Hacker News Reader

Comment by Insanity | Hacker News Reader

But how do you know if you exercise enough?

According to the linked paper [0]:

- Sedentary (SED): Does not perform exercise regularly or elevate heart rate outside of daily tasks

- Active (AC): Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week, and has at least a six-month history of doing so

A more comprehensive study that determines the optimal amount of exercise per week to achieve peak cellular function over a population would be quite interesting. Also, what about anaerobic exercises like weight lifting? What's the relative impact on metabolic function? Lots more to explore here!

[0] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.19.608601v1....

I find this a bit confusing. If you're doing an hour of HIIT a week and additionally work as a removalist, a picker in a warehouse, or a white-water rafting instructor, you're sedentary? Or is there some middle group that was excluded from the study?

What warehouse worker is doing HIIT? I’m not saying they’re sedentary, but there is no way a warehouse worker is moving at the pace of a HIIT workout, let alone for an entire shift.

There’s no job on the plan outside of drug runner that requires you to actually “run”.

> There’s no job on the plan outside of drug runner that requires you to actually “run”.

Drug runners don't really run either, do they? But athletes do.

I assume “daily tasks” has been defined before. Taking the trash to the curb or walking from bedroom to kitchen, daily task. Saving your client from drowning in dangerous rapids after they capsized, not daily task.

Seems like there's a middle group: "subjects…were assigned a research arm based upon meeting one of the following criteria related to physical activity" directly precedes these groups.

That "outside of daily tasks" addendum is killing me. What task performed regularly during the day is not a daily task???

If you're working in a professional / managerial / technical occupation then your daily tasks are probably irrelevant from an exercise perspective. (If you walk to work then that might help a little.)

I understand the answer to this given that the occupation is sedentary, yes

+1. I surf occasionally, and go rock climbing a couple times a week. Compared to the "average American" I suspect I'm pretty active. Compared to other rock climbers and surfers, I'm probably relatively inactive. If I'm not concerned about improving at these hobbies, and just want 80% of the health benefit of being active, am I achieving it? Or am I still below?

Edit: From the linked paper:

'''

2.1 Subject Recruitment Nineteen male subjects ((41.9 ± 13.8 years; 82.6 ± 13.9 kg)) participated in this study and were assigned a research arm based upon meeting one of the following criteria related to physical activity:

- Sedentary (SED): n= 10. Does not perform exercise regularly or elevate heart rate outside of daily tasks

- Active (AC): n=10. Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week, and has at least a six-month history of doing so

'''

I bet that "Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week" is related to some standard advice (but I'm too lazy to confirm that. I guess that provides an easy measuring stick to decide if we're being 'active enough'

I am in a similar boat as you. I go bouldering twice a week for about 2h per session, I swim once a week for 45 minutes, and I walk an hour each day during my commute.

But I would be interested to know how much this contributes to keeping me healthy.

Health is not the same as performance. You can have the former (sounds like you do to me), without the latter (but you're working on it -- what's the rush, going to the Olympics any time soon?).

The extreme of "performance" is rarely healthy.

The paper indicated the Active group has doing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or 75 minutes of high intensity activity activity (matching WHO guidelines[0]), and have done so for at least six months.

Anecdotally, I and several other people have found smart watches good for keeping track of intensity minutes.

[0] https://www.who.int/initiatives/behealthy/physical-activity

The best indicator of fitness is your VO2 max value and this can be estimated using fitness trackers and smart watches. You should try to be in the top 10% for your age bracket. The higher the better as all cause mortality decreases as VO2 max increases.

My gripe with VO2 max on my Apple Watch, at least, is that Apple has dozens of different workout options, but none of them include the option of changing your body weight. So my VO2 max was climbing steadily until I added rucking to my workouts, and now it's been dropping. Nowhere do I have the option of telling the watch that I'm intentionally carrying extra weight. This should be trivial to add into the UI and factor into the calculation.

I thought I was alone in this gripe but I’m happy to see someone who’s experienced the same! For my longer runs, I’ll wear a hydration vest. It seems to have an impact on my Average HR due to the added weight, and I will always see a little drop off in my VO2Max estimation as a result. A bit of a bummer :)

You can set your weight to your total weight including accessories. But it might skew other values like body fat percentage.

Unfortunately Apple Watch devices are kind of garbage as fitness trackers. They have good optical heart rate sensors but none of the other stuff really works well. For better or worse it's just not a use case that Apple cares about. If this matters to you then you might be better off with different smart watch from the likes of Garmin, Coros, Amazfit, etc.

There's a mention in this article a measurement of various epigenetic clocks but one would have to measure a baseline then try increasing or decreasing to see the effect on test results.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2501185-our-bodies-are-...

Can you look in the mirror without feeling ashamed?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com