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Not Exercising Worse For Your Health Than Smoking, Diabetes and Heart Disease, Study Reveals (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: We've all heard exercise helps you live longer. But a new study [published in the journal JAMA Network Open] goes one step further, finding that a sedentary lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease. Researchers retrospectively studied 122,007 patients who underwent exercise treadmill testing at Cleveland Clinic between January 1, 1991 and December 31, 2014 to measure all-cause mortality relating to the benefits of exercise and fitness. Those with the lowest exercise rate accounted for 12% of the participants. Dr. Wael Jaber, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic and senior author of the study, said the other big revelation from the research is that fitness leads to longer life, with no limit to the benefit of aerobic exercise. Researchers have always been concerned that "ultra" exercisers might be at a higher risk of death, but the study found that not to be the case. "There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk," he said. "We can see from the study that the ultra-fit still have lower mortality."
I had high blood pressure, borderline blood sugar levels, anxiety, and a big belly.
I started an evening exercise routine, lost 30 lbs. Blood pressure is perfect, blood sugar normal, anxiety gone, and my pants fit again.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
What a waste that would have been. I am, The Marlboro Man. Only, not dead from COPD. Yet.
Oh.
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Just getting off your ass and talking a 30-minute brisk walk every day is enough, it's the still-sitting and passivity that is dangerous.
I've thought about quitting smoking, but I always figured my lack of exercise would kill me long before the smoking did. Now I have scientific proof that my theory was sound! Thank you, JAMA, for setting my mind at ease!
It is a patient's infarction or heart attack.
Seriously ... what if I don't *want* to have a long life? There are a lot of old people out there who are bored, lonely, and too healthy to have any hope of dying anytime soon. That's a worse fate than having a decent life and then dying before it starts to suck. I'm 47 now, and everything is fantastic -- family, career, home, etc. Ideally, I would like to die at 52, but I'd like to have unlimited 5-year extensions available. I don't want to find myself sitting around at 80 with nothing to do and wishing I was dead. I'd rather *be* dead.
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If you Gray Beards could stop building so much new stuff then I wouldn't need to study all the time!
The world is an infinitely interesting place that you and I will never have any idea of understanding a fraction of it. If you're bored, that's your problem. Pick something to do and quit being such a pussy.
I don't respond to AC's.
But you know what.
After ten hours at a desk all day I just stopped caring because all the other happy robot people were so insulting by smiling at me and saying why don't you just run?
I sleep. I work. I wait to go to work.
Ain't that hateful.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
"There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk,"
Spoken like a true statistician. However, the statement is provably false. Rhabdomyolysis in the Crossfit community is a thing. There are levels of exercise that expose you to risk, however extreme they might be. The fact that putting yourself into a "group" that is statistically healthier does not mean you are risk-free. That statement just strikes me as completely moronic, though I didn't RTFA so maybe he qualified it at some point, I don't know.
This is not an argument against fitness. I absolutely believe in being fit and it's obvious that being fit improves and extends life, in general. But to make a blanket statement like ""There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk" is just naïve or lazy.
one day. But it's not usually like that. You'll feel the negative health affects (and the included pain) long before you're dead. Nobody likes hearing granpa complain about his aches and pains though so you don't hear much about it.
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Nicotine creates a negative feedback loop. It suppresses thyroid function, which causes depressions and a general feeling of malaise, along with the expected weight gain.
If you give up nicotine you'll find that life overall become much more enjoyable. Get frequent blood tests, including free T3 and free T4 levels. If not already in the middle of the normal range, get them there. Stop smoking first, they might get there on their own. TSH is next to worthless - personal issue, long back story.
Get a puppy (and hardwood floors, a carpet cleaner, etc...). Take puppy for walks daily. Cute, friendly puppies, even friendly old dogs at dog parks, are chick magnets. Puppies, sunshine and chicks are really, really good for one's outlook on life, at any age.
30 minutes per day of walking a dog and throwing a tennis ball/playing fetch is all the exercise you need. If you want 6-pack abs and the ability to do 20 chin-ups, a wee bit more discipline may be needed, but that level of exercise is just narcissism, or... something :)
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Stop'a chasing the goats, 'eh?
I quit smoking, stopped eating junk food, didn't drink and gave up on promiscuous sex.
Worst 15minutes of my life.
"There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk,"
Tell that to my knees
Lots of people I know my age when I was young are now big and fat. Some nearly unrecognizably so. Most look sick and gross. A few haven't changed much and look very similar to what they did years ago.
I understand laziness and lack of discipline yet I never expected so many to neglect their own health to such a degree. No wonder why health insurance is so goddamn expensive.
There is certainly an upper limit on exercise. People involved with best outcomes in villages aging survey for example were somewhat active and didn't eat total shit. They were normal people not health nuts. Beyond a certain threshold of reasonable discipline the luck of the draw / genetics dominates outcomes.
The hyper fit are prone to rapidly falling apart. Look at what former Olympians look like just a few years later and rampant aging/arterial hardening that occurs when you take exercise too far.
Nothing like recompiling your distro while a whore sucks your cock.
And then you go check funding for the study, and the interest of the team and you'll see a big chain of fitness stores funded it.. no limit to fitness? BS as it also puts a strain on your system. And we've seen more than enough unhealthy living people outlive healthy living people..
Has done wonders for me...I can go longer, and not worry about not making it back home :)
Got a real good deal on amazon with a chinese corny name (obv) e-bike for $700 and now I go cycling like a mofo.
This study does not prove what it purports to prove. Namely, that people who are currently sedentary will live longer and be healthier if they change their habits to get more exercise.
In order to show that, you would need to recruit sedentary people, then create an experimental group and a control group, and randomly assign participants to one group or the other. The control group would simply be monitored. The experimental group would receive an intervention that (ideally) caused them to exercise more. All participants would be tracked until death and then you could see whether the intervention was successful.
The flaw in the current study is the assumption that sedentary habits are the CAUSE of high mortality. But it may simply be that some underlying trait (such as diet or a metabolic disorder) is responsible for both the sedentary habit AND the higher mortality. In other words, maybe healthy people are more likely to go exercise in the first place, because they have more energy and feel good.
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Genetics affects things, of course, but that is not the #1 variable -- not by a long shot. Quoting genetics is also a convenient way of absolving personal responsibility.
It's simple: Don't eat a shit ton of shit, and do exercise, both aerobic and weights... make this the rule, not the exception.
*Typing this over a bacon cheeseburger and salad... but I run 3 times/week and do weights once/wk*
Seriously ... what if I don't *want* to have a long life?
You still want to be totally healthy while you are living it, you can always take the exit anytime you like if you truly feel that way... you don't have to get too old before you start to suffer the effects of lack of exercise.
But if you are in great shape I don't see how it is possible to be bored and lonely when you are old. There are countless places you could go, countless groups to join, countless experiences to have. As long as you are healthy you have so much control over your life, it's only when health goes downhill that so many doors shut and your options are limited - even when you are young.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
a sedentary lifestyle is worse for your health than smoking, diabetes and heart disease.
What I need is a list of options. How to balance the things I like with the things that will prolong my life to a reasonable extent (so I can continue enjoying myself).
While it might be nice to live to a grand old age, for most people their ability to be happy in old age is limited by available cash, friends / relatives who still survive (I.e. a support network) and the physical and mental faculties to enable independent thought and movement.
Another important point, not mentioned, is that of diminishing returns, At what point does the extra time required for exercise, including preparation, travel, showering, laundry, etc. take up more of a person's life than it is likely to extend it by? If someone spends an hour at the gym, 4 days a week (plus another hour for travelling, showering, etc) that is 400 hours a year. That is hours taken not from your *life* but from your quality time: after sleeping, chores, work, commuting, etc. That could easily be 25% of all your discretionary leisure time. So over 40 years of working, that amount of exercise would need to extend your life by an additional 10 years just to make up for the "lost" quality time you spent doing it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Good, but will it kill me quicker?
I was a smoker who biked 100 miles a week, ran 20, and got a heart attack at the tail end of a 45 mile bike ride. Needless to say, I quit smoking.
I don't have time to google right now but if one google around you will find multiple bmj studies which shows that if one start a diet *whichever* (especially diet like fat only or protein only no carbo or calory restriction) the body mechanism adapt quickly to consume the least number of calory possible and go back to the previous metabolism once the restriction is removed. Without exercize during diet to consume calory more, diet does nothing really.
You smoke therefore you stink.
He doesn't smoke so all he needs to do is wash and he doesn't stink.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
There is no level of exercise or fitness that exposes you to risk
Some years ago, not long after I got married, my mother in law observed that I wasn't particularly athletic unlike my wifes' cousin who was a sprinter, hoped for olympic medals etc.
I said that while I would not win prizes for speed, I looked forward to a healthier life. She was very surprised that I really meant it.
Over the following years, I did not have back problems, glandular fever and all the other things my wifes cousin did get. She may have been able to run 200m in far less time than I would take to do 100 but I didn't/don't care. I wasn't sick.
Will I live as long as her? I don't know but my unfashionable BMI has not limited my life in the same way that medically preferred ones do. I see people with, allegedly, healthy BMIs of 19-20 who are not healthy because of it.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Personally I'd rather not exercise than smoke and have diabetes and heart disease whatever the doctors say.
According to another study, getting up and walking for 10-15 minutes every 1.5-2.0 hours is healthier than a single concentrated 2-6 hours of aerobic exercise. It's not a matter of exercising, it's a matter of regularly moving.
I ride a bicycle more than 200 miles a week during the summer and now that it is becoming winter going to attempt at least 150 miles a week until spring... https://www.strava.com/athlete...
So with this news, I'm going to start smoking and triple up on my sugar and sodium intake.
This is the best news I've heard all year!
I believe that exercise is very good BUT I want to point out that my (quick) skim of the study indicates that this is not a controlled study, in the sense of "participant A was told to exercise and participant B was told not to". So unless I missed the part where they did that, this is a correlation... and it's entirely easy to construct a theory where people who are going to die find it harder to get motivated to exercise... effectively reversing the cause/effect relationship that would otherwise be really useful.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
They always say everything i do is gonna kill me, it never works...
People have been telling me for 63 years now that smoking and lack of exercise will kill me. You simply cannot rely on these assertions.