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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."

9 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. It's your fault by DogDude · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  2. Well yeah... by Dartz-IRL · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.
  3. "no leve" that exposes you to risk, lol please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "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.

  4. Re:Worked for me by arth1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Weight loss (which mostly comes from calorie restriction and not exercise, however exercise is great for many other things)

    I hear this a lot, and it's false. People look for easy solutions and excuses, and it's a heck of a lot easier to do a diet than change your lifestyle, and this is an excuse for doing just that. But it's not true.
    Calorific deficit is what causes weight loss.
    If you do it through diet, chances are you lose both fat and muscle, and the deficit cannot be all that large or you'll get other deficiency problems. And at any rate, you cannot eat less than zero.
    If you do it through exercise, you'll only lose fat, not muscle, and the deficit can be as high as you push it.

    The reason I can state with certainty that you can lose weight (and more importantly, fat) through exercise and not calorie restriction is that I did it. It was simple maths: I burned around 1500 kcal a day if doing nothing, and no safe diet would be under 1000 kcal a day (and even that's pushing it). So that would be a 500 kcal deficit per day. But if I started exercising, burning 3000 kcal a day, without changing my calorie intake, that would be a 1500 kcal deficit per day.
    The path was clear, and it worked beautifully.

    The main problem was all the times people asked what diet I was on, and how they wouldn't believe me when I told them "none", because of the old wives' tale that weight loss starts in the kitchen and is 80% diet. It's a bloody lie that people use as an excuse for not getting off the couch.

    Now I am lean and no longer lose weight, but I continue exercising and simply eat more to keep my weight.

  5. Re:What if I don't WANT to have a long life? by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just don't run up my insurance premiums with your self-destructive habits, ok?

    If he dies young, he probably won't. The health insurance payout per person per year grows exponentially with age, and your premium is high chiefly because of those who live long disease-ridden lives and spend years at nursing facilities.

    I think every person who retires should be given a Dodge Demon and a case of Scotch, paid for by the health insurance company. It would be cheaper.

  6. Re:Worked for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A pack of crackers I just checked has 480 kcal per 100 gram. 100 grams of crackers is nothing, they can be eaten within 5 minutes in front of TV without even noticing. Good luck burning it in 5 minutes.

    Burning 3000 kcal per day is relatively difficult. It takes time and effort. Eating 3000 kcal is very easy. It is "rewarding", eating makes us feel good due to evolutionary reasons. It is not even expensive. Exercises provide significant benefits but to claim that they make diet unnecessary is obviously dumb.

  7. Re:Check funding by unimacs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Did you really check the funding? I saw the study was done by the Cleveland Clinic which is pretty well respected but it wasn't apparent what the funding source was.

    The fitter your body, the better it is able to handle strain on your system. That level of fitness is improved by exercise (straining your system), but in degrees. Equally important to improving fitness are adequate rest and recovery along with proper nutrition.

    There is of course such a thing as over training which will decrease your fitness. The study didn't measure how much people exercised. It measured how fit they were. The fitter people were, the longer they lived and there did not seem to be a point at which improved fitness didn't improve their chances at a longer life.

    The study didn't say that there was no upper limit on how fit a person could be. My guess is that there's a certain level of fitness a person can achieve beyond which it becomes very difficult to become any fitter.

  8. Re:Worked for me by nightfire-unique · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know you're trying to help .. but you're exaggerating.

    You did not burn an average of 1,500 calories per day through exercise for any significant period of time. That's two hours - every single day - of hard, olympic level exercise.

    Mild calorie restriction, combined with light to moderate exercise is the correct way to lose weight, as medically observed and documented worldwide. There's really no actual debate about this one.

    What's mild?

    Average healthy person should seek to reduce their intake an average of 250-500 calories below their BMR, and exercise 250-500 calories per day.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
  9. Re:Worked for me by nightfire-unique · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sorry - that may have sounded too accusatory.

    Remember that: the calorie readout on gym machines is fake (and generally includes your BMR). Averages include rest days. People always underestimate how much they eat, and overestimate how much they burn.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC