Hacker News Reader

Comment by _9omd | Hacker News Reader

I've long wondered why some people can get by with little or no exercise and yet seem to live relatively healthy/happy lives. My Mom who's 66 doesn't exercise, other than a little walking, and while she's overweight, she always has energy, a good mood, and seems really resistant to the negative impacts of stressful situations.

On the other hand, If I don't get at least an hour of exercise a day, I start to slip into fatigue, anxiety, and depression. I usually walk for 1.5 hours a day and hit the gym 3-5 days a week for cardio and weight training. Fortunately, I do love being active, and I wouldn't want to be more sedentary anyway. I've never had the greatest sleep quality (falling/staying asleep isn't a problem, deep sleep is), and I wonder if I've just been compensating all this time, and those who naturally sleep really well can do better with a sedentary life.

View on HN

If you respond well to exercise it might be worth a shot checking for tense muscle related causes. Physical exercise (esp. heavy weights) might inadvertently work as a relaxation technique for tensed muscles (similar to the way PNF works [0]).

Some causes for tension I know:

- Neck -- c0 to c2 joint related issues; esp. with the Forward Neck Syndrome, can tense neck muscles and cause headaches. It's even speculated that this might be a common cause for migraine [1]

- Dental. If not everything is aligned in the "zero" position, muscles actively work and overwork to compensate. They are commonly called Temporomandibular disorders (TMD) [2]

- Eye. Eyestrain can develop, if an eye works too much for too long, hunts for focus, it can tense forehead and other facial muscles. [3]

and so on, down every joint in the body.

You might have built up some high pain resistance through the years and not even be aware this is happening. This can lead to physiological stress, which in turn interferes with the deep sleep phase (cortisol and other stress hormones keep us half awake for scanning the environment for danger).

[0] https://mediphysio.com.au/pnf-stretching-technique/#:~:text=....

[1] https://www.caringmedical.com/prolotherapy-news/chronic-head....

[2] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas....

[3] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/tmj/symptoms-...

Because people conflate exercise (gym, running, whatever) and activity. I can show you many people who degraded massively by not being active - i.e. not consistently walking and using their muscles (there's a reason why physical rehab involves actually moving). Where people are misled is thinking that you have to attend a gym or go running to be healthy - you don't.

The grim reality is that you probably don't see many of the people that faded away and physically degraded by not being at all physically active, because they're very probably elderly and essentially housebound.

It's called the fitness & health industry, not charity. It's in their financial interests to exaggerate or oversell the health consequences of not doing exercise. It comes down to genes. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger are both in their 90s and do not exercise and have crappy diets yet both are healthy and productive. Another example is William Shatner, who is also obese and just went to space at 90.

True, but you won’t be able to sustain any moderate physical effort later in your life if you never did anything for your fitness when younger.

I 100% agree with you and you should take everything the fitness industry says with a grain of salt. They lie all the time.

That being said, it’s possible for both genetically lucky people to exist and for people who would greatly benefit from exercise to exist.

Pointing at outliers doesn't prove anything. They can easily be (and likely are) highly atypical genetically, that doesn't prove how much exercise helps or doesn't help the average person.

That said, gambling on genetics and luck seems like a dreary way to play your one chance at life, even for those of us who aren't billionaires.

Most people in the US seem to eat and live like they're consciously making that gamble, and the result isn't all that seductive when I look around. e.g. How much heart disease, the #1 killer in the US, is preventable by diet and exercise?

Also, living until 90yo+ tells me nothing about your quality of life. Is the softbody 25yo happier and more confident and more fulfilled than the 25yo who puts some work into their body? Is the 40yo without the energy to chase his kids around the house happier than the one who can? Are man-tits and a limp dick at 50yo the key to happiness that fit people are overlooking? etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com