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Comment by trash_cat | Hacker News Reader

Getting fitter as in working out, or losing weight...?

As in improving cardiorespiratory fitness. According to the article, a Swedish study suggests that, for men, an improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness of 3% annually may reduce risk of prostate cancer by as much as 35%. From how I understand the statements made in the article, they (the researchers) seem to emphasize regularity and intensity; that is, regularity is key, and higher intensity as substitute for duration. They also seem to primarily focus on lower-body activity (i.e. use your legs) while making it clear that activities that involve movement of both legs and arms are preferable.

So it's the act of getting fitter, i.e. there must be a constant improvement of 3% a year, it's not good enough to get "fit" and then maintain it? Doesn't that take a huge amount of effort after the first few years?

Yeah, I thought of the same, a 3% year-on-year improvement must necessarily hit some ceiling at some point. The study didn't get into _how_ to achieve a 3% improvement, but from how I understand it, looked at the average year-on-year decline, stability, or improvement, over a period of 7 years.

My own take-away is that there's even more data that confirms "being fit" is about a continuous effort, and that putting in an effort (even quite minimal) to stay fit comes with a whole range of positive health benefits.

I wouldn't extrapolate too far like that.

If you start from next to nothing, you can sustain 3% growth per year for 33 years until you reach 100% growth. That is 33 years to go from lifting 50lbs to lifting 100lbs. You'd actually probably have to work hard to improve that slowly. For cardio that's going from a 20 to a 10 minute mile over 33 years. After a plateau, you generally need to train smarter rather than harder, and then you can keep gaining.

Even if you can't sustain it forever, you're getting fitter than if you weren't doing anything, so your life expectancy is still getting longer.

I don’t think the 3% was an annual metric; instead they simply looked retrospectively at cohorts of subjects whose VO2 max was down by 3% or worse, stable, or increased by 3% or better. The outcome measure over a mean of 6.7 years was incident prostate Ca.

Importantly, the study says nothing about how the subjects achieved this result or whether it was an active process at all. The author’s comments and the first sentence in The Guardian overstate the actual findings. It’s reasonable to assume that purposefully pursuing a cardiovascular fitness regimen aimed at improving VO2max will reduce your prostate Ca risk but the study doesn’t address that.

Peter Attia's OUTLIVE is massively interesting.

Two key indicators he tracks are grip strength and VO² max. They are the product of (most typically) structured weights and cardio training respectively.

Another key thing he addresses is to actually plan for old age, i.e. to factor in how the body will lose muscle mass/ conditioning as we get older - and set eg strength targets for activities to do later in life (i.e. be able to lift grandson) and work back from there.

In other words, this means that building a solid reserve in younger years and then maintaining as well as possible is the way to go.

(To lift grandson at 85, need to be able to lift a helluva lot more at 50).

Read the book/get his audiobook would be my recommendation; I'm listening to his Audible and finding it kind of life changing.

Has anyone ever interviewed people who are still active at 85 and asked what they did when younger?

That grip strength falls apart when you meet climbers. I know we are outliers in general population but it overall seems like a poor measure with tons of corner cases which invalidate it.

Older marathon runner can have a baby pinch due to not using his/her hands for any sport, yet somehow I doubt they fall into same category as some morbidly obese 250kg ball of fat who didn't move from the bed in past few years.

I'm not convinced climbers ruin the grip strength metric that much. Yes, as a climber your grip strength will be proportionally stronger when compared to other metrics. However, this also means that you climb regularly, which involves a lot of other muscles, balance, and lots of hiking if you do it outdoors.

It's used as a proxy for overall strength, as it's very easy to measure in a clinical setting and there is a good amount of data floating about with it.

A bit like BMI, it could be useful for looking at in overall populations even if there are pockets where it doesn't measure overall strength in an accurate manner.

It's not saying if you train your grip strength you will live longer, but _generally_ those that live longer have greater grip strength than those that don't.

Great book. But his recommendations are hard to follow.

40 minutes of zone 2 cardio at least 4 times a week plus zone 5 training once a week plus a strength training regimen plus mobility work.

I exercise about an hour 5-6 days a week and that isn’t enough to cover this regimen.

His recommendations make sense given that his most important indicator for longevity is exercise. But it’s a lot of time per day. Two hours some days if you really follow it.

"Boosting cardiorespiratory fitness by only 3%"

So, 45 minutes per day?

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