Once you do start exercising though, you have to watch out to not overdo it.
I've found that as I get older, what I would've considered moderate exercise 7-10 years ago, now causes bad moods, brain fog, fatigue, general irritability for a day or two after the workout. And getting enough sleep, drinking a lot of water, and making sure to eat right doesn't seem to completely alleviate the problem completely.
I used to have that when I started cycling (after never doing any sports throughout my whole life, not even the required exercises in school) but it was a combination of doing too much too quickly with not having adapted the rest of my behavior to support it (sleeping, eating, drinking). As they say, finding the right balance is golden.
Cannot agree enough. Listen to your body and and make sure to pull back when it tells you to. I like to lift mild weights at night and do mild yoga in the morning (focussing on deep stretches). Helps to keep balance in mind and body.
Both my grandfather's and all their brothers got Alzheimer's and they all had regular exercise routines. My mother's father was even running marathons up until he had Alzheimer's. I'm sure it helps but in the end you can't outrun death.
> Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise.
You don't have to be rich to find time to exercise. For example, I commute 20 minutes by bike to work. I could easily spend 10 minutes driving instead, but by cycling, I get at least 40 minutes of physical activity in every day.
If I wasn't as well off financially, then I would seriously consider selling my car and getting rid of the expenses associated with it and move to full time commuting by bike.
Commuting by bicycle isn't that uncommon. What do you consider to be biking distance to work? I would say about 10 miles one way is a practical maximum given the amount of time one has for a commute.
N=81, including the cohort of cognitively normal subjects, and those with dementia.
Mounting evidence showed the self-reported levels of physical activity are positively associated with white matter (WM) integrity and cognitive performance in normal adults and patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI)...
However, the objective measure of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) was not used in these studies.
Why even bother? At what point does the methodology of a study begin to so closely resemble some guy on a rocking chair saying “ahh reckon,” that we don’t call it science?
On HN, could you please not post this sort of shallow, predictable dismissal of other people's work?
What we're getting on an internet forum is not informed professional critique of sample sizes, but a clichéd reflex that is well past its best-before date.
You don't necessarily need a massive sample size to make a solid conclusion, depending on the effect size. You can use statistics to control your error rates.
Now that was interesting, and thought provoking. While I don’t know enough about the real standards of paranormal researchers, and so can’t really judge the validity of all the assumptions presented, it passes the sniff test. Besides, given the prevalence of things like p-hacking in the mainstream, maybe it doesn’t matter.
It amazes me how rare it is for people to exercise.
Entering my 30s, a somewhat regular exercise routine is something I expect in the people I date.
Yet some of those people reject the idea that it's something they should do at all. They just don't like it the same way a kid doesn't like vegetables, as if that's an option. It blew my mind the first dozen times I'd heard someone say that they just aren't interested in it.
Totally agree. One thing I am noticing that a lot of people don't respect light exercise. Either you have to do something extreme like Crossfit or you may as well do nothing. It's like most photos of yoga people are super fit, skinny people in their twenties so a lot of people are scared to even start.
It's a huge downside of the auto-dominated design of most American cities. Excercise becomes a lot easier when you can incorporate it by riding a bike to work, the park, or with friends, or walking to get groceries or do errands around your neighborhood.
When you combine bike and pedestrian hostile cities with the extreme fitness image many have, which requires drives to the gym, excercise becomes that much more difficult to achieve daily.
Of the people I know who stayed in good cardiovascular shape as they've aged, many are transportation cyclists, as I am. This is not a coincidence.
Some people I've talked to seem to think exercising as much as I do requires superhuman willpower. The opposite is true in this case. It's much easier to get exercise if it's an unavoidable part of your day. I don't own a car, so cycling just happens on its own. If I need a car or truck I can easily rent one. Even in the bike-hostile US one can plan to make this lifestyle possible.
I also cycle to work and in addition to being good exercise, you also get to experience some fun wizzy speed, wind in your hair, and fresh air. I arrive at work energized and cheerful, even if it's cold or rainy out. If I commute to work, packed into stuffy metal tubes with a bunch of cranky phone readers, I'm cranky and tired myself by the time I'm there.
The best about bike commuting is that you get a connection to the weather and and the air around you. I have to commute by car now and I feel like I am losing touch with my environment.
This is very true. My light day workouts consist of fun stuff that are mostly sports related (hockey) like stick-handling, passing the puck around and shooting on a net with real pucks (sets of 10-15 shots rapid-fire really burn your arms and it's super fun). I have a pretty elaborate off-ice workout area setup in my basement that doubles as a great VR space.
After that I play a few VR games that are full body/active type stuff (room-scale). For example, Space Pirate Trainer is my current jam; I currently hold the #3 spot on the world leader board and my games of late tend to take around 45m from level 1 to 70+. My heart-rate btw routinely hits around 130-140 toward the end of one of those game.
Extreme stuff is awesome too if you are trying to maintain a high level of fitness for specific needs but most people can get by with way less and have pretty excellent results in day-to-day wellness. Tabata, burpees, pull-ups all have their place but even those you can do much less frequently than most think and benefit hugely.
Most people sit around and do nothing all day and they have to make up for it by exercising. It's much easier to do this when you are invested in it and have a routine, which in turn is easier to maintain if it is some sort of obsession.
Indeed. I felt into this trap as well. I had to run 2 marathons before I realized it was too much for me, and stepped down to only running for the exercice.
If you always overdo it, it will not stick. And continuity is the most important part.
And unfortunately that results in people pushing themselves too much, too suddenly, injuring themselves (many times permanently) which means now they cannot even do light exercise. I would ban all marketing around hard exercising, it's damaging and unhealthy but I know that won't necessarily fix the issue as it seems to be some kind of group pressure problem, where people already engaged in doing a lot of physical exercise push newcomers to do the same, completely irresponsible.
In American culture, it's considered basic practice for most people to keep their body clean and teeth in good repair. A subset of people keep their bodies exercised and fit. An much smaller subset have a mental hygiene practice such as mindfulness or introspection of some sort. We are an unhealthy people in general, which leads to many mental and physical health issues, a war like stance, and school shootings.
Your thinking of the hierarchy of basic hygiene -> exercise -> mindfulness is exactly how I started thinking about my daily life about 3-4 months ago. I am not 100% there yet but I started by making sure by never skipping brushing even if I'm running late to work, then moved to flossing more often. Around the winter holidays I started walking more often (30+ mins), now I do it every day and then just last week I started practicing mindfulness by meditating and I saw it as the last step toward understanding my body more. Of course, I could be doing these with more rigor and more time but I think soon I'll see them as non-negotiables for everyday living. To me, it's a surprise that I went for a long time without thinking exercise is what my body needs just as much as I need calories and sleep.
> To me, it's a surprise that I went for a long time without thinking
Boy, me too!
I think most of my days fall into several categories: 1. hygiene: exercising, flossing, shaving, making my bed, eating, etc 2. spirituality: something like mindfulness, not meditation though, but rather just looking at the evening sky more often or being acutely aware of this moment and the next, of the very food I am eating, or not interpreting every experience I experience and just allowing this moment to be, etc 3. simplifying: decluttering, eliminating ideas or things that I become aware of and come across that I find aren't capital-t true or that I don't need, internally or externally 4. play: interests, going to class, studying, learning, working, hanging out with friends, sitting in traffic, paying the bills, swimming in the ocean, etc
I think introspection without action is quite common in America. Laziness, procrastination, smoking, being fat, etc. are all too easy here. I feel like we are too comfortable as consumers.
Having active hobbies is key. Many places and climates aren't suited to that though. Dragging yourself to a gym ~every day for years quickly becomes tiresome. People turn to group ex and personal trainers to get through the mental boredom but that's too expensive for many to afford.
Great strategy when you're younger and older, but doesn't really help during the years where you're raising young kids. Time is limited and it's easy to forget yourself when caring for others.
Sure, but gyms have extremely low stimulus and lifting weights really has no short term goal outside of the activity itself (compared to winning a basketball game, for example)
If you hate it, then you hate it, although there are things you can try to make it better. I used to hate running on treadmills, until I found that I don't mind it if I listen to techno music with a tempo matching my gait. The funny thing about this is, I can't stand techno at any other time.
I think one of the keys to exercising regularly is finding "lifehacks" like this that reduce the misery.
If you didn't start doing it younger, it's a tough habit to get into. I just started exercising twice a week (started in December). It's very hard starting off.
The upside is that once you turn it into a habit and unconsciously, as well as consciously, link it to your health and general well being, you'll be wanting to do it regularly, feeling bad when you don't for some period of time.
I was super-active until I had ankle problems at 19: football three to four times a week over winter, basketball all summer almost every day, running, and so on. I kept up in my 20s by walking a lot and the semi-periodic footie or basketball game with colleagues, until about 28.
Then I bought a car and had kids, and my body exploded. A lot of athletes end up pretty big once they retire.
“Starting young” for regular exercise is fundamentally meaningless, imho. It’s much more important to find ways to fit regular exercise in everyday routines that adults with commitments can stick to without having to spend mental energy on it. Whoever can come up with a simple way for a 30-40-yo to keep fit without having to think about it is going to be a bazillionaire. Walking is a good start, but the combination of car-friendly cities, the need to care for minors, and a society constantly running at breakneck speed, makes it an unrealistic choice for most.
> Yet some of those people reject the idea that it's something they should do at all.
Maybe they are right. Life expectancy in Europe is about 80 years old. I may be wrong but I suspect most people who are 80 years old now never exercised. They probably were physically active but didn't exercise in the modern sense of the term.
If you are reasonably active in your daily life and eat healthy food, I'm not sure exercising is such a necessity.
What you're missing from this observation is that exercise doesn't extend one's lifetime that much, but just improves the general quality of life, meaning that 80-year olds that are/were active in moderation now enjoy a bit better QOL [1].
I've Cardiogram installed on my iPhone and Apple Watch.
In the app there's a statistics page and if what it says there I think many of the other users of Cardiogram surely must lie on their deathbed or are severely sick. :-(
For example, on a slow weekend where I don't even leave the house I still get numbers that my 5000 steps inside my apartment are "higher than 83%" of the other users. Likewise with pulse and other metrics.
The thought of so many people moving so much less and probably eat a lot worse than I do makes me really worried. Will the human body adapt in time or will this turn into an almost plague level of dying soon?
It’s surprising to you that people don’t voluntarily subject themselves to regular self-torture?
Taking pride and pleasure in one’s ability to endure pain is certainly a trait that exists, but not a universal one. It would very surprising for someone who does not share this affinity to engage in regular, focused, deliberate practice at doing work whose sole purpose is its vigorous unpleasantness.
Of course there are people who have pleasant and unchallenging movement as part of their daily life (I walk and bike to work on flat ground, for example) but that is a far cry from going to the gym for a serious exercise routine.
It's not torture, it's a challenge. If a person doesn't learn to love overcoming challenges, they're always going to be mediocre. There's no getting around that.
Our brain is designed to prioritized comfort, there is nothing crazy about it. In a society decreasing material constraints and increasing opportunities to be in ones comfort zone, you will see it more and more.
The problem is that most of the fulfilling things in life exist outside of our comfort zone. Hence we have a society full of comfortable unhappy people.
It's ironic, given that the previous generations were unhappy because of the lack of comfort.
I'm 23, I've been exercising regularly since I was 18 and I cannot imagine life without a 20 min run and some weight training daily.
I workout for the high it gives me, it's the most sustainable form of high for weekdays. The benefits cannot even be counted if one exercises carefully and consistently; society should embrace it and make it a daily ritual like brushing teeth.
Exercise is important, but your comment is so full of smug "look why can't everyone be as awesome as me" that it really turned me off to any point you were trying to make.
Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise. Some people have to work two jobs just to pay rent. Some people have children that take up all of their time, we're not all brought up in nurturing wealthy homes with supportive parents making sure we learn all the things we should.
People can't find a moment to have a minute of rest in their lives, can't even afford healthy food and here you are being condescending about what is wrong with all these other people you don't know a thing about.
You have a good point, but you also crossed into personal attack, and broke the site guideline which asks "please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." This leads to crummy threads, so would you please not do that here? Regardless of how smug another commenter may be, or seem.
Have any studies backup any of your claims that people need to be rich to have time to exercise? Here's a study about TV consumption based on income level.
I bet if you looked for studies on income level and hours worked a week its correlated. Ask a CEO or senior executive how many hours they work a week i bet its 80+.
As for healthy food. Its really easy to eat healthy without spending a ton. Chicken breast is frequently $4 to $5 a pound which is enough to feed two meals. Vegetables are really cheap. How much is a head of lettuce? $1.50 to $2.00? Lentils and whole grains don't cost much. And easiest way to eat healthy, limit your consumption which is cheaper than over consumption.
I work two jobs. I work 60 hours a week. I still find time to go to the gym 6 hours a week and walk my dog 6 hours a week. You know how I do it? I don't binge watch Netflix. In fact I don't watch any TV at all. I make exercise a priority.
I'm not sure there is anyone who "can't find a moment to have a minute of rest in their lives". The busiest people I know are also some of the healthiest. Not having time is a poor excuse at best. The vast majority of those in poverty who "can't afford healthy food" do not work, or do not work more than 20-30 hours a week. They have ample time to exercise. (Body weight exercise is free, I might add - as is walking.)
>Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise
For full-time wage earners, there's actually a slightly negative correlation between wages and leisure time - people who earn more money have less free time. There has been a major long-term trend towards greater leisure time across all socioeconomic groups. Unemployed and retired people are not significantly more likely to exercise than working people, despite their obviously greater amount of leisure time.
The richest American households only eat 0.6 more servings of fruit and vegetables per day than the poorest. The overall average intake was 4.76 servings, so this difference in intake is clinically insignificant. Education level was more strongly correlated with fruit and vegetable intake than income, but differences within socioeconomic groups are far more significant than differences between them.
>Not everyone is rich enough to have the time to exercise.
5 minutes is sufficient if you have good pain tolerance, and pain tolerance can be trained. There's a great deal of evidence that high-intensity interval training is effective for improving cardiovascular fitness.
Diet is admittedly more difficult, but even if you can't eat healthy food you can still benefit from exercise.
"Surprisingly few, it seems. According to a new review of studies related to running and health, jogging for as few as five or six miles per week could substantially improve someone’s health."
That's about an hour of running for most able bodied adults who have been making it a habit for three or four months. If you can't budget an hour a week for exercise, you're booking yourself too tight.
>Yet some of those people reject the idea that it's something they should do at all. They just don't like it the same way a kid doesn't like vegetables
How about this part, where you compare anyone who doesn't exercise to a spoiled child?
Failing to exercise is an area where I think the victim/excuse mentality kinda falls to pieces. Unless you are just entirely ignorant that it's a concern, it is something that anyone can do. Do some yoga/pushups/sit-ups every morning (5-10mins) and then go for a short walk on your lunch-break. There is no way someone cannot do that unless they just 'don't want to'. It is free, takes almost no time, and can be as simple as walking around for 15 minutes.
I don't think it is smug to challenge people to take the smallest, tiniest, bare minimum amount of personal responsibility.
It is easy to think that everybody can carve out even a small 5-10m for exercise, but that thought fails to consider people that have had or do have chronic pain or serious injuries.
It is incredibly hard to go from zero to minimal exercise, especially when even basic exercises seem to flare up old injuries. Where do you start? A poorly done crunch might throw out your back again -- do you risk it? Ten push ups might flare up your old tendonosis, should you do any? Your knees are weak from lack of exercise for years, and now 20 free weight squats makes your knees ache the next day -- is this good pain, or will the problem get worse as you do more?
Even without pain, it isn't hard to imagine people being too busy for _most_ of their day to find the motivation to exercise for a simple 10 minutes. Your day might start with a long, early commute to a tedious job. After a long commute back home, it may be hard to say "well, time to strain my body!" That is mentally tough, especially so if you have to prepare dinner, interact with kids, answer late night emails, etc.
I don't scoff at people who fail to exercise. I feel bad for what is going on or had happened in their life that drains them of the motivation or ability to exercise.
For most Americans, they can easily carve out 1 hour of TV a day. There's really no excuse for anyone between the ages of 10 and 60 to walk 15 minutes a day. Obviously there are outliers, as you said, disability issues, health problems etc.
But the vast majority of Americans eat way more than they should and don't give it a second thought. For most of America it's a cultural issue, not a physical or practical problem.
> Where do you start? A poorly done crunch might throw out your back again -- do you risk it? Ten push ups might flare up your old tendonosis, should you do any? Your knees are weak from lack of exercise for years, and now 20 free weight squats makes your knees ache the next day -- is this good pain, or will the problem get worse as you do more?
So scale it down to something you can do. No shame in that.
> I don't scoff at people who fail to exercise. I feel bad for what is going on or had happened in their life that drains them of the motivation or ability to exercise.
Pretty sure for most of the people in my socio-economic bracket it's just laziness. I know they have money, I know they have time to binge on Netflix, I know they have similar jobs to mine. And yet so many people I know from work fail to exercise.
This may be true for a lot of situations, however there could be all kinds of factors that are not considered, so I would caution you not to be too absolutist about this thinking.
I for one would very much like to exercise much more, and had in the past invested a fair amount of money and time into it. I enjoyed it immensely most of the time, even without the other benefits mentioned in the article.
However I rarely exercise now, and since I lost health insurance some years ago I feel the financial risk too great. Even basic yoga / pushups could lead to expensive treatment for anti-hemophilia factor treatment if it was needed.
I see many other people have more serious issues with mental and emotional health which take priority over exercise and growth too.
It's easy to armchair quarterback and say "oh that persons is lazy watching tv, drinking or smoking" for example, and not realize that they are actually suffering greatly and are prioritizing working, paying bills, and getting a small amount of comfort in doing one thing that another may think is just lazy, is actually a sad form of self medication for issues that perhaps could be treated better if they had access to better care.
Of course this is not an excuse for all who don't, just another way of seeing some things that I have learned over the years, not everything is always the way it seems to us and others do not always have the same things stopping them as we do.
@nradov - yes you are right! I promote knowledge of this to people when I can. Just doing some now again can have a similar effect as prozac and similar meds as far as percentage of people helped from what I understand.
I think it helps for many different reasons too, some physical, some just seeing the world differently.
My point with statement above was just not to be a blanket absolutist.
There was a time in my life when I looked at my obese friends and wondered why they did not get that X calories - X movement = whatever.
I learned later in life that sometimes it's not so simple, whether it's genes, or types of food that are different, the way they were raised, emotional issues that were not treated, medications for one thing that caused another... there are so many things I do not know just by looking at someone. The same with them looking at me.
As cruel as it might seem, you need to prioritize yourself when looking for a relationship and if 'exercises' is a useful heuristic to you when choosing who to date so be it - the other person's concerns, excuses and reasons are not your problem.
@ACow - I'm assuming you don't know what it costs to treat a bruise / internal bleed when you have hemophilia factor 8 deficiency with no health insurance.
believe me, I want to exercise like I used to. There were times in an Aikido dojo where the exercise was so good that I felt better than after sex.
Right now I stand consciously for times, and I got on walks on occasion. However the past 30 days I have had immense pain from my lower back to my left knee, which at this point I am pretty sure is an untreated bleeding in my left gluteous, which makes sitting in most positions difficult.
I do some slow tai chi on occasion, but have to be careful not to over extend and cause injury. This is great, but it certainly doesn't burn the calories and get blood flowing like other things I could be doing, at least not the way I do the tai chi steps at home. I know there are more vigorous ways to engage in it, it's me that is limiting the type, not the available / advanced tai chi options.
So yes, I stopped most vigorous exercises soon after I lost health insurance, the financial risk is indeed too great.
"not accounting for the health effects and treatments you're going to need because you stopped exercising?"
- It would be an interesting comparison. Unfortunately I can not afford either, so I guess it's a matter of try to play safer for now so I can prolong the time between now and then.
I spent a little over 2 years incarcerated. Inside I learned the ultimate truth of exercise. In my institution there were no weights or exercise machines. Inmates would fill trash bags with water and use for weights. The point being, money should not be an excuse for lack of exercise. People that tried were able to stay in really good shape.
Another problem is the mentality of always being smart. Being smart almost always mean achieving the same thing with less and less effort.
But for some things being smart is being dumb. Why always take the shortest route to minimize walking? Why go over the lawn instead of around when walking is good for you and only <30 seconds will be saved? Is it smart when you'll likely end up overweight, unhappy and with cardiac problems in the next 20 years?
And what about your discipline, patience and character in the long run?
Doing exercise(lifting in my case) makes you realize your limits and over time you realize that being consistent can really help you change yourself.
Personal responsibility for what? One's own choices? I choose not to exercise. I've tried it plenty of times at the nagging of busybodies like you. I don't like it, and I don't want to do it. Why do YOU care about MY choice in this matter?
You're upset at a straw man. The OP was condemning the "I would exercise, but I just can't because XYZ" attitude, not "I choose not to".
There are precious few people who can't actually carve out time to exercise. Not wanting to is a different matter - but not wanting to is a choice you make, rather than a circumstance you're forced into.
Technically you're substituting that time into the labor of food preparation yourself, not avoiding it.
Additionally, I'm not convinced that waiting in line at lunch is not itself a niche behaviour. I'm guessing it must be a US tech/mega Corp thing, is it like a children's tuck shop or school canteen or something? I do remember I did some work experience when I was younger with some NASA guys out at tidbinbilla, and they had like a work canteen...which I found really weird and put it down to "an American thing". Is that what you mean?
Because I'm still struggling to comprehend what it involves...a line for what exactly? A fridge? Shops? Seats?
Additionally again, at least here, with sub $8 AUD lunches available, the marginal gain of buying ingredients and preparing one's own is getting less and less.
And you can then sub off that preparation time into doing something like exercising. Even if it's simple as going for walks while eating your lunch for most professionals...
Good observation it could be trading one time sink for another.
That said, prep time is the most time consuming, but only takes about 10 mins. for me. Cooking, while linearly can take a lot if time, doesn't because I'm doing other things while the cooking is happening.
The line thing can be many things like walking to a restaurant/food service, getting seated, ordering, waiting, eating. Or walking up to a food truck, ordering waiting. Going to a sandwich shop ordering, waiting. Going to a supermarket, deciding, ordering waiting checking out.
On site food service is the quickest of course, but not all techs or star-ups do or have that.
That's BS. I'm one of those people, and recently have taken up Crossfit. I wake up 2 hours earlier, and it sucks, but I'm doing it. Other people can do it too.
Number one excuse for not doing exercise/physical activity is lack of time. Work jobs that include PA. Do activities with the kids that involve PA. Find 10-20 mins a few times a week for vigorous. Not that hard, no excuse, and their comment was not smug whatsoever.
Part of caring for a family is caring for yourself.
Many people take the jobs they're lucky to find. They're lucky they have a job at all, or two if that's what they need. You should go take a walk down a not so nice street and let all the people you see there know how much more they should be exercising.
It's actually not that difficult to find ways to move your body. Go for walks (to work, school, store, or just orbit your neighborhood). If you have kids, drag them out too. Childhood obesity is a problem now, don't let your mistake rub off on your kids!
The time you're spending on this thread could have been spent going for a jog, or searching for a more preferable job. Exercise is free in a vast amount of modes. Time may be scarce, but some effort can allow for the minimal time to maintain or improve health. No excuses.
I find some of what you say agreeable but the victimization of yourself or those you are speaking about is intolerable for this topic.
Your comment reads like a huge cope to yourself, case in point, the original comment was about being interested in exercise at all, not about exercising like an athlete.
On HN it doesn't count as a dupe if the story hasn't had significant attention yet, and the convention is to only link to threads that got some comments. Otherwise people click, feel shortchanged, and get ornery.
Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have a misconception of what "fitness" means in the first place. They think it means signing up for expensive and unnecessary gym programs and drinking twice your weight in protein.
In reality you can do it from anywhere, it's very simple, and there's no excuse besides physical disability or laziness. I work 12 hours everyday and sometimes 16, and yet ever since taking on this job where I sit in front of a computer for the entirety of that shift, I'm in better shape then ever. That's because I've developed a consistent routine of working out.
I don't have a schedule or use an app or anything, I just do push-ups when I get home and sometimes when I'm at work too. Instead of using the elevator, I take the stairs. It's just about doing something regularly. For bonus points, get good sleep and eat better.
Very personal anecdote on my part but I hate reading "not everyone has time to workout." How much time do you need to do 10 push ups if nothing else?
Title: "Running helps brain stave off effects of chronic stress Exercise protects vital memory and learning functions"
It's a study in mice but fascinating results IMHO.