hit a point where our bodies suddenly start to break down, and things like exercise just no longer produce the same changes they used to. The systems that handle growth, repair, immune responses- they just stop.
I'm sorry if this is bleak, but it hurts to see him like this. I just spent a couple months helping him put up siding. He wants to finish that cottage so much. I hope it's not his swan song.
I'm glad your Opa has you there with him though this stage.
As in e.g. 365 * 128? Or 365 * 8? The latter is realistic, the former is a bit unbelievable. Even the latter is a violation of the "magic 7"[0].
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...
When you're multiplying large numbers you only need around 5 or 6 items.
I admit to not taking emotions into consideration here.
His talent was mainly that he could factor super quickly, and had the times tables memorized up to some absurd level. So that just cut a lot of thinking out of the task.
I am unsure about chunking for random large numbers though. Mnemonic champions chunk very large numbers (I don't have sources on hand), but normal people generally don't.
The original multiplicands are honestly the hardest to remember. Don't materialize all of the intermediate results, and you can stay within working memory. You'll need to chunk a little, but mostly only 2 digit numbers.
Personally, I use fingers to keep track of the 10s place, and work from left to right. Less overwriting that way, and you start with an underapproximation that you refine gradually, which means you can stop early when estimating.
Are you just submitting your RSS feed here?
It seems quite a weak correlation compared with the story 3 months ago "Alzheimer's risk 10 times lower with herpes medication" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540094
Maybe healthier / exercising people are better able to deal with viruses?
Similar to "Time in nature heals you"...