Comment by twawaaay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by twawaaay | Hacker News Reader

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I think all those studies that say running even 5-10 minutes makes you almost invulnerable from death should be taken with caution.

One problem is that people who run regularly are just different from people who do not. People who will run will make a lot of other choices that are also better for their health, for various reasons like being probably more intelligent (to see the reason), having means (to be able to carve time each day to do it consistently) and also have the willpower to stick to something that will only have positive results sometime in the future. Running might be, at least to some extent, a result of people being in better health both mentally and physically and not the cause.

Don't get me wrong, I truly believe running is good for you and I see how I get worse when I can't run and then get better when I can. But I red a bunch of those studies and pretty much every one of those studies has some problems, and basically that is because it is neigh impossible to have long term randomised study on real people on a topic like running where it is basically impossible to point finger at people and get them to adhere to your prescribed lifestyle.

This is a classic example of correlation and causation. You're basically saying that running is correlated with a longer life, not causative of it. Causality is undergraduate level science and any paper of any quality will discuss causality and correlation in depth.

For example, in the study that we are discussing here, it says

> It is possible that healthy people may run more, which could lead to reverse causality. However, we found consistent mortality benefits in runners in both healthy and unhealthy individuals

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4131752/

You can read more if you want to understand more about how they handle these factors.

Some time ago I discovered a health issue with me and it prompted me to spend a lot of time trying to understand how proper nutrition should look like.

I discovered that almost everything I have been taught, told by doctors or red on the internet about proper nutrition is lies. And those likes usually have intelligently sounding papers behind them that are not worth the paper they are printed on. And then repeated ad nauseam by thousands of health "experts" that do not seem to be really concerned about validity of any of it other than their personal life goals.

Like the lies that you should eat breakfast to start your day or multiple meals or that fats are bad for your health or that you should limit intake of salt as much as possible. Or that you have to avoid foods that have cholesterol in them. Or that whole grain bread is healthier than the one made from white flour (it is not). Or that you need to eat fiber to have healthy gut flora or to avoid constipation (I have mercilessly removed all carbs of any kind from my diet for over a month and my gut flora is perfectly ok and there is no constipation).

You know, all that stuff that we have been bombarded with from childhood.

I know all about correlation and causation (actually, I studied theoretical math and have a lot of experience with statistics. I have even given a lecture on logic to first year students once when I was asked to do it by my prof).

Let's just say, there is a lot more ways to make improper than proper inferences from your study. And that saying you know about causation absolutely does not mean the person who did the study actually understands it and took it into account properly. And also that a lot of people start with an opinion or a vested interest to show a particular result and then are trying hard to prove what they already "know".

In the end the problem is that all those people who make those studies are forced to crank out results or perish in their field. Conducting a study very carefully and honestly costs many times more effort than just getting it to a point where somebody will take and publish it.

One of the things I've always wondered about, and I don't know if there is a good scientific answer for it (haven't looked deeply), is if you end up committing to running 5 to 10 minutes a day will you end up turning into the type of person you're describing eventually.

I guess my question is that is it likely a person would get the outsized health benefits because they commit to the minor health change which then causes them to commit to more later.

I noticed on myself that running long distances is also willpower training.

Being able to force myself to stick to something hard/painful causes me to also expand my ability to stick to other things.

And when I can't run (for example due to injury) it also affects my ability to stick to a lot of other things that should not be affected by my knee.

Another reason why I think running is so beneficial is because when you start it you see obvious, epic improvements in your performance.

I literally was doing runs I did not think possible just a month earlier.

It changes your perspective on what is and what is not possible.

And if this happens to you it may cause you to start investigating and making a lot of other health-related changes.

Steve Magness has a great book on the topic called Do Hard Things. It’s a great read, but makes extra sense for folks who run of engage in hard endurance exercise.

There's definitely a lot of psychological interplay with running and willpower/self discipline. I think I read somewhere that there are disproportionate number of professionals/PhDs/otherwise successful people who are into ultra running, in part because they have the resources and flexibility needed for the training, but also because the ability to delay gratification and work towards a long term goal is required in both venues.

On a more micro level, a good run can make the rest of life's challenges much less daunting...as I say to my wife: busy days seem a lot less overwhelming if you start them by dragging yourself out of a warm bed to run 8 miles in freezing rain.

Alan Turing was a serious marathon runner and came close to qualifying for the 1948 olympics. https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Turing_running/

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