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Comment by yoz-y | Hacker News Reader

Median age of 61… 4.4 minutes of “vigorous” activity. Hard to interpret this as anything else that if you remain being able to be somehow active in your later years you will be better off.

I find all of the studies of “how little exercise” is needed sad. Instead we should be focusing on how to restructure modern lifestyle to allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises.

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I'm confused. You're saddened by people researching the minimum exercise needed, but want society to aim to give people that minimum? How would society know what the minimum is?

We know the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of cardio exercise and two resistance strength training sessions per week. For many people this is unrealistic.

But this is not what the research for minimum is for. There are all those “20 minutes a week”, “7 minutes a day” programs to basically just avoid croaking from not moving at all.

Presumably it’s a known amount approximately matching what they do.

Agreed. I've figured it out during the drier months in the NW of the States. Plenty of work in the woods, workshop, maintenance, and helping neighbors with the same. But winter and the rains I would inevitably put on 10 pounds and lose my super old guy muscles. My mildly successful campaign against the trend is long rain walks and Convict Conditioning workouts.

Restructuring the modern lifestyle, allowing people more free time to focus on their health, is unprofitable.

Whereas minimizing the amount of free time people spend on their health, allowing people more time to labor or consume, is profitable.

100% agree. The real battle isn't the actual exercise. It's initiating it in the face of endless distractions.

Once you make it a habit like brushing your teeth the distractions cease to be an obstacle.

> allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises

Aren't you just asking the same question?

I certainly prefer sitting then doing exercise, I just also don't like the consequences of doing none.

I think what the poster was getting at is that finding a minimum is a negative way to view human health (what is the minimum amount of food a human needs to survive, what is the minimum I need to brush my teeth so they don't fall out of my head, etc.).

Restructuring society in healthy ways (shorter work weeks, bike lanes, green cities, etc.) will allow us to achieve whatever that minimum would have been (had we measured!) and more!

At least I think that's the distinction.

The only time I prefer to sit is after I have done a good deal of exercise. I don't mean that as a jab of any sort, just a differing perspective from someone who gets much more than a minimum of required exercise.

It's not hard to restructure it at all.

1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week

2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.

3. City sponsored exercise events and sports competitions open to everyone, not just athletes. Give tax deductions to those who participate and demonstrate attendance.

The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence. But I have given the solution.

Your health insurance or employer may already offer a similar program. Mine does. I get up to $500 added to my HSA every year if I hit step count goals on their app.

That said, looking around my office, I don't think it's very effective. It's hard to get people to exercise and a few hundred bucks doesn't change that.

Completely restructuring society seems so simple to some people.

What needs to be done is relatively simple. Convincing society to fix what's broken is the hard part.

We need to restructure cities away from being driving focused.

A lot of Americans genuinely like their cars and low-density single family neighborhoods.

This would also be a massive and expensive undertaking that would require rebuilding the majority of city infrastructure.

It would be cheaper than continuing down the current path. Like I said, the answer is obvious and conceptually simple. Getting people to accept the truth is the hard part.

It took us centuries to screw everything so I don’t claim any of this is simple. But we will need to start actually fixing stuff eventually, rather than adding patches.

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