Vitamins Found to Curb Exercise Benefits | Hacker News Reader

Vitamins Found to Curb Exercise Benefits

nytimes.com

20 pointstheoneill16 comments

This is off-topic, but am I the only one to find all nytimes articles utterly useless? They're all very well written and interesting, but after reading them I never know more then I did before. I've made a habit of not clicking them, but then I find some interesting title and click... only to again waste 5 minutes.

It really depends on the section. The editorial assumptions and standards are very different between, say, the Health section and the foreign news.

This article is a writeup of someone else's writeup. Keeping an eye out for publications with surprising findings is a good way to fill that last bit of space in the science section, but it's not going to reproduce all the details. It does give you enough information (PNAS and two authors' names) to find the real article pretty quickly, and that turns out to be open access:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/05/11/0903485106.abst...

I'd say that I like the nytimes. Comparing it to other newspapers the articles seem a lot better written and more informative (possibly with the exception of the multi-page spreads that local papers sometimes produce).

At the minimum it seems to be of the same level of quality of any other decently sized newspaper. I can think of an independent newspaper that has some extremely well written articles, but it seems to me that the problem is more with the format rather than the nytimes. So what newspapers are more informative?

I'm not sure if there are any newspapers that are more informative. Perhaps the Irish Times, probably not the Seattle P.I.

Harder news sources like scientific and technical journals, and a very few websites and the occasional magazine like the Atlantic monthly and the economist are about the only things that come to mind.

What a terrible title. The researching doctor clear states:

antioxidants in general cause certain effects that inhibit otherwise positive effects of exercise

It's like claiming "food found to cause heart disease," based on a study of cholesterol. It's true, but totally overblown.

Considering exercise (especially resistance training) increases your metabolism and overall oxygen intake for many hours after, if you aren't getting antioxidants you will be slowly killing yourself. They don't have to come from vitamins, though. Green tea, blueberries, and purple corn are all excellent sources.

> Considering exercise (especially resistance training) increases your metabolism and overall oxygen intake for many hours after,

This is popular knowledge that seemingly everyone believes is important (along with the belief that gaining muscle mass increases metabolic rate by an important amount), but the magnitude is tiny.

From one source (http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/anatomyandphysiology/a/rm...):

> Exercise of the intensity and duration commonly performed by recreational exercisers (e.g., walking for 30- 60 minutes or jogging at a pace of 8-10 minutes per mile for 20-30 minutes) typically results in a return to baseline of energy expenditure well within the first hour of recovery. The post-exercise calorie bonus for this type of exercise probably accounts for only about 10-30 additional calories burned beyond the exercise bout itself.

20 calories.

In practice, exercise also makes you hungrier. It is far from clear that it's even a net win for weight loss at all, when you look at studies and data.

I was looking for info on the opposite effect, lower metabolism from crash dieting earlier today and couldn't find anything useful. However, using the term RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate) from your link I found far more interesting stuff.

The short version: yes crash dieting can lower your metabolic rate, but the effect is small, and not permanent.

It can be a difference of 10% of your RMR which is 60-75% of your total calories burned per day. Therefore crash dieting can cause you to burn 6-8% less calories. So that's roughly 1 lb of fat less lost (or more gained) per month.

This is why I said "especially resistance training."

The metabolic benefits from aerobic exercises like walking, running, swimming, etc. are rather short (1-2 hours.) Intense resistance training gives a benefit for 12-36 hours (until your sleep, generally.)

This is why resistance training in the morning helps weight loss.

How many extra calories does intense resistance training (say for 1 hour) burn, beyond the training itself? I believe the answer is something small enough to be practically insignificant. (I'd appreciate if you can prove me wrong with data.)

The point of the article is that, somewhat surprisingly, the body seems to use the reactive oxygen compounds released during exercise as a signal that the body should regulate its insulin sensitivity, so if you're exercising to help keep diabetes in check, taking antioxidants (which destroy them) is actually going to be cancel out those benefits.

As with most studies (particularly anything involving nutrition!), further studies will be necessary before there's a consensus on the specifics.

Unfortunately the NYT's coverage of nutrition lately has been so bad as to make me think of most of the articles as press hits by the pharmaceutical and food industry.

The conclusions from the study are interesting. However, giving people the impression they should cut antioxidants to improve overall health (via insulin regulation effects from exercise) is suboptimal. The antioxidants are rather important long term.

Exercise is critical but not sufficient if you're going to continue eating refined sugars and grains that bring about a need to improve insulin regulation to begin with.

So, to be clear, the prevention for diabetes is: Exercise regularly and remove all refined/processed foods from your diet. Don't cut out antioxidants.

The issue of grains is a really striking example of how people (up to nutrition professionals and medial doctors) engage in group-think when the facts don't fit preconceptions and aren't convenient. As far as I can tell, grains, including corn, whole wheat bred, and rice, are pretty unambiguously bad for health in practically all respects, yet many people cling, with strong emotions, to the belief that they are healthy foods.

> So, to be clear, the prevention for diabetes is: Exercise regularly and remove all refined/processed foods from your diet. Don't cut out antioxidants.

Or, just have a simple operation and cure it for real (type 2 anyway):

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2009/2554683.ht...

Don't panic! Read

"Most Scientific Papers Are Probably Wrong": http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7915

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