A new perspective on healthy aging.
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Commonsense
Give me twenty
It was my tunderstanding that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy affects roughly one in 500 people and is primarily a result of genetics. Oâkeefe and lavie did show that it can happen with hyper competitive senior athletes, but is rare.
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@iampops5 âŚAlthough a form of hypertophic cardiomyopathy can develop as a sort of chronic âoveruseâ injury, as you observe, itâs generally found among in the elite, Master AthletesâŚan almost infinitesimally small sector of the population. A bit of a hoot that such an example would be used as a reason not to exercise (with a specific piece of equipment) when all available data suggest that the overwhelming majority of the population doesnât even achieve minimal recommendations for movement.
Funny you should mention OâKeefeâs work as, wouldnât you know, Peter Attia has done a podcast with him as guest plus a follow-up Q&A session on the mechanisms of exercise in preventing premature morbidity/mortality (including but not limited to cardiovascular)âŚalong with the concept of how much is too much. First time Iâd thought of the "reverse J-curve phenom in this contextâŚas in all cause mortality shows a steep decline with increasing fitness/MET expenditure (what youâd expect) followed by a tapering off of the effect and then a small increase. I seem to recall the figure as being something like 2% of the super athletic population (your ultramarathoners etc). As much as Iâd like to pretend to this level of athleticism, such is not the caseđ
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I wont use the treadmill under the desk as I read.
Over exercise has other problems. Family friend a doctor had very high blood pressure as a 21 year old in college. He swam 2 miles a day, weight trained and other things religiously for decades. He has all sorts of horrible conditions now.
I exercise all the time. I am taking it easy. Meaning I go at a nice pace for a guy now entering his 60s. I am not aimed at a sort of high achievement in exercise.
There is another side to this. Cutting calories is more valuable than larger exercise sets. My hunger grows with exercise. I could go a lot harder but do not. I want fewer calories.
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And thatâs a more than adequate answer. When I introduced the idea of the Walking Pad which is Not A Treadmill, it was a simple question. Iâm aware that TMF no longer allows for a simple âNahâ but introducing multiple examples of weird, unrepresentative, allegedly exercise-induced medical conditions to pad the answer out is a bit OTT. Srsly!.
Not sure why you introduce the cutting calories either. There are more benefits to exercise beyond helping the fat become not-fat (irrelevant for me as Iâve never been fat). The move away from a sedentary lifestyle has such a documented reduction in all cause mortality that these Walking Pads seem like a very useful tool for someone whoâs anchored to a desk. Certainly the folk whoâve used them appropriately attest to that.
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VeeEnn,
I am very sure in many ways long term reduced calories for all of us would do more than any amount of exercise for our longevity and our health.
The Noom forum groups were full of people who were into heavy exercise and not paying attention to the calories. It was not working for most of them. I decided from day one follow the nonsense. Those into that were obsessing. Inwardly they had failed before they began.
âMy hunger grows with exercise.â
I experience the opposite. After a hard session such as trail running or xc skiing, I have to remind myself to eat. The metabolism is revved up, and I have more than a few times not ate the rest of the day after those types of sessions. I did a short trail run (5k) yesterday in the late afternoon, did not eat the rest of the day. It may be different for you, but thatâs how I experience it. Have heard the same thing directly from others as well, so itâs not just me.
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We are all somewhat different.
I have major problems with hunger.
Your exercising is excellent. I do a lot. But reign it in.
Cutting calories which you do is even better. I do that as well in my own way.
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âCutting calories which you do is even better.â
I donât want to cut calories, the right thing for me to do is eat something healthy within an hour, but just not feeling hungry, so sometimes it gets skipped. And that is not the optimal thing to do. No big deal, Iâm an American so get plenty of calories, lol.
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In other mammals cutting calories by about 30% leads to much better longevity. It is unstudied in humans. It is expected to be true in humans as well. Even modest cuts in calories are beneficial. As someone who has long been overweight cutting calories has greatly improved my health for the last three years.
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Yes, but they did come up with an exercise âsweet spotâ for runners that was pretty modest - something like 2-5 runs per week, 7:30 - 10 min/mile pace, 30-50 min/run. Running farther and faster rarely kills you, but it also produces no additional benefit in terms of longevity.
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Itâs good to be very sure, itâs even better to be not too sure. Maybe. Whilst for some this is without doubt fairly accurate statementâŚand obviously for someone fat whoâs surrounded by people who are fat (unfortunately a lot of the US and,increasingly, the rest of the world) itâs hard to imagine any other option. However, itâs a false dichotomy for most if looking for optimum health (within the genetic hand oneâs been dealt and allowing that true optimumness might be a bit elusive for all of us)âŚand that doesnât depend solely on an arbitrary number on a scale.
Most folk have probably heard the phrase âskinny-fatââŚi.e. metabolically obese: normal weightâŚwhereby, although a dieter has lost âweightâ down to some pre determined healthy figure, when achieved by calorie restriction alone (and especially without regard to macronutrient profile) the contribution made by loss of lean body tissue oftentimes leaves the dieter barely any better off metabolically. Thatâs why the either/or argument fails.
Now, I donât doubt that the Noomers do a poor job of exercising appropriately (much like your other examples, in fact). Theyâre a pretty much self selected group whoâre willing to part with their $$$bucks for access to a weight loss app because they have a track record of showing an inability to eat rightâŚthereâs no reason to imagine theyâd do a better job with any of their other choices.
Oh yeah. The Law of Diminishing Returns. Thing is, competitive runners donât do more than this because theyâre thinking about longevity. Race times are the driver of that bus. How many folk nattering/reccing posts on this thread do anything like that on a consistent basisâŚweek after week, year after year etc. Iâll wager not very many.
Edit/PSâŚthe Walking Pads I mentioned upstream that might be useful for someone anchored to a desk wonât help much with reaching this theoretical sweet spot. Because theyâre not treadmills, theyâre not engineered to reproduce any running speed close to this. Thereâs an upper limit to the belt speed that Iâve seen advertised around 2.8/3 mph. Barely a shuffle for anyone modestly active but enough to activate something of a muscle pump in those legs to give a modest increase in circulation.
Ahhh. The Power Law (Pareto) distribution strikes again!
80% of the benefits with 20% of the effort.
I like it!
ralph - Donât let âperfectâ be the enemy of Good enough.
Is Law of Diminishing Returns another name for the Power Law principle?
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Apparently, it seems to be. 
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For anyone interested, hereâs the OâKeefe paper mentioned upstream for a bit more context and nuanceâŚ
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I get a lot of gurus and otherwise call the scale number arbitrary. It is a dumb position, unthinking. The number on the scale matters but is a rough number. Asking people to ignore it is just flat out wrong.
Noom handled it by having people weight in every day. The person who weights in every two weeks gets a shock that is very depressing. Daily weighting is bearable.
should be âday one NOT TO follow the nonsenseâ.
If you throw in with a bunch of anything most will fail because that is what all of us have been doing. Most people simply do not change. I was successful not making their mistakes. The big one was exercising to hunger pains. Remember those who were in the program MOSTLY were eating too much to gain the weight. The program asked people to exercise moderately. Instead most of them were obsessing so much they failed again.
I find that an Apple watch is also a good tool for someone who sits at a desk all day. It reminds me every hour to stand up and walk around a bit. It also tracks âstandingâ hours, âmovingâ around calories, and exercise minutes. Itâs pretty nice. At first I thought I would hate it (having not worn a watch for more than 2 decades) and would return it, but instead after 2 weeks I was hooked and I wear it 23 hours a day (it charges during the remaining hour).
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smiling
The fitbit drove me around the bend. I do not want to look at that data. I find there are obsessive layers to thinking that way. My heart will beat or it wont. If it is not beating the fitbit is the last place I want to see what is going on.
Just a sort of note, I do not sit at a desk ever. I work standing some 10 to 12 hours per day. I move constantly. I go for ten minute or longer walks every two hours or less. Not sure how wearing a watch and sitting most of the day helps?
I was taking fish oil about ten years ago. I asked my doctor if it would help. His response mattered. He told me the numbers would be better. Then he said better numbers would be meaningless. The mortality rate would not change. I had to do other things.