
How to Gain or Lose 30 Minutes of Life Every Day  - danso
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-gain-or-lose-30-minutes-of-life-everyday
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mwsherman
Keep in mind that life expectancy is a statistical notion. Something specific
is going to kill you. You won’t die or live 30 minutes longer or shorter as a
result of a cigarette or a meal many years in the past.

Rather, these behaviors are correlated with outcomes, and average to 20 or 30
minutes or whatever. This sort of daily accounting is misleading.

Similarly, the notion that we are living longer largely has to do with less
infant mortality. Specific people are not dying at birth that otherwise would
have, pushing up the expectancy. Someone else’s not-dying-at-birth hasn’t made
you healthier.

Now, is the “20 minutes a day” thing a noble lie, to encourage good behavior?
Perhaps. But that should be put to scientific scrutiny too: to what degree
have people changed their behavior due to these notions, and what’s the
outcome?

Can I add two years to my life by regularly reading pop-sci recommendations?

~~~
danielweber
Exercising for 20 minutes a day to add 60 minutes to my life sounds like a
good plan.

I wonder if other things are reproducible. Is the "1 alcoholic drink" thing
been replicated when correcting for income? Lots of rich people may have 1
drink a day, and so this pushes up the average of the "1 drink a day people",
but it doesn't mean you can replicate it.

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aes256
I've always hypothesised alcohol consumption is largely independent of income.

At both ends of the wealth spectrum you find people drinking far more alcohol
than is healthy, just in different forms.

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danielweber
Yes, but what group of people drinks exactly 1 drink a day?

I'm aware this could be a just-so story I've explained to myself.

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maaku
I do. I usually have one glass of alcoholic drink with dinner (beer or wine,
depending on the food). I don't often drink when I go out, except on special
occasions.

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JshWright
The fact that you 'go out' (especially often enough to distinguish between
'normal' occasions and 'special' occasions) puts you pretty firmly in the
'wealthy' class (at least as far as most of the world is concerned), and the
other implications of your class will likely contribute to a longer life than
someone who is less well off.

So, will you live longer _because_ you have one drink a day, or is the fact
that you're able to have one drink a day simply a byproduct of a lifestyle
that will naturally lead to a longer life?

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maaku
Uh, no. "Go out" simply means "attend social event."

You're telling me that a young man in the poorest part of Africa doesn't "go
out" with his buddies now and then?

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JshWright
In the context, 'go out' clearly meant 'go out to meals at restaurants where
alcoholic beverages are the social norm.'

Yes, I'm absolutely telling you that a significant portion of the world does
not have the resources to do that (even 'now and then').

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boothead
Again with the red meat?! Is there actually a real study that has established
a causal relationship between eating meat and living shorter?

~~~
Zimahl
I'm not a big fan of the overweight argument either. If I can find it, I read
an article just the other day[1] that said there was no expectation of
untimely death from being in a BMI that is considered 'overweight'. So there
is no lost time there. And a couple drinks a night isn't going to cost you any
time either.

[1] [http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-overweight-
surviv...](http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-overweight-
survival-20130102,0,7418358.story)

~~~
dredmorbius
BMI is an absolute crap metric. It's vaguely useful for populations (and even
there serious objections have been raised). It's utterly inappropriate for
individuals, particularly when ready alternatives exist (waist size, for
example, is a more robust predictor, despite its own vagaries).

For individuals, BMI suffers in that it generally understates obesity in
unfit, but "BMI-compliant" individuals, while overstating obesity in fit, BMI-
noncompliant individuals. Which means that interventions are _not_ indicated
for those who would benefit and _are_ indicated for those who would not.

Generally, there's also the issue that there are large natural variations in
healthy human weights, and no single target or designator will be appropriate
for all. Fitness is multidimensional, and any attempt to reduce it to a single
metric will likely fail.

My lay recollection is that slightly higher-than-prescribed BMI is positively
associated with greater life expectancy. Rationales vary, but among them, sick
or ill individuals typically have lower-than-average bodyweights (skewing life
expectancy down for low BMI scores), and athletes typically have elevated
BMIs. Studies of Scandinavian Olympic athletes shows a pronounced lifetime
mortality benefit to having competed in games (which tends to balance out the
notoriously poor life expectancies of US professional athletes, particularly
football, many associated with cumulative injuries sustained).

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casca
This is might be a helpful way to get people to care about making small,
incremental improvements but the scientific basis is suspect.

There is no evidence that 20 minutes of exercise adds an hour to your life.
Taking the aggregate information around years and dividing it into days is not
a meaningful operation and I'm sure that Spiegelhalter knows that as he says
that this method of displaying the data "seems to resonate with people".

As an aside, I've heard Dr Spiegelhalter regularly contributing to More or
Less[1] and he seems to be a well informed scientist.

[1] <http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qshd>

~~~
thyrsus
I'll assume these figures apply to only established daily patterns.

I find exercising lonely, painful, boring, and stupidity inducing - although I
completely believe others obtain opposite results. If I had a choice for
myself between exercising for 20 minutes, then dying, or dying immediately,
I'd choose the latter.

The non-exercising part of my life is spent pleasantly or sleeping, so I see a
net gain of 27 minutes ((60 minutes life extension - 20 minutes exercising) *
2/3(awake factor)) for the first 20 minutes/day of exercising, but a net 7
minute loss for the next 40 minutes ((30 minutes life extension - 40 minutes
exercising) * 2/3(awake factor)).

Am I using these numbers correctly?

~~~
sliverstorm
Even if you don't like exercise, it isn't necessarily a loss. Have you
considered the potential quality-of-life improvements you could enjoy during
the time you aren't exercising? E.g. better mood, better health, more
energy/vigor.

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drucken
Silly system. Takes very broad and multivariable dependent statistics and
tries to parse them down to micro lifestyle criteria.

Red meat is a perfect example. There are no convincing studies that
demonstrate that it as an independent factor reduces life expectancy. If
anything, quite the opposite is true, based on previous generations or the
health of populations where red meat is very heavily consumed but suffer few
other adverse major health factors.

~~~
mmanfrin

      Takes very broad and multivariable dependent statistics and tries to parse them down to micro lifestyle criteria.
    

That's the point.

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csmeder
I have a hard time believing I could start smoking 1 cigarette per an hour if
I stood at my desk instead of sat, and the bad (smoking) would be balanced out
with the good (standing)?

Is sitting really that bad? Or is smoking really not that bad?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Sitting really is that bad.

I have a script on my work computer that runs once every hour, reminding me to
get up and making suggestions on things I can do: make some tea, do some
situps, do some pushups, do some leg lifts, go up and down the stairs, take a
walk around the block, and so on.

I lack self-discipline but am very obedient, so it has been extremely
successful for me.

~~~
quickpost
Mind sharing your script? I'd love to have something similar.

~~~
Flimm
For Ubuntu, try this: [http://askubuntu.com/questions/63999/how-can-i-install-
typin...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/63999/how-can-i-install-typing-break)

~~~
quickpost
Thanks! I found a good free one for OS X as well:

<http://www.dejal.com/timeout/>

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arctangent
These articles always seem to ignore quality of life - they assume that more
life is necessarily a better thing. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that an
extra ten years of life isn't much to look forward to if your mental and
physical faculties are degraded to the point that you're a shadow of your
former self. Better to burn out than fade away...?

~~~
kscaldef
You're assumption is that you get a fixed amount of functional life, followed
by a variable amount of less- or non-functional life. OTOH, you might get a
variable amount of functional life, followed by a more-or-less fixed amount of
non-functional life. In general, I think the second option more closely
matches how we understand aging and disease.

(Also, watch the TED talk by the referenced professor. He doesn't ignore
quality of life.)

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notsosmart
Spiegelhalter's TED talk about this subject is quite good.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4LSbnEgvmG8)

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lostlogin
Prior to reading the article I thought it was going to be about the way
smokers get an hourly break of 5 mins at work while non-smokers don't. That's
always an interesting subject.

~~~
clauretano
Would your employer prevent you from going outside for 5 minutes every hour?

That actually sounds like a great idea. Once an hour, head down to the street
and walk a couple blocks.

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lostlogin
I'm sure they wouldn't mind - the timing would obviously be dependent upon
business but that isn't a consideration for the smokers I work with, they just
leave their colleagues to take up the slack.

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ricardobeat
Scientific American's website is riddled with ads. Can AdBlock get rid of
those full-page intermissions? I might finally install it.

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tolos
Yes, except for the tweet/+1/reddit/others floating bar.

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ZoFreX
Adblock can do them too! You can either add them manually or subscribe to a
filter that has them all already - I use "Fanboy's Annoyance List".

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wheelerwj
Its the comments that are the best part of that article. Wow.

