Vigorous Exercise, Cognitive Decline, and High Blood Pressure
alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
There is more money to be made by stakeholders treating health problems than there is in preventing them. And so there is a lot more money and effort invested in developing pharmaceutical and treatment solutions than there is in preventing the problems they treat – even though that would be far, far better for society as a whole.
Alternatively/additionally, the stakeholders that make money treating things (insurance companies, hospitals, etc.) are simply larger and better capitalized than those that make money preventing health problems (gyms, health food stores, etc.) The biggest gym or fitness company in the world is probably minuscule in comparison to the average medical company.
The only wrinkle in my understanding here is that as far as I know, insurance rates are lower for healthy people, and thus doctors(?) are somewhat incentivized to have healthier patients.
Is there a market-based solution to this? And if so, what would it look like? Tax breaks for gyms? More lobbying from Big Gym?
Exercise sucks. I am overweight. I much prefer Ozempic (and pay a substantial premium for it) vs lifestyle change. So do millions of other Americans who are shelling out for it.
You would basically need to economically torture fat people to the point that exercise is less horrible than your incentives.
I’m paying 8K a year to avoid exercise.
I always tell new runners to slow down, like ridiculously slow, laughably slow. If it feels like the lung is burning and you want to vomit, oh that is wayyyyy too fast. Keep it slow and steady and maybe only ever so slightly uncomfortable, then allow your body to adapt and ride that feeling until you're all of the sudden exercising much harder but without feeling like you do.
I posit that exercise does not have to feel terrible to work, and that it can be turned into something that feels maybe a little bit uncomfortable during, but really nice after.
That aside, exercise is just one aspect of prevention. In most places that have lower obesity rates, people probably exercise less than they do in America, which is ironic.
My broader point is more that the system is set up in such a way that it's easier for you to get overweight and then pay $8K a year to buy a treatment drug, than to just help you avoid getting overweight in the first place. Probably because the cost to do that is much less than $8K, so the stakeholders are much less incentivized to do it.
Also, being low in fat is great, but it’s not the same as also having a developed muscle structure, strong bones, and performant cardiovascular system.
When the weather is good and I ride my recumbent through the beautiful Dutch landscape, I'm getting both exercise and joy.
That's odd, I'd think even for people who barely exercise there'd be plenty of Type I fun, available much more cheaply than USD 8K/yr. Distance is what matters; people who actually like jogging get their distance in much more quickly than the rest of us, but long slow distances can also be covered much more pleasantly.
(Type II fun is probably indistinguishable from type III fun at the start, but should you ever get more involved in sport you'll discover that there are many, many things that are type II but not type III)
> We condition the masses to hate the country, but simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. —DHC for Central London
Some things can't be fixed by exercise, so take the pills. Some things can, it's probably best to take the exercise. If it doesn't work, the pills are still waiting for you.
I guess what I'm saying is: exercise is misery, but not preventing damage is delayed misery of uncertain magnitude.
At times when I have been out of shape, it has felt taxing to start up. But as soon as my shape starts to tighten up, it no longer feels like misery at all, instead it feels like the privilege getting to drive around in a cool machine - your very own body.
It may be this is fundamentally different between types of people. For example, I have heard many women claim that running never felt good to them, even when they were in shape (this might there be related to how hips may be differently shaped for running).Exercise isn't a misery when you aren't fat.
To lose weight you eat less. Unfortunately we've decided treating food addiction with pills and removing organs is the way to go rather than targeting the addictive stuff itself. Kinda like treating heroin addiction by removing arms.
There are other studies that show quite often the most effective way to eat less is to fast every now and again. And that's because if you're trying to diet by eating a small meal, your stomach/brain is going to be yelling at you all the time that you're hungry and you should eat some more, but if you fast, after 16 hours or so that urgency goes away and you stop feeling as hungry. Fasting sounds a lot more scary than it actually is. The record fast length is 382 days [0].
If that’s the case, I’ll hazard another guess: you lived in an environment where you couldn’t just go out and play whenever you wanted?
I might be completely wrong in my guesses, and I apologize if I am. But I strongly believe that all kids are naturally predisposed for physical activity, and it’s the duty of the society to let them do that in an easy and safe way.
Weirdly enough, I now go to the gym 3 times a week. I don't love it like some people do but I've made it enough of a habit that I do it anyway.
The main motivation for me was wanting to be active enough to keep up with my kids and a string of minor ailments (mostly not relating to lack of exercise) which gave me a bit of a shove to do something.
For me there is a huge difference of doing something that requires physical exertion in order to complete and doing pointless physical exertion for exertion's sake. I can skate on a board or skates, or ride a bike for hours because it's about skill and technique for me, I feel frustrated after running for a minute. Similarly I can free-dive whole day but swimming laps feels like a massive chore.
I believe some people can enjoy exercise but, judging by how many fit people are there - they are in small minority.
Lots of people, including myself, love exercising. If nothing else, endorphins are a great natural "high". And I can tell that the rest of my system just works better when I'm working out regularly: I have fewer hunger attacks, I sleep better, I feel better. And, I just really like the feeling of picking up really heavy things (that being my current exercise of choice).
From what I can tell, the "exercise sucks" barriers most people face are 1) not everybody likes everything, and 2) it takes at least 2 months of training to get to the point where you can get the taste for the endorphins without being overly sore afterwards.
Now maybe you've spent 2 months trying all kinds of different activities (swimming, walking, hiking, weight lifting, cycling, wrestling, football) and none of them have worked, in which case fair enough. But if you haven't, I'd recommend trying it.
I can see why if you're overweight that running wouldn't be very fun. If you haven't tried weight lifting, definitely give that a go. If you're overweight, you've got a head start lifting heavy things (you), so it shouldn't be as hard to get into. People who've never lifted weights have this idea that it's mind-numbingly boring; but the mental focus you need to lift heavy things is actually a bit more like meditation. And being able to confidently lift really heavy things is an amazing feeling, not to mention having pumped-up muscles.
great, good for you and those people. but clearly most people don't.
plus you cannot out-exercise a poor diet. doesn't matter how hard you go in the gym or on a hike if you slam donuts and pepsi all day.
If throwawaysleep had said, "Some people seem to like exercise, but I've tried all kinds of things and never found anything that wasn't a misery", I probably wouldn't have replied. But rather, they said, "Exercise is a misery" -- no exceptions or qualifications. They have acknowledged the importance of exercise, and seemed to indicate that they would be willing to do it for their own health if it were just boring or mildly annoying; but they believe exercise is always unpleasant. They seem to believe that everyone who does exercise regularly does so by just powering through the misery; but that this is realistically not an option for them.
So there's something they don't know, something they need to know -- exercise doesn't always suck. Lots of people exercise without having to "power through" any misery, because they've found routines they actually enjoy. And so, maybe there's a routine that they will enjoy as well. You're not going to look for something unless you know that it might exist.
> plus you cannot out-exercise a poor diet. doesn't matter how hard you go in the gym or on a hike if you slam donuts and pepsi all day.
I'm not sure where the donuts and pepsi are coming from. I don't know what happens if you take Ozempic while only eating donuts and pepsi; it's possible you could stay thin, but you definitely won't be healthy.
But since you raised it: Slim != healthy, and healthy eating !=> slim. It's possible to gain weight eating healthy most days and only eating really unhealthy once a month. And it's possible to have healthy muscles / cardiovascular system and still be overweight, or to have poor cardio and be slim. I'm pretty sure it's healthier to be overweight and cycle 20 minutes every day than to be slim and a couch potato.
If throwawaysleep is slamming donuts and pepsi all day, they should stop that for their health and well-being. But although it might slow the rate at which they gain weight, it probably won't make them slim.
Similarly, if they're overweight, while a normal, sustainable exercise routine will probably slow the rate at which they gain weight, or help them lose a bit, it probably will never make them slim. But they will be a lot healthier nonetheless.
Only if you haven't been doing it. When you follow through and get the hang of it, it can be ecstasy.
>I’m paying 8K a year to avoid exercise.
And paying a lot more in cognitive and health decline long term, both in monetary terms (treatment) and in non-measurable quality of life terms.
Ozempic is just weight loss (and the potential side-effects of longer term use with it, we'll find out in the future).
Weight loss is table stakes for optimal performance.
There is zero need for exercise if one wants to lose weight.
Ozempic may help with weight loss but there are other health reasons to exercise.
I spend 8 hours a day sleeping and 8 hours a day at work. Anther 4 hours in meal prep and consumption, personal hygiene, commuting, and mandatory household chores. That leaves 4 hours a day in elective time. Now you suggest I dedicate 50% of that time in non-productive exercise where I'm stuck with my own thoughts and no other mental stimulation while being physically uncomfortable?
Or once a month I could go to the doctor and get a shot.
I can see the appeal of Ozempic.
Now mind, I'm not overweight, but I do have diabetes and mild hypertension controlled through diet and, until my old dog "went to sleep" recently, regular exercise. I don't like the diet and often resented the twice daily long walks in all kinds of weather but still prefer that over chronic medication, especially one delivered through a means the gods did not give you an orifice for. My choice, but I respect other people's choices.
For me, what I needed was to swim and bike more. I loved those things. Running hurt and was miserable. Weight lifting was horrible. Team sports were a misery.
But I could happily bike (on a recumbent in particular) for ages, at my own pace.
When I sold my car, started riding a bike everywhere, and started a volumetric diet (don't eat tiny meals, eat big ones of low-calorie-density foods) I dropped to about 200 pounds.
And I stayed there for a long time (over a decade) until I moved somewhere I could do this even better - the Netherlands - and I've lost another 20 pounds. And I just ride my bike around. I don't go to a gym (I do get a swim in a couple times a month though).
Riding my bike in suburban California was, indeed, torture, but only because it's a horribly-designed place. In nice places it's a delight.
There are of course typical gyms, but the associations are much more popular afaict.
And then membership is often based on somewhat calendar years starting in September, so if you don't register exactly at this moment the cost per month is even higher.
One of the worst things that ever happened to pharmaceutical industry profits was the the discovery that most ulcers can be cheaply cured with antibiotics (which won the discovers a well deserved Nobel prize).
Even after this ulcer drugs were hugely profitable. I cannot remember the numbers from when I was an analyst covering them (more than 20 years ago!), but at one point a very big proportion (maybe even most) of Astrazeneca's profits came from their blockbuster ulcer treatment. Imagine how much more profitable that would be without a cheap cure around!
Gyms are not the solution, nor are health food stores. Far more people join gyms than make use of them. You can keep fit going for walks or running or a multitude of cheap things. IMO the problems are lack of time for exercise and money for a healthy diet.
Poor people have a far worse diet than rich people because they have to fill up with cheap junk. Junk food takes less time to prepare. I have ready meals sometimes because I am tired. Some people have to do it all the time, and they do not have the money to be fussy about how healthy the meals are.
pretty much. You go to some circles that will keep swearing by "Calories in, Calories out", and blaming any detteral of this as laziness. It's basically the equivalent of saying "stop smoking" to a smoker. Yes, they are objectiely right, but also miss all the subtlety of the steps needed to "stop smoking".
Time is definitely the biggest factor, and modern society feels like it's demanding more time than ever of workers for less spending power than ever. Of course people don't have time to work on their diet/exercise when some are working 2+ jobs at barely above minimum wage.
I pity the smoker more because they don’t have to smoke but feel compelled to smoke through addiction.
You have direct control over how many calories you consume and it’s a basic human instinct to eat.
Saying there’s nuanced steps inbetween is just a way to hand wave away someone’s laziness to not tackle the problem.
What gets deposited into your bank account and what gets stocked at your local grocery drives what you put into your body to survive.
If eating healthy is too expensive or outright impossible because of what is stocked at your local grocery and your hormones and neurotransmitters are telling you overwhelmingly to eat poorly... Is this laziness?
I never smoked nor fasted, so I can't really compare the two.
We all feel compelled to eat.
A lot of cheap food does not satisfy hunger for as long as better food.
Just cutting calories in can make you feel less able to do things, so you automatically cut back on exercise.
People differ in many ways: metabolism, genetics, physical sicknesses, mental health, gut bacteria and probably many more things I cannot think of will change how the same diet affects different people, and their ability to exercise.
As someone who has dieted by cutting and counting calories. This wasn’t true, I didn’t have the energy for high intensity workouts sure but I did have the energy to walk a mile or two and the result is the same loss of calories as 2 mile run. Walking just takes a bit longer.
The important thing was drinking a lot of water or gassy things to feel full to quiet the urge to snack.
Also Deleting junk food, sodas , and beer completely from my pantry. Having coffee without cream, Replacing them with low calories snacks like carrots, celery, bananas.
I dropped 15 lbs fairly fast.
So you improved the quality of your diet significantly. That is very different from just eating fewer calories. I suspect that if you had not done this it would have worked.
> Replacing them with low calories snacks like carrots, celery, bananas.
Also improving your fibre intake, and other improvements in nutrition too.
Carbs are one aspect of diet. There's very little actual nutrition in any of those things.
I’m a fitness person, I love it and have made it large part of my none professional life. One of the most annoying things I hear fitness people say is:
We all have the same 24 hours.
Yeh no, people don’t and telling them that isn’t helping. What’s better is to accept people have different lived and see how exercise can be snuck in.
Getting off the bus two stops early to get a 10 minute walk for example is a pretty manageable one.
I do minimal high intensity exercise every single day, it is just routine, because I am busy. Everyone can learn that. In fact I see the biggest number of betting shops in the poorest part of the cities as they are more vulnerable to learning bad habits, as companies are eager to teach those as it is great business.
So, instead try to find a way to squeeze exercise in as part of daily life (essentially habit stacking)
> Large companies will tell you that you need to eat different. Never to eat less.
The actual problems are things like food addiction and forced sedentary lifestyles. The solutions to these are things like taking food addiction seriously and treating junk food the way we treated cigarettes (ban all advertising for a start) and getting rid of cars in towns.
As far as I know, the insurance companies sponsor these, and presumably they find the upkeep costs (under $1'500/year?) pay back in reduced overall payouts?
The health care system in US is very broken. This paper [1] really outlines. It not just more money made in treating health problems than prevention. Due to the health insurance is structured in US, there is also an incentive for doctors to prescribe the more expensive treatment instead of the cheaper more effective treatment.
https://pubmedinfo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Is-US-Heal...
It is depressing how many of those comic strips are still relevant today.
Anywhere the healthcare system is public, there is more pressure in lowering its cost / raising its efficiency.
Which is ironic because we all know someone who’s had a heart attack, cancer or a stroke.
And if someone decides to make lifestyle changes, they’re often going against society and the medical establishment.
A friend recently was able to stop taking her diabetes and hypertension meds after she did things her doctors discouraged her from doing, like intermittent fasting, which I told her about.
Now she distrusts doctors because they told her she’d have take these meds for the rest of her life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_r...
I moved to the Netherlands a year ago and have already lost 9kg (about 20 pounds) without really even trying that hard. I just don't have a car.
It's even more baffling we don't do this because this is cheaper AND healthier. If the same organisation is paying for health care and transport (like a national government) than it should be a blindingly obvious solution.
You can have a sedentary person who works from home and orders takeaways.
You can have a person who has a car who goes to gym 4 times per week, hikes during weekends and plays tennis 2 times per week and eats healthy food.
There is no reason to tax the second person more than the first one.
And taxing private transportation / providing incentives for public transportation does not only benefit our health, it also bring other benefits; global warming issues, dependency on fossil fuels, etc
Hell I doubt you will even see much correlation between car ownership rates and miles driven in a car or walking distances but at least that's a correlation that you might possibly see in data.
If this were your epistemic standard, you'd have to accept all sorts of absurd or conflicting conclusions.
Things tend to be affected by their causes (!) so when the outcome is changing significantly and the purported cause is not then it suggests more evidence needs to be offered before we accept that the purported cause actually has a significant affect.
It is cheaper for people to die younger and so we should be encouraging unhealthy habits if we want to minimize medical care costs.
In spite of it's near ubiquity, I am trying to avoid the phrase "health care" because that is, as another comment talked about, not really what we do.
[1]: https://www.kff.org/other/slide/the-u-s-has-the-lowest-life-...
Reminds me of Vitality health insurance in the UK
Unlike the food industry which directly causes the issue by pushing addictive and unhealthy food, I suspect the underlying problem with treatment vs. prevention is in culture and mentally.
You need to convince people to spend a significant portion of time exercising and eating healthy when they do not yet have issues in order to prevent future issues, taking time away from other, more entertaining things. Even with a goal, exercise is hard work. Treatment on the other hand rarely requires significant effort, and once it is needed it is no longer something you can ignore and postpone like you could with prevention.
At the same time, many conditions which pharma develops treatment for are not fixed with exercise.
Using your point, how would lobbying from big gym be able to compete with the dominate interests of pharm and medical.
The desire to work out comes down to the self determination of the person and I don’t think there is any product that is a substitute or replacement for that.
You don’t need a fancy gym to get rigorous exercise. You can do everything in your home. Walking, running, Push ups, sit ups, squats, dips, are free and easily accessible to do anywhere. biking, swimming, and pull-ups are less accesible but are also relatively easy and cheap, these also are the best exercises one can do to avoid injury.
I would say building more bike roads, walkable spaces, outdoor exercise areas, and emphasize these things early in schooling are the best and most effective. I’m sure it is emphasized highly in Europe where people are generally more in shape.
Because my less than expert observation is this comment is the kind that gets trotted out consistently by cynical systems thinkers who think they've uncovered sinister forces making the population sick on purpose. This seems to ignore that tremendous effort does go into trying to convince people to eat better and exercise more. Money put into youth sports, mandatory gym classes, amateur athletics as their own carveout for nonprofit activity. Lyndon Johnson launched the presidential fitness challenge in 1966. Michelle Obama tried to make this her entire pet project for 8 years while her husband was in office. Other parts of the Internet are full of people like the greyed out comment making the exact opposite observation to yours. They complain that doctors don't take them seriously or give them medicine, refuse surgeries if you're overweight, and are always prescribing diet and exercise.
For what it's worth, and I guess it doesn't have to be worth much, my personal hobbies outside of work have always consisted of sports and fitness. I was into these things well before I ever discovered my first computer. One consequence is most of the informational/entertainment content I consume is sports and fitness focused, including a few podcasts hosted by both coaches and medical doctors, who also make the same counterarguments to your own observation here. Every major medical association out there, national and international standards bodies, primary care physicians themselves, do in fact prescribe preventive measures like diet and exercise, but either the patients and general population ignore these and don't do it anyway, or they don't seek any sort of remedy until they're too far gone in the first place.
There are clearly plenty of environmental factors causing higher levels of diseases of civilization, ranging from the accessibility of sports and recreation facilities in particular places to a poor walking environment to food abundance, but it certainly isn't just this. Plenty of nobility of old got fat eating minimally processed, locally grown foods that their ancestors ate, before cars and concrete existed. We can see the same thing happening to our own pets. They're seeing elevated rates of obesity and hypertension and stuff you'd never see in the wild, and this happens even when they're fed great food and allowed every opportunity to exercise. The unfortunate reality is evolution equipped mammals with an incredible propensity to conserve energy and overeat when the opportunity to do so is available, presumably because such an environment would have largely been seasonal and not permanent in the distant past. We've made it permanent.
I'm not at all trying to say that we can't do anything society-wide. There are obvious differences between nations and regions. There have to be reasons some places do better than others, but I doubt that market forces are one of those things because those are largely the same everywhere, and the entire world has seen diseases of civilization pop up as soon as people have the chance to overeat and live sedentary lives. Hacker News really hates this for some reason, but things like GLP-1 agonists are going to be necessary if you really want to hit everyone that is affected by this. A whole lot of people simply are not going to eat less and move more no matter what incentives you give them.
This is not in line with economic theory. According to it, actors would simply price the treatment and an npv of the potential future cash flow. It would actually be more beneficial to treat people completely, as it reduces the risk of the cash-cow suddenly being hit by a car, for example.
"High fitness in middle age reduces the chance of dementia by ninety percent" https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180315101805.h...
The effect size is very modest. You spend more time in exercising than increase your lifespan. The metaphor is literal, you are running from death and disease, and death is running faster.
What we need is review studies ranking lifestyle and health regimes by their effect size and combined effect sizes. Almost certainly combining two effective regimes increases the life- and healthspan more than their sum.
Whatever you do, the effect likely is probably just 5 years of healthspan (relative to your generation).
Wild guess: Body weight, proper nutrition, exercise, no stress, no smoking or alcohol and controlling inflammation in the body other ways, like dental hygiene[1] is the best you can do.
[1]: Patients with periodontitis have a doubled risk of stroke already before age 50 https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/brain/patients-periodontitis...
Exercise improves sleep, improves cognitive function and make tasks easier and more enjoyable. Everything about your life improves.
I bicycle, and I enjoy it. It is one of the reasons I want to live longer.
I feel the same, but this is not about me.
For people who read this and don't exercise, may not feel it enjoyable, it's often uphill all the time. They don't like exercise. Maybe being just thin and losing weight would be better, or doing non-vigorous exercise. We don't have much information. We make stories going off the tangent on some studies.
Viewing this topic purely through years of life extension is severely flawed.
Sleep maybe. My cognitive function is down for extended periods of time after prolonged exercise. I see no effect on exercising vs my life enjoyability except immediately after exercise I feel happy, because that torture is over and I can resume thinking.
Not sure what types of exercise you are doing or your background (I could be more specific if you shared, feel free to email me) but in general I find most untrained to moderately trained people exercise at too high an intensity most of the time. Feeling like exercise is torture, and having lower cognitive function afterwards are also strong indicators of this.
Most exercise should actually feel quite easy — perhaps an 80/20 split of easy exercise days to hard exercise days is ideal. For example, if you were running you might switch between running and walking to keep your heart rate at a pretty low level (zone 1 or 2) in some sort of structured program that ramps up intensity over time but keeps you in these lower heart rate zones 80% of your exercise time.
For me personally I started enjoying exercise and getting a lot more out of it after making most of it feel "too easy"!
The healthy person has less stress, sleeps better, has better sex, has better mood and energy and isn't spending most of his life having difficulty dealing with illnesses steaming from unhealthy habits.
Additionally, the time spend exercising isn't wasted, it's quiet enjoyable thanks to the release of Endorphins. Not to mention that it helps build muscles and keeps your body in shape which makes you more attractive to the opposite sex, thus increasing the chances of finding a partner. You also get all the cognitive benefits mentioned in the article for free.
To top if it off, the time commitment isn't 8 hours a day. It only requires an hour every 2 days or so (it varies depending on what you're trying to accomplish).
I highly recommend it.
1) Regular exercise with a routine designed by a fitness trainer.
2) No alcohol, moderation is not an option
3) Manage your stress, some repetitive tasks I find useful, like household chores
This smells bad.
Should I just exercise flat out and try to sustain that as long as I can, or is there a level of vigorous exertion below flat out that leads to better results because of the longer duration?
> When we say ‘vigorous’ we mean activities that make you sweat, increase your heart rate or increase your breathing. Please think about vigorous activities that you may have done at home or at places of work other than your home, as well as vigorous recreational activities or conditioning exercises. Please think over the last year and indicate how often you participate in vigorous activities.
Do you stop afterwards and catch your breath? It was vigorous. Bonus if you broke a sweat.
There's no need to be more qualitative than that for most folk (a "suboptimal" schedule consistently applied being vastly preferable to an "optimal" one inconsistently), but if you absolutely insist on getting quantitative, see: https://pacompendium.com
[in particular, see https://pacompendium.com/sexual-activity/ : a light pash might be twice as much activity as just sitting on the couch, while "scaring the horses" can be six times]
If you can make yourself do proper HIIT regularly you will become batman but the mental barrier of intentionally making something "suck" as much as possible (and then some) is really tricky to get over. Even once you are "on the wagon" it's a difficult habit to maintain.
I find 30-60 minutes of moderate daily cardio to be much more approachable on a regular basis. It also feels more meditative to me than rushing through a 20 minute hellscape. I can sit down and write code for hours after getting off the rowing machine. After a CrossFit routine I just want to nap all day.
Correlation != Causation
Could the causation conceivably run the other direction? People with beginning dementia exercise less? Yes, that is quite conceivable actually.
Could there be a common cause explaining both? Yes, if you are in good health, with good genes, a good job, leisure time and money, then probably you are the type of person who'll live longer, sport more, and be cognitively healthy for a longer time. It doesn't mean the causality runs in the other direction.
In other words, this study shows what we all know. The 'good' people have all the good stuff. But what we want to know, will an intervention that causes people to exercise more do any good?
So yeah, this is a mere correlational study, and a self-reported one at that. So technically, it could even be that people who think they exercise harder have better health outcomes.
No, please let's not.
This almost automatic HN reaction to every research is the lowest tier of facile dismissal.
This is just one of dozens of studies that have shown that good cardiovascular health (a side effect of "vigorous" exercise) has a downstream positive effect on health.
And I personally can attest to that - the days I don't vigorously exercise (run, swim, BJJ, MT) are also the days I see the biggest cognitive declines - and I'm fairly young.
Then use that to train an RNN for sentiment analysis based on the values you’ve just described.
Then run the entire HN corpus through your RNN and chart the values over time.
For bonus points, incorporate the score of replies in the weighting of values.
I also don't want to pay for scraping and data ingest costs out of my personal pocket.
Feel free to do it if you want - it would make a nice blogpost.
There's no scraping cost, the API is free. Your message, for example, is here: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/40801233.json?pri...
Processing 10,000 threads is probably not more than a few dollars on OpenAI's GPT API.
The reason I don't do it is I don't see the trend you see.
Don't you think that slimmer people are more inclined to enjoy exercising?
Is that a function of bodyfat percentage? I doubt so as well. Ideal BF% in men goes from 8 to 20%, when I see lots of people above 20% in the trails or running/cycling around.
Besides, if the goal is weight loss, that can be achieved with caloric restriction and zero minutes of cardio. It's thermodynamics.
Move for the sake of it, not for weight loss.
The problem is cultural, and also because of GREED. Companies make so much money off of selling you junk food, pharma makes a lot selling you pills, etc. It’s not a biological problem 99% of the time. You really want to solve this overnight?
Simple:
• force free healthy and delicious meals in public schools. regardless of cost. Home cooked meals on site like in japan. CARE ABOUT THE KIDS america! We feed them shit, it’s sad.
• ban food advertising in all mediums.
• Some kind of incentive for adults to walk/bike to work if possible, and drive less. Would need to think about this more…
• mandatory school subject: teach how unhealthy it is to be overweight. Explain cardiovascular disease and what happens to the body in detail. Explain how lifestyle will differ at 60 yrs and 70 yrs of age for a fat diabetic vs a slim person that exercises weekly. Take a field trip to a nursing home. This SHOWS kids the negative consequences while maybe benefiting nursing home residents with possibly free volunteer help.
• mandatory school subject: Cooking class. Also explain that you should eat for FUEL first, pleasure second.
I could go on…
Companies are full of people. Those people want to do good things and want to help others.
There are plenty of companies who sell vegetables, fruits, free-range eggs and beef, meal replacement shakes with full spectrum of macros & micros, packed foods for vegetarians, keto, paleo eaters.
It's not particularly companies fault that someone buys a cheeseburger instead of omelette with tomatoes or whole grain sandwich with turkey & lettuce. Options are there no matter where you live.
--
I agree with teaching kids about nutrition and impacts of obesity. That makes 100% sense.
I agree that at a micro level people are just trying to find a job and do the best they can. But the system as it’s designed drives these incentives. Have you seen the typical lunch that a japanese student eats every day? Not sure how anyone can look at the typical american child’s lunch and not feel shame and guilt. This is something the government could change if someone with power wanted to.
Please watch this if you haven’t: https://youtu.be/fze5s1SlqB8?si=Xo7kQH3ShfE0y3wz
That’s not some fancy or private school in japan. That’s a NORMAL school lunch.
Regarding advertising and foods, I was referring to heavily processed foods that are advertised on TV and elsewhere, targeted at kids that don’t know better. Cereals, junk snacks (doritos, chips, popcorn, etc). I am in my 30’s and I STILL remember how badly i wanted my mom to buy me coco puffs lol.
Most overweight and obese persons I know are overweight because they are using food as a drug. This has nothing to do with hunger.
Shoveling fistfuls of Reese's Puffs into your face because you're bored, sad, stressed, angry, etc. is not to relieve hunger pains.
It's to get high.
40+ years ago these people would have been chain smokers instead.
Want to fix the obesity crisis? Design a cheap, socially-acceptable, ritualized drug which can be consumed using little-to-no energy in near-limitless quantities and has no preexisting history of being considered "bad".