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Comment by toxik | Hacker News Reader

This is heavily contested, yes exercise is healthy but straining yourself regularly also has a cost. Most people either exercise really hard or not at all, I think what’s actually healthy is a moderate amount of exercise and the best type differs with age and occupation.

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More importantly is having a variety of moderate exercise mixed in throughout the day.

Your lymph system relies on the movements of your skeletal muscles to push anything not water soluble through your body. This includes fats, various local inflammation signaling molecules, etc.

Interesting, had no idea about that with the lymphs

I think this is one of the most important health information most people have no idea about.

When you feel sick don't stay in bed, go for walks, a large part of your immune system is passive and rely on muscle contraction to work optimally.

> When you feel sick don't stay in bed, go for walks, a large part of your immune system is passive and rely on muscle contraction to work optimally.

Do you have a source for this? I haven't heard this before and genuinely want to learn more about it. A cursory Google search didn't find anything related to this

Not the OP, but:

https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-health/ex....

I have doubts about that. The feeling of sickness is basically our body telling us not to move. Sick animals also don't move much.

And a common reaction to being sick is shivering, so maybe the body is already compensating for the lack of movement.

Guts too. Whenever I walk/jog/ride my BM are better. Nature likes to scavenge energy it seems.

And exercise kind too. Walking is actually a good example, it's surprisingly deep and integrated. When I was ill, it was the only thing that was soft yet deep enough to maintain my cardiovascular system flowing. Other activities like yoga play on the geometry to change your blood circulation without doing anything. Crawling makes a lot of muscles coordinate in ways other sports don't.

Sawing trees also pulls muscles differently.

I'd love to spend a year on such life. More manual labour (but not harmful nor too risky), and see how your body and mind evolve.

I don't know if heart working while sitting/standing to overcome other body parts not working to assist it like they would during and exercise is a good thing.

I thought it is often important to exercise stronger when you have been out of shape for a while. Then once you have core goals met, you can find your stride and sustain.

Not really, ideally you'd want to start with what feels good to do and learn to maintain that then slowly push it until you increase your activity and intensity. If you train hard all at once up front, it'll be harder to build the habit and learn to sustain it.

It is other way round. You risk injury if you start too strongly while the body is unprepared. You should slowly increase the amount of exercise.

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