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A lot of people in the comments are expressing curiosity about "ideal" amounts of exercise to avoid these sorts of problems.
I have a real-life friend whose hobby is studying this stuff. His recommendations boil down to:
- 1/week 20 minutes HIIT: 5 minutes warmup, 3x(2 minutes high intensity + 3 minutes low intensity) blocks.
- 1/week strength training focused on large muscle groups.
- 12,000 steps per day walking (HIIT excluded).
According to his reading of the literature, this gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of all-cause mortality avoidance. Most of the studies in this area are correlational, not randomized controlled trials, so it's hard to be sure. But I can vouch for his diligence in trying to get to the bottom of this. I've been following his program since January with reasonably good results over my already-active baseline.
His website is https://www.unaging.com/, and honestly it's a bit hard to recommend because he's definitely playing the SEO game: the articles are often repetitive of each other and full of filler. And the CMS seems janky. (I would tell you to find his older articles before he started optimizing for SEO, but, it seems like the CMS reset all article dates to today.) But, if you have patience, it might be worthwhile.
Isn't 12k steps like 6 miles? I could plausibly jog that much, but to walk it every day seems like a huge time commitment.
The manual for a human body says several hours of exercise per day.
Children try to follow it, but it's being made hard for them, and by the time you're an adult most have learned to forget the natural instincts for movement and how much fun you can have doing physical exercise.
There's no such thing as "ideal". From what I understand from the research, more fitness is correlated with better health outcomes, even up to advanced to elite level.
I recommend trying out a number of different exercise modalities and schedules and seeing what you enjoy, what makes you feel the best, and what fits into your life.
Here is a study that tries to answer that question: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40279-024-02120-2
A good summary: https://bannister.coach/mitochondria-and-exercise-how-differ...
Quoting the conclusion:
> In this systematic review and meta-regression covering ~ 50 years of research data, we demonstrate that the magnitude of change in mitochondrial content, capillarization, and VO2 max to exercise training is largely determined by the initial fitness level. The ability to adapt to exercise training is maintained throughout life irrespective of sex and presence of disease. Larger training volumes (higher training frequency per week and larger number of training weeks) and higher training intensities (per hour of training, SIT > HIT > ET) are associated with greater increases in mitochondrial content and VO2 max. Therefore, training load (volume x intensity) is a robust predictor of changes in mitochondrial content and VO2 max. Increases in capillarization occur primarily in the early stages of exercise training (< 4 weeks) with ET, HIT, and SIT equally enhancing capillaries per fiber, while ET is more effective in increasing capillary density (capillaries per mm²) due to less pronounced muscle fiber hypertrophy.
The 2019 physical activity guidelines for Americans include consensus recommendations including the evidence and some good graphs to visualize the "bang for buck"
For those curious, those (weekly) recommendations are: twice weekly resistance training, and 150-300min moderate intensity aerobic activity, or 75-150min vigorous aerobic activity.
If you want a program to just give you a starting point, I highly recommend Barbell Medicine's (free) "Beginner Prescription"
People must have very different definitions of HIIT because there's no way someone is sustaining a 2 minute absolute max-effort sprint.
> so its hard to be sure
Who is asking you to be sure in the first place? Why do you need this certainty? Farm animals need the comfort and stability of the farm to survive. They "flourish" within the parameters some one else sets.
In the Elephant-Rider model of how the mind works, people are talking to rider And the elephant.
The elephant just needs some feel good stuff, to momentarily focus shift away from all the unpredictability in the universe, it has no control over - in this case it is being fed - well the story teller who is not sure about anything is atleast "diligent".
When you let go of the story, and realize the elephant is not under your control and can never be, the ride is much smoother. And that's the only story, no SEO game needed to promote the Truth. And truth is - you are just along for the ride. Don't act like a farm animal thinking you are healthy based on how many eggs you have been told to lay. You are a chimp. All animal domestication protocols break down sooner or later when dealing with chimps. Cuz the chimp mind has an elephant in it. Taking it for a wild ride.
The separate HIIT is probably not necessary if you vary your weight training to include higher volume sets. If you do a true HIIT sprint set at 100 percent effort like the initial journal article, you will be wiped out the rest of the day, it’s not practical.
Playing 12s on maimai DX makes my arms sore. Is that HIIT? :P
12000 steps is around 10km. And takes around 2-2.5 hours of walking. So I say it is total baloney. Only very few people can do that amount of walking daily. Plus after you do a 2+ hour walk your body next day needs time to recuperate. As an added note it could be utterly boring to walk the same route again and again.
Rather do 6 km slow running 2 or 3 times a week (of course if you are not severely overweight). You can do that in one hour and one running session is enough for 2-3 days. It also strenghtens your core and every other muscle in your body. You will also eat less. If you can mix it with strength training that includes your 4 headed leg muscles you will feel yourself like a champ.
Lot of literature is absolute hogwash in this space because most of them is theoretical and they regurgitate the same old bs. Like idiots saying running half an hour is 400 kcal :D.
Your body is a system, and not a robot or an engine that needs x amount of gas and oil to go for y kilometers.
Anaerobic training’s returns increase ridiculously with days/week until about 3 and it’s large diminishing returns after that.
Just saying, once you’re willing to lift weights once a week with all the upfront cost (gym membership, leaving your comfort zone, learning the ropes, etc) it’s a really good bang for your buck adding one or two more.
I love when exercise is hyper-optimized as possible so I can back to what's most important: working at a job I actually hate to make as much money as possible -- the real source of my happiness.
Walking 2 hours per day is a completely impractical fantasy.
A better resource: Body By Science a book containing recommendations based on research and data. The overall goal is proper volume of effective effort of cardio and strength exercise that doesn't take too long and reduces risks of wear/tear and injury.
Between this and http://myticker.com (posted recently), I want to share a theory of mine:
1) the internet is mostly made up of spaces where the median opinion is vanishingly rare among actual humans.
2) the median internet opinion is that of a person who is deep into the topic they're writing about.
The net result is that for most topics, you will feel moderate to severe anxiety about being "behind" about what you shuld be doing.
I'm 40, and I'm active. I ran a half marathon last weekend. I spent 5 hours climbing with my kids this weekend. My reaction to these articles, emotionally, was "I'm probably going to die of heart disease," because my cholesterol is a bit high and my BMI is 30. When I was biking 90 miles a week, my VO2 max was "sub-standard."
Let's assume this information is true. That's OK. It's all dialed up to 11, and you don't have to do anything about it right now.
Obesity is an independent risk factor, even if otherwise active/healthy. It's worth getting under control for lifespan and healthspan.
Don't feel bad about your VO2 max, the baseline and ceiling are largely genetic. Most people can only bump VO2 max by about 10-15% even with absurd training regimens. Same goes with many of the markers people track - you can control them to an extent, but some people just have high blood pressure or poor lipid profiles and thus need intervention.
BMI isn't a great predictor of health. Waist-to-hip ratio and body-fat percentage are probably somewhat better indicators.
https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/why-you-shouldnt-rely-on-b...
I dislike most forms of exercise for one reason or another. I'm likely on the autism spectrum and have all the clumsiness that comes with the package so ball sports or dance are particularly hard and turned me off of sports for decades.
I also dislike walking and hiking as nature loves to make me miserable - I'm a pale mosquito magnet. Meanwhile walking in my city is a miserable experience as the urban environment is ugly and depressing where I live. And it's frigid most of the year.
But at last a few years ago I found a discipline that I enjoy and might be considered decent at. It's also one that to my understanding is one of the most beneficial of them all - I'm talking about swimming. I go to the pool every weekday before work and try to get at least 2-3 km at a decent clip. Mixing styles every few hundred metres to make sure I move different muscle groups.
It has done wonders for my physical appearance and my mental health which is what actually motivated me to try this after years of failed psychiatric treatments. If you know how to swim or are willing to learn I can't recommend it highly enough.
I quite literally was thinking as I was reading your second paragraph, "hey, they should try swimming" - turns out you're well ahead of me!
I started about four years ago, and it's been awesome for me too. For me I tried it because I just never liked how running makes me feel in my chest, whereas the aerobic intensity of swimming (slower burn in zones 2 and 3) feels way better to me.
For anyone starting out, there is a bit of a hump to get over as you get some technique (I just used YouTube videos and feel). For a bit of an idea of how it can be to start, when my then-girlfriend (now wife) started coming along to some of my sessions, she had done three half marathons and was training for her fourth, but she couldn't swim 50m of freestyle in one go without a break! I remember doing two laps, having a break, then some breastroke, break, etc., whereas now I can pretty easily punch out 600m freestyle sets fairly fast before a break, or do 2km without stopping at a bit of a slower pace.
I love swimming but it’s incredibly inaccessible for me. I don’t own a pool, the closet public pool is 20 minutes away and doesn’t have lane rental so I can’t consistently do laps, and everything is outdoors so it’s sun poisoning or winter temperatures for most of the year.
You should look into Moe Norman. Legendary golfer on the spectrum. You might catch the bug like he did. A round of golf is about 5-6 miles of walking.
I've been trying to get into swimming for years, but being on the ADHD-side instead, I just find it intolerably boring >.<
I haven't read the paper, but what I am curious about, how much of the damage can be turned back if someone becomes physically active after a long sedentary period? Let's say someone already had low fat oxidization and/or cardiovascular disease, how much of that can be "cured" by being active?
This post claims: the good news is, this is reversible. But is that so? Is it also proven to reverse things in all cases? I would imagine there are caveats, and things are not that rosy in reality.
The reason I am asking because if the answer is "None. It can only keep the symptoms from worsening" then it's not really reasonable to expect people with such physiological situation to become active again.
They will most probably need to put in much more effort to achieve much smaller gain compared to a healthy individual, which is as I said is unreasonable. Especially because some people simply have worse genetics and or social circumstances which they might not be able to change.
So I appreciate these findings, but how I read this: you need to be aware of this to prevent the ill effects. And I doubt the reversible claim (although I have not much of an argument to corroborate that).
That's not really a relevant question, actually.
We know definitively that active is strictly better than inactive in all respects unless someone has such severe end stage cardiorespiratory issues that they risk actual death, or some other unusual condition that makes exercise contraindicated, in which case, of course, speak to a doctor and obey their advice.
Even if it merely preserves function (which I would be skeptical about, humans are amazingly adaptive), the alternative is inactivity and thus gradual loss of function indefinitely over time until death.
I didn’t strength train until my 40s. Started being able to curl 15 pound weights. Now at the same reps I’m up to 20 or 25. Years later :)
It takes time. It’s a very steady climb. No doubt if I was a teenager I’d make much faster progress.
But it’s not just about the raw amount of weights, my running pace, etc. The benefits for my mental health in the moment. Improving my sleep and stress. And myriad other benefits make it worth it.
I’ve been chronically ill for 11 years now. I wasn’t really exercising basically at all for 8 of them then I started walking 3 years ago and jogging 1 year ago and cycling 6 months ago. My VO2 max was 52 at age 24. 40 when tested a year later after becoming sick. I had it retested a year ago and it was 36.5. But I ran a 5:59 mile a month ago so it is very likely higher now. But I haven’t been able to get it retested since it is expensive. But my general health has massively improved in the past 6 months. I cycle 10-20 miles a day every day. I had like diastolic heart dysfunction and tons of arrhythmia showing up years ago and had a heart monitor redone this year and the rhythm is back to what it looked like before I became ill. I’m still sick but just seems like I have more vitality anyway now despite that.
It's not a question of trade-offs or utility. The sooner you intervene the more effective your interventions will be, sure, but it's hard for me to imagine a situation where there's absolutely no point in doing something about a sedentary lifestyle. It might be harder to improve your outcomes if you've already developed comorbidities but if one cares at all about living longer I don't see why that person should let perfect be the enemy of good.
Probably a better link for the post, the current article appears to be an AI generated ad
But how do you know if you exercise enough?
According to the linked paper [0]:
"
- Sedentary (SED): Does not perform exercise regularly or elevate heart rate outside of daily tasks
- Active (AC): Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week, and has at least a six-month history of doing so
"
A more comprehensive study that determines the optimal amount of exercise per week to achieve peak cellular function over a population would be quite interesting. Also, what about anaerobic exercises like weight lifting? What's the relative impact on metabolic function? Lots more to explore here!
[0] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.08.19.608601v1....
+1. I surf occasionally, and go rock climbing a couple times a week. Compared to the "average American" I suspect I'm pretty active. Compared to other rock climbers and surfers, I'm probably relatively inactive. If I'm not concerned about improving at these hobbies, and just want 80% of the health benefit of being active, am I achieving it? Or am I still below?
Edit: From the linked paper:
'''
2.1 Subject Recruitment Nineteen male subjects ((41.9 ± 13.8 years; 82.6 ± 13.9 kg)) participated in this study and were assigned a research arm based upon meeting one of the following criteria related to physical activity:
- Sedentary (SED): n= 10. Does not perform exercise regularly or elevate heart rate outside of daily tasks
- Active (AC): n=10. Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week, and has at least a six-month history of doing so
'''
I bet that "Performs aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes per week" is related to some standard advice (but I'm too lazy to confirm that. I guess that provides an easy measuring stick to decide if we're being 'active enough'
The paper indicated the Active group has doing at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity throughout the week, or 75 minutes of high intensity activity activity (matching WHO guidelines[0]), and have done so for at least six months.
Anecdotally, I and several other people have found smart watches good for keeping track of intensity minutes.
[0] https://www.who.int/initiatives/behealthy/physical-activity
The best indicator of fitness is your VO2 max value and this can be estimated using fitness trackers and smart watches. You should try to be in the top 10% for your age bracket. The higher the better as all cause mortality decreases as VO2 max increases.
There's a mention in this article a measurement of various epigenetic clocks but one would have to measure a baseline then try increasing or decreasing to see the effect on test results.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2501185-our-bodies-are-...
Can you look in the mirror without feeling ashamed?
There's a quote in that blog that I quite liked:
We’ve engineered movement out of our lives. We sit in chairs, stare at screens, and outsource physical effort to machines. Then we try to cram all our movement into 45-minute bursts a few times a week.
This is like eating only once a week and calling it a balanced diet. Most people are malnourished, not from lack of food, but from a lack of diverse, nutrient-dense movement.
This article describes issues lurking unseen for inactive people. I have the inverse. I'm one of the more active people I know: lots of walking, biking, swimming, hiking (with a heavy pack). I like to do outside work like digging and chopping firewood, etc. Yet, my blood glucose went prediabetic a couple of years ago (I'm 45). I actually eat very well too, lots of greens and whole grains, mostly vegetarian (my wife is a dietitian). I rarely eat sweets.
So, I have the inverse issue: instead of being inactive with an unobserved symptom, I am active with an observed symptom.
Alas, I haven't been able to get any relevant medical advice because the answer is always: diet and exercise. And, while I suppose I could find some way to improve my diet and exercise to some degree, I'm clearly above the norm. And, when I got a referral to an endocrinologist, they ended up canceling the appointment without seeing me because I'm only prediabetic.
Does anyone have thoughts or advice?
I will recommend working while walking. Also learning while working.
One needs a standing desk and a treadmill.
Also, if you are watching an episode of a tv show, randomly watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, etc., walk an hour or two during that time. That time won't feel 'wasted'.
I can't point you towards any study. But intake of new knowledge and information is somehow better while I am walking.
One workaround that I have to maximize my steps is to have walking meetings whenever face 2 face camera is not mandatory or when discussing ideas. All hands - walk. Meet with peer - circle the office parking lot. The goal is to maximize steps starting from the first wake minute. That side I still have fatty liver. My doctor said it’s most likely due to genetics.
How about boosting mitochondria via supplements? Would that be something to look at? I climbed out of ME/CFS-like neurocovid mainly thanks to boosting mitochondria as much as I could and am wondering if the same lesson could be applied here?
How about just moving around for 30 minutes most days?
Supplements aren't going to help you mentally as a nice walk in the park.
Sumo wrestlers generally don't develop metabolic disease until after they retire, which comes with the cessation of their grueling, multi-hour daily training regimens. I wish I could find the NHK report on a group of scientists that were researching how metabolically-undesirable substances build up in muscles after as little as 20 minutes of inactivity.
This is the one thing that makes me so angry about the state of AR/VR/XR. Human bodies are made to move when we work - not strenuously, not non-stop, but consistently and with some amount of vigor. Spatial software design represents an AMAZING opportunity to re-tune digital work processes to be movement-oriented, while still productive and efficient. Compare digital sculpting in ZBrush and Media Molecule's Dreams.
It's maybe harder to envision a similar transformation for people dealing with data or communication for a living, but is it out of the realm of possibility? It shouldn't be, for anyone who who might compare common GUIs to interfaces like VIM and Emacs. The former are the unhappy compromise between the latter and the as-yet-to-be-created spatial interfaces that would be coming if the Bigs would stop trying to outmaneuver each other, and just create them.
I am tired of trying to manage my photo library on a small laptop screen or monitor, with a single pointer. Let me summon them to my physical space and manipulate, stack, sort them, and more, with split controllers or my actual hands. I promise that my brain and body and your wallet will be much, much happier.
Would 8 minute HIIT a few times a week do the job?