Slashdot Mirror


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."

2 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. 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.