Sitting Too Much Ages You By 8 Years (time.com) 147
Sitting too much during the day has been linked to a host of diseases, from obesity to heart problems and diabetes, as well as early death. It's not hard to understand why: being inactive can contribute to weight gain, which in turn is a risk factor for heart attack, stroke, hypertension and unhealthy blood sugar levels. On top of everything else, sitting has detrimental effects on cells at the biological level, according to a new report published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. From a report on Time: In the new study, scientists led by Aladdin Shadyab, a post-doctoral fellow in family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego, traced sitting's impact on the chromosomes. They took blood samples from nearly 1,500 older women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative, a long-term study of chronic diseases in post-menopausal women, and focused on the telomeres: the tips of the tightly packed DNA in every cell. Previous studies have found that as cells divide and age, they lose bits of the telomeres, so the length of this region can be a marker for how old a cell (and indirectly the person the cells belong to) is. The researchers compared telomere length to how much the women exercised, to see if physical activity affected aging.
So basically (Score:3)
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Research results are unclear. Some studies [annals.org] have found a link between sitting and bad health, and also found that exercising doesn't offset the sitting. Other studies [oxfordjournals.org] have found a much weaker correllation, so maybe sitting all day isn't that big of a deal.
Disclaimer: I have a stand-up desk in my office ($39 folding table from Costco with 4 sections of PVC pipe to extend the legs, and a 2 inch thick anti-fatigue mat to stand on), and I use it about 4 hours per day.
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Too bad the study is bullshit because it's based on the WHI (Women's Health Initiative), a study that had huge design and implementation flaws and bad data analysis.
The WHI claimed to study the effects of hormone replacement therapy on women. However, rather than using bio-identical human hormones, they used Premarin and Prempro (the PREgnant MARe unINe). Hint - human estrogen is not bio-identical to horse estrogen, so we're already off to a bad start. Also, at the time Premarin was approved, the 50+ impu
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OTOH, this experiment [theatlantic.com] shows how menopause could be adaptive.
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Having 8 more years of life to spend exercising doesn't seem so great.
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Having 8 more years of life to spend exercising doesn't seem so great.
You do realise that you don't have to spend the 8 years continuously exercising? Right?
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Any amount tends to ruin the whole day for me.
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Can I just put my brain in a jar instead of exercising?
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It would certainly make airplane travel easier.
Damn... (Score:2)
>Sitting Too Much Ages You By 8 Years
Crap! That means that I could have retired 8 years ago, better notify the tax offices.
Sitting too much, much? (Score:2)
Beware of the autoplayer, and beware of things that begin with Studies have shown... and then attempt to ascribe a definitive value like eight years off your life.
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Not to mention that sitting and exercise are not necessarily independent variables. For example: I spend many hours sitting on a bicycle training for my next Ironman.
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Also sitting long hours affects other decisions we make, if we feel stale we might want some pizza to lift up our mood, vs. wanting/needing something more wholesome after a day of being active.
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There are a lot of factors I think are going on. ...
If you spend a lot of time sitting.
You are often working a higher stress job - Could stress Age you?
Lack of exercise reduces muscle tone - That could age you?
If someone sits too much they may have a medical problem that prevents them from being fully mobile - Could age you?
When you boil down statics into a single number such a percentage or years off your life. You take out all the complexities in life and give a meaningless answer.
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Beware, beware the angry AC.
Work and cars (Score:5, Insightful)
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TBH pretty much the only exercise I get is the walk to and from the train station for work (at both ends). Which luckily probably totals over three miles a day, and it's an enforced routine.
Problem is, work has recently started an aggressive Working from Home culture (well, 2 or 3 days a week). Guess how much I walk on those days... sure, I eat better, but that's about it. "Bed -> Desk (via Kitchen for coffee/lunch/dinner) -> Sofa -> Bed" isn't the greatest daily routine. Saves a decent amount of t
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Maybe, but we all have choices to make. Setting up your life so that you have a long car commute is within your control. We have to balance that against other considerations affecting choices about jobs and homes.
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Well, you would be surprised. I spend almost as much money on my bicycle a month as I would spend in gas a month. Bike tires, replacement chains, a new cassette for the rear wheel about every 3,000 miles $100, a new set of chain rings in the front about every 5,000 miles $200. A new bottom bracket every 5,000 miles $40. New bike clothing about every 6 months $200. New brake pads every 5,000 miles $60. New wheelset every 2 years, $600. It adds up quickly.
But, I wouldn't give up riding to work for anything...
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I spend almost as much money on my bicycle a month as I would spend in gas a month.
I bought my bike for $100 on Craigslist 5 years ago, ride it every day, and my only expenses during that time have been a set of kevlar tires and a bell. If you are regularly spending $600 for a new set of wheel hubs, then you are doing it wrong.
18.3 mph (Score:2)
From his garmin link he is averaging 18.3 mph - I am guessing you are not doing that on your craigslist wonder bike.
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Yes, if you make cycling into a hobby then the costs can skyrocket as you chase better and 'better' gear. That said I'm surprised one set of tyres could last so long. Riding ~40km per weekday I'll need to change tyres every 6 months, plus patch or replace tubes occasionally, brake pads, handlebar windings and every year or two put in a new chain and back sprocket.
Still cheaper than driving when you factor servicing in.
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Ok, so lets talk about work. Have you seen the average farmer, who works heavily all day long? They look youthful for you? How about janitors, cleaners and people with heavy manual work. Do they look youthful for you?
I sit all day, and exercise 1 hour every day. People consistently say I look 15 years younger than I am. So, yeah, I'm taking this study with a spoon of salt.
CAP: aptitude [btw, a great package management tool].
And that old man will probably be able to dig your grave with a hand shovel. Skin aging is normal when your skin is constantly damaged by sunlight.
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Sorry, but I'm in a really pissy mood with myself today again trying to figure out why I don't just kill myself, and I guess it shows. Today's farmer is not doing "a life of working out and struggles, just to be dead by 40." The average age of a farmer is now 58. That's not the age they die at, it's their average age. Here's a story about an guy who dug his own grave [www.cbc.ca] just because
Kickham is also hoping that his family will remember him as a man with a good sense of humour.
"The grandchildren will know that their grandfather dug his own grave with his own backhoe at the age of 90. So that'll be something for them to carry around, won't it?"
This guy dug his own grave, and he's well over the average age of expectancy. Sun damage to skin just doesn't equate to overall h
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Have you seen the average farmer, who works heavily all day long?
I have. My parents are farmers. They sit on a comfy seat in the air conditioned cab of their tractor. Modern farming has very little "heavy work", and rural people have the highest obesity rates in America.
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If you exercise at least 1/2 hour a day, sitting the rest of the day doesn't make a difference.
Besides, your looks don't tell your age. As others have said, a lot of looks has to do with skin damage from sun exposure.
They might have reversed cause and effect (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article they found that women who had shorter telomeres, or were biologically older, moved less. Not in the past but during the week they were studied.
For some reason they think this means that moving less shortens the telomeres when the other way is obviously likely.
Being older causes people to exercise less, just wouldn't make a good headline.
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Shorter compared to the expected length at that age. Shorter compared to women who did not do so much sitting.
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But it is at least as likely that having shorter telomeres predisposes you to be less active, choosing to sit more than other people. In fact, I would argue that genes affecting behavior is far more likely than behavior affecting genes. Without a truly randomized study with a control group, I don't see how you can convincingly prove causation.
What is the 'biological' level? (Score:5, Funny)
As opposed to the 'mineral' level, maybe?
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No, as opposed to the datalink layer.
Biological age vs. chronological age (Score:2)
I think it means biological age as opposed to strict chronological age. If you're biologically eight years older, your cells show damage comparable to the median person chronologically eight years older than you.
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Remote work is validated once again. (Score:5, Interesting)
My commute time equated to over 2 hours a day. At one point in my career, I was able to offer up a great trade-off to work remotely. In exchange for getting an additional hour of work from me every day, I spent the other hour exercising. A win-win for both parties involved.
Sadly, I now deal with a boss who is so old-fashioned that the concept of working remotely isn't even an option, even when enticed with the benefit of getting an additional 20 - 40 hours more work out of me every month. Very frustrating, considering my job can easily be done remotely.
Cities dealing with more and more pollution. Commute times grow due to overpopulation. Stress and physical impacts of sitting in a car. I grow tired of the bullshit arguments against remote work. Managers and business owners need to wake the fuck up.
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You need to do something.
Are you waiting for me?
Nah. I've got other things to do. I have a short commute and after a few mths working at home I hated working.
Stop bitching and create something. You may actually get recognition and some green from your ideas.
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...Stop bitching and create something. You may actually get recognition and some green from your ideas.
- All the environmental impact I've already cited.
- The direct financial benefit of companies not having to pay for expensive corporate real estate to literally warehouse humans for 8+ hours a day.
- The direct efficiency benefit of gaining an additional 20 - 40 hours of work per month per salaried employee.
- The measured financial benefit of a healthier workforce due to removing the negative impact of commuting that contributes to increased stress and reduced efficiency.
The benefits are as fucking obvio
Constructively dismissed? Become a contractor (Score:2)
Stop bitching and create something.
the "productivity" that is measured these days is seeing how many jobs you can make a single employee do before they reach the breaking point and quit.
I think that might have been GLMDesigns' point. By dismissing these measurable benefits, your boss is constructively dismissing you [wikipedia.org]. Take this as an opportunity to stop complaining about your boss and instead be your own boss, working as a contractor instead of an employee.
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Stop bitching and create something.
the "productivity" that is measured these days is seeing how many jobs you can make a single employee do before they reach the breaking point and quit.
I think that might have been GLMDesigns' point. By dismissing these measurable benefits, your boss is constructively dismissing you [wikipedia.org]. Take this as an opportunity to stop complaining about your boss and instead be your own boss, working as a contractor instead of an employee.
Sound point.
Perhaps I'll quit my job to become a writer, penning a graphic novel about the impacts of commuting and the stupidity that forces it upon humans.
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You need to address their concerns (legitimate or not) and show how your plan will help them accomplish their goals.
The point, in essence, was stop bitching and do something about - AND YOU are the person that must do the doing. YOU are the person who is outraged by this. Not your manager, not me and not many others.
I tried working at home and after a while I hated it. You wan
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Yeah, for my WfH days I don't deliberately work more hours (I may make up some if I had to leave work earlier on other days), although having a child I have to take to school removes that 'Wake up 5 minutes before the morning stand-up call' temptation.
I may end up working more hours just because it's a better environment to get work done, or I decide to have a 2 hour nap in the middle of the day.
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WTH? If I didn't have to commute in I sure wouldn't be working more than I already do, I'd be taking longer breaks and getting up later in the day. Pretty sure that'd be typical of most people as well.
The problem with workaholics is that they think that everyone else needs to be more like them.
You may have missed the fact that I split the time gained between benefits for myself (exercise), and my employer (additional work). This was done as a justification for remote work, and since it's a win-win for both parties involved, it's not exactly a detriment or turning me into a "workaholic". I'd be sitting on my ass in traffic otherwise.
Put $150 - $200 back in your pocket saving on gas costs, and you'll find you really don't mind the split and sacrifice.
Re:Remote work is validated once again. (Score:5, Interesting)
You're fighting the cultural expectations of management and power, and likely at the root, primate dominance.
Your boss assumes that being boss requires some level of physical control of you, and that means controlling your locality to reinforce his perception of dominance and control over you.
It goes a long way towards explaining why incompetent employees who show up and don't evidence much insubordination are tolerated so well.
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You're fighting the cultural expectations of management and power, and likely at the root, primate dominance.
I've heard a lot of justifications behind the infamous killer of remote work (Marissa Mayer), but primate dominance is a new one. Thanks for the laugh.
Re:Remote work is validated once again. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not really meant as a joke. For a lot of managers, at its core, managing is about being in charge, and being in charge is about dominance.
And it ultimately looks like innate primate behavior. They're achieved status in the troop and they need to dominate the other members or they fear they will lose their dominance.
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It should surprise nobody that a manager's frontal lobe wouldn't be up to the task of modifying primate instincts. That is, the boss is a chimp.
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It's not really meant as a joke. For a lot of managers, at its core, managing is about being in charge, and being in charge is about dominance.
And it ultimately looks like innate primate behavior. They're achieved status in the troop and they need to dominate the other members or they fear they will lose their dominance.
Your feedback reads like the tag in front of the gorilla cage at the zoo. Again, thanks for the laugh as I question what species we're talking about here.
I've dealt with many a leadership structure over the last 25 years. What I've learned from the best of them is respect goes a long way, and I still address my subordinates as "Sir" or "Ma'am" out of respect for my fellow human.
Arrogance feeding some kind of fucking primal urge to be an asshole of a boss is akin to excusing the wife beater because "testo
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Clearly humans, possessing more developed language and sophisticated intellectual capabilities, have been able to develop more sophisticated social organizations than other primates.
But it doesn't stop them from displaying regressive behavior that shows pretty clearly while we've branched off into a new species we still carry a lot of primal instincts from our ancestors.
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Clearly humans, possessing more developed language and sophisticated intellectual capabilities, have been able to develop more sophisticated social organizations than other primates.
But it doesn't stop them from displaying regressive behavior that shows pretty clearly while we've branched off into a new species we still carry a lot of primal instincts from our ancestors.
*Darwin peers into the boardroom window*
"Yup. Fucking nailed it."
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I think an expectation of remote work ability (at least after a couple of months or so of joining) should be an expectation for anyone looking to move company these days. Especially if you have children it gives you the necessary flexibility to cope with the situation. For most it would be 2 or 3 times a week, face to face time may still be important/necessary for some to retain humanity .
The last thing I would want to do is sit in a car in a traffic jam daily. Luckily I've avoided that throughout my career
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So, sitting is purely by proxy? (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't appear to be sitting that's being tested here, but rather inactivity. These two things are not the same (one can be inactive without sitting) though they frequently occur together.
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Sitting in one position is worse than standing in one position. So yes, there's a difference in the type of inactivity.
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And some smokers are gym rats - one healthy activity doesn't make up for an unhealthy one.
Sitting too much ages you by 8 years (Score:1)
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And jogging and bicycling increases your chances to get fatally hit by an automobile, train or plane.
I wondered about that a while back, so I did some investigation into the odds. It turned out that the risk of riding a bike is in the same ballpark as riding in a car when measured on a per-hour basis.
While the risks aren't insignificant, they turned out to be clearly better than the risk of being out of shape and keeling over prematurely from a heart attack or similar problem.
I do avoid some of the things that probably skew the cycling risk numbers higher, such as riding at night, or riding on hilly countr
Ya, right (Score:2)
Waste of time study. (Score:2)
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Social gender values (Score:4, Interesting)
Why did they just study women?
It seems like anything that affects women gets attention, while society doesn't even value men.
Another prime example is the massive amount of attention and funding that breast cancer gets compared to prostate cancer, even though 1 in 7 men get prostate cancer while 1 in 8 women get breast cancer.
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Why did they study just women? Hint - they couldn't find any post-menopausal men. They started with old, flawed test data from the WHI menopause study and came to new, flawed confusions ... oops, I mean conclusions ... or do I?
Also, even if you get prostate cancer, it's usually so slow that something else will kill you first.
Besides, most of the men doing the studies would rather look at boobs than fingering your prostate.
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Gee who knew that sitting too much is only something that affects post-menopausual women?
And since Prostate cancer USUALLY doesn't actually kill you quickly, then men should just suck it up and keep donating to Susan G Komen instead?
Yeah thanks for being part of the problem and further reinforcing the stereotype by just laughing it off with a boob joke. I didn't expect that from you of all people.
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Men are the ones who are deciding NOT to treat prostate cancer [nytimes.com]. They don't want to go through life wearing a diaper because of incontinence caused by surgery for something that can be left untreated because, as I pointed out, it won't be what kills them in the end. Or hormone therapy that means they have to go around in summer wearing bulky jackets to hide their new man-boobs. Or, for younger men, permanent impotence.
So no, I'm not furthering any stereotype, you jerk. I'm well aware of the problems they g
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>> Men are the ones who are deciding NOT to treat prostate cancer.
Thats not what the article says at all. Did you even read it?
It actually says "More Men With Early Prostate Cancer Are Choosing to Avoid Treatment".
>> So no, I'm not furthering any stereotype, you jerk.
Yes you absolutely are. Jerk yourself.
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>> rather than put up with the side effects of CURRENTLY AVAILABLE treatment that is ultimately futile, BECAUSE NO_ONE IS TAKING FUNDING IT AS SERIOUSLY AS BREAST CANCER JUST BECAUSE VAGINA, EVEN THOUGH BREAST CANCER IS ALREADY A FAR MORE BEATEN PROBLEM.
http://healthydebate.ca/person... [healthydebate.ca]
There fixed it for ya.
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>> Many cancers cannot be even remotely considered as routinely curable. Prostate cancer happens to be one of them.
Breast cancer also used to not be even remotely considered as routine curable, yet now it is, thanks to the billions that people donate to it. This is EXACTLY why prostate cancer does need more attention and research money.
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So then give money if you think it should be supported. Organize a fund raiser. Do some awareness campaigns. You know, the same as women did for breast cancer.
Or if you want to talk prevention instead of cure, take 50 mg of Avodart and 50-100 mg Androcur. You're probably going to have to take them anyway if you get prostate cancer. Consider it no different from women with the HBRC1 and HBRC2 genes getting preventative mastectomies, even though breast cancer is treatable - they prefer prevention to the chem
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So who wrote this [slashdot.org]....your evil twin?
Then you go on to rattle off some of the side effects of traditional prostate cancer treatments - not exactly making the case for why breast cancer research gets so much more money, despite people dying in comparable numbers for both types of cancers.
FTFY
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Your complete non-response, and doubling down on a stereotype that has nothing to do with medicine - is hereby noted.
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Aptly titled “My eyes are up here,” lead researcher Sarah Gervais’ study found that men like looking at women’s large breasts. For extended periods of time. Although, in dudes’ defense, “women also seem to view other women as objects.”
A total of 29 women and 36 men outfitted in eye tracking gear were asked to look at pictures of models manipulated to have different body types. Both men and women looked at breasts and waists longer than faces. Furthermore, women with hourglass figures received more substantial stares and were rated as having better personalities. Because boobs.
But if you were a woman you'd already know this because you would have experienced it first hand. And please note - the lead researcher was a woman.
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Your continued hand waving, non-responses and doubling down on sexist stereotypes is also noted. You can stop prattling on about your study when the subject is medical doctors and cancer research. Really, feel free to stop beating that horse at any time, it's quite dead.
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And yet prostate cancer kills more men than the amount of people, both males and females, killed by breast cancer. Where are our support ribbons?
You don't get a support ribbon for lying. 27,681 men died from prostate cancer. [cdc.gov] 40,860 women and 464 men died from breast cancer [cdc.gov]. And you failed to note that half of all men decide not to treat their prostate cancer.
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Why did they just study women?
It seems like anything that affects women gets attention, while society doesn't even value men.
While I'm not familiar with this particular study and can't explain why the researchers chose to focus on women exclusively, I'd like to call your attention to this exerpt from a Guardian article from 2015 [theguardian.com]:
For several reasons, female subjects have historically been excluded from toxicology or biomedical research, says Tamarra James-Todd, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. While progress has been made since 1993, when the National Institutes of Health mandated that women and minorities be included in any government-funded health research, there’s still a long way to go.
Indeed, this trend of including females in studies at all is relatively recent, and females are still underrepresented in study populations in general to this day. Please consider that your perception of an unreasonable focus on women when it comes to medical research seems at odds with the empirical data
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That being said, while I agree that performing studies exclusively on females explicitly in response to the historical focus on men wouldn't really make sense, I'm not aware of any evidence to make such a claim. Your response here, however, seems quite emotionally charged. I'm not sure how allegations of a "veng
More money on Viagra subsidies than brain research (Score:2)
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WTF is a honey old men? Elderly male beekeepers?
They are suppressing partial solutions (Score:1)
In Europe they use weight-loss medication that has proven fairly effective and safe. But for some reason doctors in the US are discouraged from prescribing them.
I asked my own doctor about them, and got a lectury response something like "patients should just learn to exercise more and eat better instead." Yeah, we know that already.
Ironically, the doctor is also overweight. It's NOT working, doc!
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American Medicine enjoys the punitive Puritan approach. That's why we get so much bogus dietary advice that leads to eating unsatisfying food that tastes like sweetened cardboard in spite of research suggesting that your Grandma's (or Great Grandma's by now) dietary advice works much better and tastes orders of magnitude better.
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In Europe they use weight-loss medication that has proven fairly effective and safe.
What sort of weight loss medicine are you referring to here? I'm interested.
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https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
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Glad I prefer lying in bed all day
"Of course I didn't sleep with anyone else."
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Really? Because according to an old article in the ASHRAE journal that I ran across, office work is only about 1.2 Met and sitting in a lecture hall or library is only around 1.0 Met.
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No, there are still 19+ hours until the inauguration starts.
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Meaningless until you compare him with someone who's maintained a high level of physical activity, spending little time sitting, throughout 50 years of full-blown ALS.