Live longer -Adults need at min. 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity | Hacker News Reader

Live longer -Adults need at min. 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity

cnn.com

42 pointspriyankanath31 comments

Part of what the article says is "Adults need at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise per week, according to the World Health Organization."

It bugs me when people leave out the units. The title says we need 150-300 minutes of activity on our adult lifetime, which is woefully inadequate.

Here’s the actual study: https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2024/10/07/bjsports-2024-...

49 minutes of walking a day is higher then I woukd have guessed for the lowest quartile. Office/desk work is brutal for getting movement in.

That includes walking to the coffee-machine, to the elevator, to the car, etc.

If you walk a moderate 100 steps/minute, 49 minutes of walking is just 4900 steps which is easy to hit without even really intentionally walking anywhere, unless you work from home without going outside

It depends on where you live. In a European or Asian city it’s just a normal commute. In North America it can be more difficult outside of cities.

Not really. I pace around my house all the time when I work from home. I go up and down the stairs a dozen or so times a day. I walk the dog twice a day most days.

Put some headphones on and walk. If you live outside of the city you have even more nature to walk in.

When you walk do you do so on sidewalks?

I think the article got confused between per-week and per-day; otherwise the numbers are internally inconsistent, and difficult to believe. I don't think the top quartile of the US exercises 3 hours a day! And there's no way the bottom quartile exercises 49 minutes a day: 49 minutes a week for chores, errands, and walking to/from your car sounds more correct.

Also note that they were wearing hip pedometers, which might overestimate "moderate" exercise compared to something that also tracks heart rate.

> I don't think the top quartile of the US exercises 3 hours a day!

Moderate exercise, plenty of people are on their feet all day for work.

Office/desk work is better than WFH for getting movement in. A basic stuck at desk all day sort of day would be no less than 4k steps for me - WFH ~0 steps.

The number of steps is only a small part of the equation, sustaining walking elevates your heart rate in a way that going to grab a snickers in the office kitchen doesn't.

WFH is 10x better because all the commute time can be transformed in walking around the block or exercising at home instead of being in a car or public transport.

WFH is different for everyone. I used to walk to the subway, stand/pace around the platform waiting, walk from the subway to work, walk to lunch, walk to errands on the way home. Now I drive constantly around the suburbs.

People will naturally do that 5 days a week working in a city, there's no "well just go take a walk" handwaving.

> Adults need at min. 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity

... per week.

(Or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise.)

Actually, that's how the article ends, and is the general guidance from the WHO (as linked from the article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/health/world-health-organizat... )

But the article itself talks about how if you move as much as the top quartile, the study predicts gains of years on your life (5-11).

"Total activity levels in the lowest quartile were equivalent to walking for 49 minutes at roughly 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) per hour daily. Total activity levels in the second-, third- and fourth-highest quartiles were equivalent to 78, 105 and 160 minutes, respectively."

That's 160 minutes of physical activity daily, which includes things like walking to a store or up stairs, not just vigorous exercise as the WHO guidelines recommend.

Everytime I read these stats I can't stop but feel like we as a specie completely fucked up, modern life is actively working against us

Most people don't get 75 min of vigorous exercise per week? 10min per day? The average American spend 2x more time watching TV per day than exercising in a week?

The closest thing to an health magic pill we have is exercise and it's virtually free

It's financially free at the time of action but most folks don't have the resources to do that. Time and space are both required and the people who need exercise are the ones least likely to have these criteria met.

Most people sit or stand at work for about 8-9 hours and have a little 30-45 minutes of commuting in each direction.

Our entire society is built upon car centric, work centric life and lifestyles. It's easy to blame the individual when you don't suffer the systemic issues that cause these things. A lot of us are fortunate to have flexibility in our hours or finances but this is a bubble.

In my case: If I want to go for a walk or a jog I have to do so on the road. There are no sidewalks within dozens of miles of my location. That leaves me to buy a gym membership and commute back and forth by car. I can't afford that financially at present so I don't.

If I had a safe way of moving more I would be more inclined. I go for walks as regularly as weather, climate, and time allow but they're often cut off by needing to keep my head on a swivel and risking being accosted by folks if I step into their lawns to get out of the way of a car that probably has a distracted driver.

You can always do burpees. That requires no space and little time, cause they wear you out real quick

You'd have to be in very good shape already to do 75 minutes of burpees per week.

Of course any exercise is better than none, but I suspect the duration of exercise is important to get all the benefits.

maybe its a uk thing but i've never been in a house with ceilings high enough to do a burpee

Wow yeah must be that is incromprehensible to me.

Well I guess Im not very tall either I could see that being a problem if you were like 6'4"

no its just people dont want to do it. people can do tons of exercise even in a literal jail cell theres basically no reason any given person can't figure something out

Boxing, star-jumps, tai-chi, yoga, skipping, dancing, rooting, drumming, volleyball, squash, digging, moving boxes, lifting weights ...

> Find more moments to move throughout your day. While your food’s heating up, do some squats or take a lap around your work building instead of scrolling through social media. When you’re running errands, park as far away from stores as possible. Getting coffee with a friend? Catch up during a walk in the park instead of sitting in the coffee shop.

The last one about taking a walk with a friend sounds nice, but the other ones sound like the worst ways to get activity ever

Constantly forcing yourself to do things is hard and probably will fail. If you find things you enjoy doing, getting activity can be a treat rather than a chore, regardless if it's taking a dog for a walk, going to every museum in town, or finding a sport you like

Wrong mindset in my opinion. Uncomfortable workouts are for delayed satisfaction of a more healthy outcome. I actually think you have it backwards. I think it's more likely you exercise less and never reach consistency if you expect all exercise to be enjoyable.

Did they control for weight? Because overweight and obese people are likely to have both shorter lifespan and more sedentary lifestyle.

Overweight people (bmi 25-30) live longer. I bet they will eventually change bmi classifications to make that range normal. Underweight and obese people live less. But even there obese are probably better off than underweight. Being overweight is in itself exercise for the heart and your calves and every other muscle probably.

> Overweight people (bmi 25-30) live longer.

Seems statistically dubious..

Is this claim based on a longitudinal study? Or at least does this exclude everyone who lost weight due to health reasons etc.?

Is the study controller for income levels and status? Slightly overweight people might be benefiting from better healthcare and QoL. Afaik, there was only one Danish study which reached that conclusion.

Also muscular and fit people tend to fall within the overweight range of the BMI chart.

Tall people also tend to have a higher BMI as well (square cube law and all that), and Denmark is in the top 5 for tallest average population. I would have to imagine that would skew the results as well.

BMI seems like a useful tool for rough estimates of weight, but for any rigourous correlations it seems almost impossible to disentangle from other variables.

What are sources of this claim?

It might be a myth:

https://theconversation.com/mondays-medical-myth-overweight-...

> Live longer -Adults need at min. 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity

Per century ? /s

Reply on news.ycombinator.com