Around 20 Minutes of Exercise a Day May Balance Out the Harms of Sitting, Study Finds (nbcnews.com) 79
A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine finds that about 22 minutes a day of moderate to vigorous activity may combat the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Furthermore, they researchers found that as a person's activity level increases, the risk of dying prematurely from any cause goes down. NBC News reports: In the study, researchers looked at information from nearly 12,000 people ages 50 and older in four datasets from Norway, Sweden and the United States. In those datasets, the participants wore movement detection devices on their hips for 10 hours a day for at least four days. All of the individuals included in the new study were tracked for at least two years. In the new analysis, the researchers accounted for factors, including medical conditions, that could've affected risk of early death. About half of the participants spent 10 1/2 hours or more sedentary each day.
When the researchers linked the participants' information with death registries in the different countries, they found that over an average of five years, 805 people, or 17%, had died. Of those who died, 357, or 6%, had spent less than 10 1/2 hours a day seated, while 448 averaged 10 1/2 hours or more sedentary. Sitting for more than 12 hours a day, the researchers found, was associated with a 38% increased risk of death as compared to eight hours, but only among those who managed to get less than 22 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day.
The risk of death went down with increasing amounts of physical activity. An extra 10 minutes a day translated into a 15% lower risk of death among those spending fewer than 10 1/2 hours seated and a 35% lower risk among those who spent more than 10 1/2 hours sedentary each day. Lower intensity activity only made a difference among participants who spent 12 or more hours sitting every day. The study's lead author, Edvard Sagelv, a researcher at The Arctic University of Norway, broke the findings down into manageable terms. "Think of it: only 20 minutes of this a day is enough, meaning, a small stroll of 10 minutes twice a day -- like jumping off the bus one stop before your actual destination to work and then when taking the bus back home, jumping off one stop before."
When the researchers linked the participants' information with death registries in the different countries, they found that over an average of five years, 805 people, or 17%, had died. Of those who died, 357, or 6%, had spent less than 10 1/2 hours a day seated, while 448 averaged 10 1/2 hours or more sedentary. Sitting for more than 12 hours a day, the researchers found, was associated with a 38% increased risk of death as compared to eight hours, but only among those who managed to get less than 22 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a day.
The risk of death went down with increasing amounts of physical activity. An extra 10 minutes a day translated into a 15% lower risk of death among those spending fewer than 10 1/2 hours seated and a 35% lower risk among those who spent more than 10 1/2 hours sedentary each day. Lower intensity activity only made a difference among participants who spent 12 or more hours sitting every day. The study's lead author, Edvard Sagelv, a researcher at The Arctic University of Norway, broke the findings down into manageable terms. "Think of it: only 20 minutes of this a day is enough, meaning, a small stroll of 10 minutes twice a day -- like jumping off the bus one stop before your actual destination to work and then when taking the bus back home, jumping off one stop before."
Okay, great (Score:1)
Now how many minutes of exercise each day do you need to offset a sedentary lifestyle and a generally-poor diet?
Re:Okay, great (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... if you did exercise every day you wouldn't live a sedentary lifestyle, so that would be taken care of.
The poor diet is something you can't really compensate with exercise. Processed food that's devoid of any nourishment and only consists of carbs and fat (i.e. what makes stuff tasty and unfortunately also very cheap) is just simply unhealthy, even if you run a marathon while stuffing your face.
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"You can't outrun a bad diet" (is I believe a quote of some fitness guru or other)
Also, the man who popularised jogging died of a heart attack (because he was so thin from all the running, he claimed he could eat whatever he wanted): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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the man who popularised jogging died of a heart attack because he was so thin from all the running, he claimed he could eat whatever he wanted
Taken from the link you posted:
Fixx had an unhealthy life: Fixx was a heavy smoker before beginning running at age 36, had a stressful occupation, had undergone a second divorce, and gained weight up to 214 lb (97 kg). Medical opinion continues to uphold the link between moderate exercise and longevity.
So he wasn't exactly thin, led a stressful life, was a smoker and was genetically predisposed to heart problems as his father also died of a heart attack. Running may have even helped prolonged his short life. I think it is a stretch to say exercise doesn't work because one jogger died of a heart attack.
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> I think it is a stretch to say exercise doesn't work because one jogger died of a heart attack.
I didn't say that - I said that no amount of exercise will solve for a bad diet (since you raised smoking, I guess you could additionally say exercise can't solve for bad choices).
But I will correct "...he was so thin" - he obviously wasn't thin.
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It depends on the food and the activity.
"Processed" isn't relevant, this doesn't innately make food better or worse and neither does most health store scams like "organic" or "non-gmo", etc. Specific forms of processing foods can certainly impact their nutrition but some processing even increases bioavailability of nutrients.
"consists of carbs and fat"
Both of these amount to energy. Expending that amount of energy can certainly offset having eaten them... I'm not sure why you'd think otherwise. That said, i
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The key problem is that fat and carbs are both cheap, and they are also what we consider tasty. That's a pretty damning combination considering that the food industry loves cheap food and we love tasty food, so it's a match made in ... well, hell in this case.
Carbs especially are a godsend for the food industry. They combine three key elements of what is great for them. First, they're dirt cheap. Second, they have a near infinite shelf life if dried, and you can dry them practically to the point of containi
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and they are also what we consider tasty
No they aren't. Our tastes are largely mediated by all manner of other things we add to something to sell it. Fat and carbs by themselves can be as bland or tasteless as you want. The reason why we gravitate to foods which are high in fat and carbs isn't because of the fat and carbs, it's because these cheap products are typically sold loaded with salts and sugar.
No one eats chips for the chips. They eat them for the zing you get on your tongue from the endless array of spices added to them. McDonalds fries
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That's nonsense.
All food being made of living things contains perfectly natural levels of sugars, salts (both NaCl and KCl) and fats.
Which includes potatoes and most certainly meat.
The fact that YOU have a problem tasting meat and potatoes (and even bread FFS) "without anything on it" - that's you. [youtu.be]
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Ok, very well, let's do your experiment.
Fats are, to some degree, bland, but they are great at carrying tastes and aromas. And we like that. And have you ever taken a look at the sauces they sell at McD. They consist mostly of sugars, modified starch and a blend of various fats.
That patty is, weirdly enough, probably the "healthiest" part of that burger, because it is the only part that mostly consists of protein rather than fat and sugar.
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I agree with what you are saying here but from your statements someone who didn't know might get the wrong impression. Of the three macros fat, protein, and carbs; carbs are the least filling of the three and to the great love of food peddlers everywhere they keep you full for the shortest period of time. They try to distract people with complex carbs, which are MUCH better than simple carbs but still don't compare with fats or protein for keeping you full.
Eat a giant bowl of popcorn, you'll be full for an
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You are aware that popcorn is mostly literally thin air, yes? Why do you think it's so popular with food courts?
Can we instead stuff your face with mashed potatoes and repeat the experiment?
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So are the pork rinds. Mashed potatoes done right are at least as much butter and cream as potato. For that matter the popcorn is never really just popcorn in the real world, a bowl will have a stick of clarified butter and/or artificially flavored oil added in.
I suppose we could use potato flakes, uncooked oats, clarified butter and chicken jerky if you really want to do it but I'll pass. Blerg.
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Nonono, just take a bowl of potatoes, mash them, no added ingredients. Eat it. See if you're gonna be hungry in an hour. My prediction is that you're still trying to move in an hour.
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Okay, I'll give you that. But I'd be willing to bet if you ate an equivalent weight and/or caloric content of anything I just listed you'd be struggling to move in an hour. A popcorn bowl will hold a 5lb bag of potatoes BEFORE mashing and compacting them. If you are eating that kind of volume of food when you sit to a meal it really doesn't matter what the food is. Eat whatever you want and enjoy the hell out of it because you aren't long for this world.
But stepping away from these library of congresses lik
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The length of the digestion is less of a topic than the expenditure of metabolizing it. And metabolizing fat is very, very easy. It's pretty much already in exactly the form that your body would love to put around your hip.
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Fat is relatively expensive. That's why they are always trying to find a cheaper one. Now the processed foods industry is on palm oil, which is bad on every level; it's bad for you, it's bad for ecology, much of it is made with child slave labor... And this is also why they replace vegetable oil with HFCS. It's cheaper, and also more shelf stable. That translates into less wasted product, which increases the value proposition. When they do that they also pound it full of citric acid to kill the sweetness, w
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Replacing vegetable oil with HFCS? I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. I already can't stand that crap as a replacement for sugar, but this is just ... hurk!
Compared to protein, though, fat is still fairly cheap. We're still talking cents per pound, plus a comparably long shelf life. Protein is the evil step child of the food industry. It's expensive, it spoils easily, hard to process without quality loss... not exactly the rock star you want as a food designer.
Fat, on the other hand, is awesome.
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Protein is used to build muscle.
What you want to avoid is cholesterol found in saturated fat, found in butter, cream, fatty meats, chocolate, etc. Unsaturated fats, often from plants, such as sunflower oil, are much better.
When it comes to carbohydrates, you want to consume carbs with a higher fiber content like Brussels sprouts, and avoid are sweets, soft drinks, and other sugary stuff, but
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"Avoid" makes it sound like you should NOT eat it. Which is also bollocks. We do need cholesterol. We need it for our cell membranes, for our liver enzymes, for a lot of other shit I forgot. The problem is that we eat too much of it.
The too much part is pretty much the whole problem with our food intake. We could (and should) eat almost everything we eat, but we should watch how much of each group we eat, and what type. We need it all. But we need very different shares than what we ingest.
Take salt as anoth
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Not really. Cholesterol is not found in saturated fat. Its found in eggs. But there is no reason to avoid cholesterol, or eggs. Eating it does not raise your cholesterol level. Eating saturated fats probably does.
Unsaturated fats come in two sorts: mono unsaturated and polyunsaturated. Mono unsaturated are in olive and peanut oil. Polyunsaturated are in sunflower and corn oil.
Its probably best to avoid polyunsaturated, but there is no reason to avoid olive oil or peanut oil. Back in the day it was
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https://www.heartuk.org.uk/low... [heartuk.org.uk]
Cutting down on foods high in saturated fat and replacing them with foods higher in unsaturated fat can help improve cholesterol levels. For example, plant-based fat spreads and oils, oily fish, nuts and seeds. ...
Cholesterol is made and broken down in the liver. Eating foods that have too much saturated fat, and too little unsaturated fat, changes the way the liver handles cholesterol.
But you get enough cholesterol produced by the liver.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.or... [hopkinsmedicine.org]
The cholesterol in your blood comes from two sources: the foods you eat and your liver. Your liver makes all the cholesterol your body needs.
I only stated that a lower consumption of white bread and rice is good for you. Switch to carbohydres with more fiber, whole grain bread instead of white bread and brown rice instead of white
"Processed" is a term that muddies the water (Score:4)
"Processed" food is just food that has been changed in some way. Applesauce is processed, chopped carrots are processed, ground beef is processed. The act of processing these foods didn't make them any better or worse, although there are obviously processes that can make food less healthy. For that matter, "devoid of nourishment" isn't the right metric, either; lettuce is unprocessed and lacks any "nourishment," but it has undigestable matter (fiber) that makes other food easier to digest, is fairly water-dense which helps with hydration, and tends to make you feel fuller, so it still serves a useful purpose in your diet, nourishing or not. What people usually mean by "processed" is e.g. deep fried or very greasy food, which isn't bad because it's processed, it's bad because it usually vastly over-emphasizes fats (and specifically saturated fats, the generally less healthy kind).
"Processed" is a distraction from the actual fundamentals of nutrition, which are caloric content and macronutrient content (that is, fats/carbs/protein). If you keep track of what you're eating, set sane calorie goals for your body weight/activity level, and make sure you're not over-emphasizing or lacking any specific macronutrient, you'll be pretty far along on the path to better health just from that alone. The specifics of how much you need varies person to person, but what I personally did was use meals that I already knew made me feel good as reference values and then came up with meal plans that tended to have similar nutritional content.
There are plenty of other dietary considerations beyond this (to name a few: micronutrients e.g. vitamins, saturated versus unsaturated fat, glycemic index for diabetics; exercise also plays a role and affects what your calorie and macronutrient targets should be), but the biggest thing that most people get wrong that contributes most to problems like obesity is that they overeat or they eat an unbalanced diet (which typically leads to overeating).
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It's a bit more complicated than that.
To say modified starch is the same as starch is gross oversimplification. That would be akin to saying trans fats are just the same as any other fats. Just saying that what matters is the calorie intake in the groups of carbs, fat and protein isn't even remotely going to be enough, because I could trivially give you two menus with the same amounts of fat, carbs and protein and I think we'll both agree that one is way, way more unhealthy than the other one.
Re:"Processed" is a term that muddies the water (Score:4)
I have digestive problems from my mom's side and diet is very hard for me to get right because there are a lot of things I can't eat without having a reaction (and it's a good mix of both healthy and unhealthy foods that I can't eat). I've done a lot of research over the past ten years or so to try and figure out things that are both reasonably healthy and won't leave me feeling like absolute crap. Offline, many people have foisted unsolicited advice on me about this subject and it's often a lot of vague nonsense. So I have a personal stake in pushing people to be more concreate about what they're talking about; it benefits me in the end because this is something I'm always trying to learn more about.
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Yes, purely technically, the term "processed" can even include food that has just been cooked, but I think we know what the term "processed food" is about: Industrially manufactured edible "stuff" that has barely anything to do with the ingredients that allegedly went in.
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Applesauce is processed, chopped carrots are processed, ground beef is processed
You do know that they've found a solution for the problem you mention? Now there is "ultra-processed food" [wikipedia.org].
I fucking hate it. Nutrition is fairly complex, but most of it as it pertains to health is actually pretty easy to wrap your head around. I always try to emphasize the results from nutrition research that are robust and that have some grounding via a causal mechanism instead of the unending stream of food-health correlations and implied associated nutritional advice (saturated fats, salt, etc.).
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For me it is about 90-100 minutes. At that level, I loose weight and get fitter.
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At least someone provided an answer instead of being a snarky pain in the ass. Good on you!
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Yes, 10 km dogwalking every day, and quite high intensity training 2x per week feels like the minimum for my body to not become jelly.
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You can cut this to about 20-30min 3x week if you switch to compound whole body free weight exercise with a small-mid number of reps and heavy weight. People get caught up in the number of calories burned by the exercise and that come directly from the residual burn but that isn't where the biggest benefits come in. This will increase lean mass and while the residual burn is happening there is a multiplier on the calories burned with all other activity... including digesting, going to the bathroom, thinking
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For me it is about 90-100 minutes. At that level, I loose weight and get fitter.
I'm about the same. Summer it's cycling, which I have a hard time restricting myself to less than a few hours at a time, so it's not an issue. In winter, on the treadmill or the rollers? It's hard to hit those numbers. The boredom of sitting in one place pedaling or walking gets mind-numbing.
But yeah, anything less than 90 minutes averaged per day over the week and I'm walking a tightrope weight-wise. More and I lose. Less and I gain.
Re: Okay, great (Score:4, Interesting)
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Okay that's fair, though I have to admit that when I first got in shape years ago it didn't change my eating habits all that much.
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Iâ(TM)m personal experience is that as you get in better and better shape, you stop craving things like soda and processed foods. I went from 315 at my peak to 211. I also run 5 miles multiple times per week.
It's not the exercise. It's the long term change in diet that does that. After a while, processed sweets and overly greasy chips start to taste cloying. They also taste, for lack of a better word, cheap. As in quality.
I live in America (Score:1)
Re:I live in America (Score:5, Funny)
Yes there are busses in the US. I know it for a fact, because there is always, always, always one in front of me whenever I'm in a hurry and no way to push past.
I think it's time to spin a conspiracy around them not actually transporting any people but actually only exist to slow down traffic because someone somehow profits off traffic jams.
Re: I live in America (Score:1)
Truman, is that you?
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There's always the lame bus. [flickr.com]
Moderate to vigorous activity: a 22 minute stroll (Score:4, Funny)
If a stroll counts as moderate to vigorous exercise, I guess walking to the fridge must be light exercise.
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Walking to the fridge and chewing. Don't forget the chewing. You have no idea how tiring this can be, and we have to because our doc said that chewing your food is healthier than just wolfing it down.
And we want to eat healthy, right?
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There are people here who argued even against getting up to turn the lights on, or to make the coffee. Again, I can't remember the moron's name, but he's a regular here.
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I guess walking to the fridge must be light exercise.
It is. My fridge is downstairs. You can actually see on my heart rate monitor the difference between me sitting on my desk and going to the fridge.
If a stroll counts as moderate to vigorous exercise
That depends on the stroll. Your speed, gait, and the area you stroll in can be vigorous enough to put you out of breath. If on the other hand your stroll involves stopping every 5 seconds to smell flowers or something then you're going to get very little exercise at all. The simple act of walking has a well documented and study effect on the risk of heart diseas
Ride a bike, live longer (Score:1)
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Riding a bike in the USA is a great way to get killed. Even with bike lanes it’s incredibly dangerous and not at all worth the risk.
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Riding a bike in the USA is a great way to get killed.
I agree. It's much preferable to dying of Alzheimer's or cancer.
But seriously, it all depends where. I live in NYC and ride 90-180 minutes per day, and each ride spend only about 10 minutes on scary streets. We have some nice bike paths that exclude cars -- though sadly not e-bikes, some of which are getting ridiculously close to being actual motorcycles. (They are technically illegal on the bike paths but there's no enforcement.)
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I think e-bikes should be required to have wi-fi connected controllers to ride on shared pedestrian/bike trails and their max speed is dependent on how crowded the path is, or maybe more simply time of day.
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Just did a 5 mile mountain bike commute to work. Invigorating, My employer should pay me to ride as i work out details on things I am working during that time.
Sounds like correlation and not causation (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps people who are capable of doing 22 mins of exercise are in better health than people who cannot.
It seems to be a meta-analysis, so can't tell if they had randomized trials of people who did 22mins and reduced that to under 22 mins and another group that extended theirs to over 22 mins.
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Or perhaps people who are capable of doing 22 mins of exercise are in better health than people who cannot.
Or perhaps people on Slashdot think they are cleverer than those doing the actual study, mis-read the conclusion which doesn't mention direct causation, all the while not being clever enough to read TFS which says that the study did in fact account for these differences.
Good work Dunning Kreuger.
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Can't be an article about science on slashdot without someone thinking stating 'correlation does not equal causation' is clever. https://xkcd.com/793/ [xkcd.com]
True, dat.
While correlation is indeed not causation, it is the beginning of the search for the proximate cause.
To wit: Some person notes: People who spend more than a minute under water drown!
Internet wag: "That doesn't mean that water causes the drownings, because correlation doesn't equal causation!"
Internet wag thinks that maybe it isn't the water, but the person's green shirt. No, internet wag needs to make up an excuse. So "Correlation does not equal causation" is trotted out.
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Lots of people publish things that are junk science. It's not 'unethical' as long as you truthfully publish your methods.
Of course they do, the question is *why* do you think something is junk science? The very first example from the OP was addressed right in TFS and likely in far more detail in the study itself.
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Of course they do, the question is *why* do you think something is junk science?
Motivated reasoning. It's an effective method of self-deception, I use it all the time.
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Or perhaps people who are capable of doing 22 mins of exercise are in better health than people who cannot. It seems to be a meta-analysis, so can't tell if they had randomized trials of people who did 22mins and reduced that to under 22 mins and another group that extended theirs to over 22 mins.
This guy gets it!
Yes, a person that is in pretty bad shape, and for whom sitting is about all they can do - indeed, that person is much more likely to die. They were closer to death to begin with.
It is a strange thing, but there seems to be some sort of strange idea that if we eat all the right foods, and do the right exercises, then it naturally follows that we shall live forever! Reading through the posts might seem to confirm this. This "study" which I agree reeks of meta analysis, seems to be alon
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This guy gets it!
And so did the people who did the study since they accounted for it. You and the OP are not as uniquely clever as you think.
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This guy gets it!
And so did the people who did the study since they accounted for it. You and the OP are not as uniquely clever as you think.
And you managed to completely miss the thrust of my post - which had very little to do with the people making the study, but how many people would likely react to the study. . Apparently you read and became fixated on the first sentence, and didn't read anything else.
I'll leave it up to others to determine if using insulting language when missing the whole point of a post is ironic or not.
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It is a strange thing, but there seems to be some sort of strange idea that if we eat all the right foods, and do the right exercises, then it naturally follows that we shall live forever!
Ask me how I know you have no idea what a bell curve is.
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It is a strange thing, but there seems to be some sort of strange idea that if we eat all the right foods, and do the right exercises, then it naturally follows that we shall live forever!
Ask me how I know you have no idea what a bell curve is.
Ask me how I know you presumably read what I posted, and managed to miss the main point.
Has nothing to do with bell curves. And it's only related to the actual study, in the way that many, or even most people will interpret it. That you and thegarbz managed to draw wrecked conclusions sort of lends credence to my thesis.
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Truly you have a dizzying intellect.
I hope this is true, but I really doubt it (Score:4, Funny)
I spend more than 20 minutes per day doing single-handed exercises, and based on my inability to push a lawn mower and complete even the back yard without having to stop for rest, I'm sure that this study's results are only valid for 18-21 year old tennis players.
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You should probably see a doctor.
20 MORE minutes... (Score:1)
And correlation isn't causation.
Stop with the click-bait titles.
Possibly partly true... (Score:1)
Intuitively some exercise is a good thing - and days on end without it obviously bad. If you've ever failed to walk your dog, you'll know what I mean.
However, sitting does more than not-exercise you - unless you're very careful, bad posture, wrong heights and whatnot will cause all kinds of joint issues. Such problems are slow and cumulative - that is, one day won't do anything, two days does a little tiny bit, but a few months leads to a bona-fide injury. Those are only partly solved by some exercise, and
Get a dog and eat better (Score:2)
Walk him/her a few times a day for 30 minutes. And cut out the processed foods and refined sugar products.
It's pretty simple.
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Simple...means you are an evil person.
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That's a bad reason to get a dog...
Kind of like getting a kid to save a marriage.
supine (Score:2)
Title. (Score:2)