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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

the research metric I'm interested in is "if you exercise for 5 minutes, you should expect to live 1 minute longer" and I would look at that and say "so I lost 4 mins? no thanks"

but if it ever comes out with a surplus, I'll turn on a dime (and turning on a dime for 5 minutes a day probably lowers blood pressure)

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You need to consider quality of life too. Maybe you only gain one minute, but you'll age much better with a habit of exercise and stretching.

your point gets made over and over and over, I get it, health nuts have a list of things that they think are healthy.

My point, that there's a cost to all this that might not get repaid, is a fresh take that you never see unless you've read one of my other comments making the point.

> that might not get repaid

This is the part that we know is false. The benefits outweight the costs. But fine, suffer if you want.

This research exists. This study [1] suggests a 2.7 year increase in life expectancy. Doing some math, 5 minutes per day for 80 years is around 0.2 years.

So sure I might have gone fishing a bit to respond to a random HN comment but the data is out there and you have a brain.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9794712/

I really don't think "walk briskly for five minutes a day" is a health nut thing. That sounds more like the advice your doctor gives you when she knows you won't do anything a health nut says.

If you are waiting for studies that perfectly model every variable before you spend 5 minutes walking, you are unlikely to be satisfied within your rapidly decreasing lifespan.

it would be more like: if you exercise for 5 minutes, you should expect to live 1 day longer

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