
Exercise should be kept to a healthy minimum - havella
http://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/10/2/100
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brianwawok
Well, find some 70 year olds near you that never exercised, and find some
runners / triathletes. Choose which 70 year old you would rather be, and use
that to chart your own path.

~~~
smegel
Find some 20 years old cars, one with 200,000 miles on the clock, one with 20.
Which would you choose?

~~~
AppeasingRoko
Humans aren't cars...? Don't use an analogy unless it has a logical basis.

~~~
ldp01
Parts of the analogy are certainly correct...

Mechanical parts wear out from use, whether they are animal or machine. Animal
parts will heal to an extent and may require a minimum level of use to stay
healthy, but they still wear out.

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tomq
This study is completely disconnected from biological reality. Exercise is the
only general-purpose life-extending intervention we know of with certainty.
See for yourself:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise)

~~~
interfixus
" _Some studies indicate that exercise may increase life expectancy and the
overall quality of life_ "

Or, as some would have it, "with certainty".

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NikolaeVarius
Science has finally validated my life choices to sit inside a air conditioned
room, lights on, windows covered, minimal physical activity, doing things that
don't require brain power.

~~~
copperx
> doing things that don't require brain power

For a moment I thought that you were going to be either programming or
reading.

~~~
tpeo
Depends on what kind of programming or reading. Writing out boilerplate code
or just skimming text don't seem to require much brain power. Neither does a
task which one is so used to that it becomes "effortless".

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DrScump
... to _minimize entropy_.

Is there a proven cause-and-effect relationship to actual mortality?

Was this ever peer-reviewed?

(2007 study)

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batiudrami
This [1] is a study which attempts to quantify the diminishing returns of
exercise. Compared to no exercise, people who do 1-2 times the recommended 75
minutes of weekly intense exercise or 150 minutes of moderate exercise have a
31% lower chance of death across a median 14 year follow up period. Those who
complete 2-3x the recommended amount had 37% lower and 3-5x a 39% lower
chance. There was no sign of negative effects of 5-10x the recommended amount,
however no additional benefit either.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25844730)

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JumpCrisscross
> _The entropy generated predicts a life span of 73.78 and 81.61 years for the
> average U.S. male and female individuals respectively, which are values that
> closely match the average lifespan from statistics (74.63 and 80.36 years)._

Can...this be changed?

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JabavuAdams
Why do I want to minimize biological entropy? What does this mean?

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failrate
I work out with a serious body builder and a serious power lifter. Both of
them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get the
greatest benefit.

~~~
matwood
> Both of them are engaged in minimizing the amount of exercise they do to get
> the greatest benefit.

Absolutely! I can only go full effort lifting for maybe 45 minutes. After that
I'm just going through the motions.

Another thing to remember is that gains do not come while you're in the gym.
The gains happen during the rest periods between workouts, so resting is just
as important as the workout.

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Aron
I'm perfectly willing to believe it. From an Occam's razor perspective,
exercise most directly and clearly _is_ wear and tear. Stories about how the
body overcome and benefits from that are more complicated, hence more likely
wrong.

~~~
3131s
I don't see it as wear and tear. If you exercise correctly, everything from
your bones, tendons, ligaments, and muscles will become stronger. The
athleticism and strength that come from exercising will be beneficial for
aging people in preventing and recovering from accidents. Not to discount the
possibility of harmful effects, but the other benefits of intense exercise
(especially cognitive health benefits) are easily worth it for me.

~~~
Aron
It's two separate things. The exercise is most directly damaging. The repair
and improve process is a response. Our experience with things like bench press
shows the response generally works on the measure of lifting iron. However,
it's simpler and more demonstrable that exercise damages all your parts, than
the theory that all your parts can be repaired and improved. Hence perhaps
arthritic wear and tear, or damage to some part of the heart, etc.

~~~
AppeasingRoko
An entirely sedentary lifestyle has incredibly high mortality. Similarly so
for extreme exercise/steroid abuse.

By definition, there is a point in between which maximises longevity on
average. This may not be the same as the point which maximises quality of
life.

How exactly does exercise "damage all your parts"? You need proof to back up
that bizarre claim. Humans are evolutionarily designed to be long distance
athletes.

~~~
candiodari
A LOT of functions of your body work by simply accepting damage and working
around it. That's how your muscles build strength: first cells overexert
themselves and a portion of them die. If this happens a few times the other
cells will overcompensate while replacing them and you become stronger, up to
a point.

Both processes have both short term and long term cost and accelerate
senescence. More cells need more replacing under normal circumstances and this
is limited by your genes. The absolute number of cells that will ever get
replaced in your muscles is strictly limited in what is probably a measure
against cancer. So increasing strength in muscles brings the day you get
cancer forward. Not by much.

To a point this can be a worthwhile trade off, as it improves other aspects of
your body.

But if you need or use food additives, or, god help you, steroids, you're far
past that point.

In the short term over exerting muscles releases toxins, and over taxes your
liver, heart, sometimes lungs, pancreas, and more. Needless to say this can
trigger problems, and cause cell death in those organs too.

And lastly physically stressing your body can and will of course damage it.
Even when there aren't large scale injuries there is damage. Any exercise will
cause blood vessel ruptures. Will cause cell deaths due to crushing. It will
bend or reshape your bones. Minimally, but nonzero. Of course, having a bmi of
35 will do cause more of this stress.

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nitins
What will be the definition for this healthy minimum?

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jimmywanger
There is so much wrong with this article.

I don't think anybody has a unit for entropy.

They are falling a fallacy.

Just because you entered the world, you have increased entropy. Every time you
eat, you increase entropy.

I can't believe this got published.

~~~
threepipeproblm
Good thing you don't decide what gets published, then. The paper is cited by
29 other papers. And...

"Entropy is an extensive property. It has the dimension of energy divided by
temperature, which has a unit of joules per kelvin (J K−1) in the
International System of Units"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy)

