On Exercise and Laugh Expectancy
Medical journals, the Lancet among them, are not famed for their humor, but a letter in a recent edition of the latter raised a smile, at least in me.
It referred to a previous paper in that august publication from Taiwan about the health benefits of exercise. It is a medical truth now universally acknowledged that regular exercise prolongs human life, but it is not known what is the smallest amount of exercise that will have such an effect.
Between 1996 and 2008, the Taiwanese researchers divided 416,175 people into five categories, according to the amount of exercise, on self-report, that they did: from none to a lot. They discovered that those who did a little exercise, on average 92 minutes per week, had a reduction of 14 percent in their all-cause rate of mortality. They also found that “every additional 15 minutes of daily exercise beyond the minimum of 15 minute per day further reduced all-cause mortality by 4 percent.”
The subsequent letter to the Lancet pointed out that this cannot be correct: for if it were correct, and on the assumption that the relation between exercise and longevity were a causative one, Man would be immortal if only he did sufficient daily exercise, something in the region of six hours. In these circumstances, at least in my opinion, life would not actually go on forever; it would merely seem as if it did, in the sense of being boring and pointless.
Exercise is not about living longer – it is about living better.
Fitness makes it easier to enjoy life and makes life worthwhile, longer.
Mind you, the actual “exercise” part itself is pretty miserable… But it is better than being a wheezing semi-mobile lump.
I disagree about the actual exercise part being “miserable”: I do enjoy it, and I have a secret (shhhhh !!!) I put in the CD player some nice audio book (99% of time, the Lord of the Rings unabridged) and there I go with my work out in Middle Earth…
Sherab, a small percentage of people find exercise to be fun and stimulating but for the vast majority of us, it is a tedious, mind numbing, hideous way to spend our time.
One delightful element gleaned from exercising is how it feels so good to stop. Seriously. Post target heart rate for 20 min. or longer, with the muscles all warmed up & loosened up yields a really nice feeling of strength & well being. JMO.
If you are just getting back in shape, expect it to be hard and miserable for 3-5 weeks.
If it’s still not enjoyable after that, you are doing something wrong.
Beg to differ. I am 90 years old, have survived a triple bypass, and W.W.II leg wounds that gave me a permanent foot-drop, but still look much younger than my years. I swim 1000 meters at a time and lift weights and dread every minute of it. Boring, boring. I often wonder if it is worth it, to live a long time, if you have to spend that time lifting weights or staring at the bottom of a cold swimming pool. I think I stick around out of sheer orneriness. But don’t mind me. I don’t want to spoil masochists’ fun.
Same method, different tool. I have my Kindle read to me, at least when I’m on the bike, or treadmill.
That only makes it LESS miserable.
The reward is when you hit the sauna or the whirlpool – if you have enough time. I can soak for an hour or more…
Since I discovered swing dancing, my exercise has been fun.I wish that I had time to do it more than 2-3 times per week.
All very true when the only issue is length of life. Quality of life is extremely important, and I say this as someone up in years with health issues that have been significantly improved with regular exercise. I don’t enjoy the time spent exercising, but it it well worth it for improving my overall health.
I recognize that the choice to exercise or not is a personal one and should not be made into a moral issue by the nanny state.
Thanks for this excellent common sense article.
Wow, I’ll get to spend another few years in a nursing home at the end of my life. What fun.
http://beatingyourselfatyourowngame.tumblr.com/
I thought you might appreciate this!
Yeah, Libertyship – choose not to exercise, be a ‘wheezing semi-mobile lump’ (per HtH above) & die a slow, agonizing death in a nursing home, and in the process, be a burden on society – good plan. A better plan is to exercise, enjoy quality time while you’re here, and have it all end quickly.
Stay active & moving – walk, jog, run, bike, swim, aerobics, weights/machines, doesn’t matter – or atrophy away. Your choice.
Yes indeed! I remember reading somewhere that when doctors are asked how they would prefer to die, the most popular option is a sudden massive heart attack. One brief burst of pain, and you’re out like a light, done. All that exercise will do for you is greatly lessening the odds of this happening…
This is probably what happened to Kleobis and Biton, and – much more recently – to Andrew Breitbart.
And let’s completely ignore physiological variability among human beings so we can be smug. Your body may “atrophy away” if you spend your afternoon doing something more interesting or worthwhile than destroying your knees and getting skin cancer jogging in the sun, but other human beings’ bodies may not.
It’s demonstrable that if one exercises every day for 200 years, one will live 200 years.
That’s irrefutable.
It may be irrefutable, but I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate it
Two hours of aerobic exercise per week nets me about 14 hours alive-and-awake time per week. Egoscue exercises have gotten rid of pain that inhibited the use of my back, a knee, and a foot. Strength exercises give me the figure to attract male attention.
My opinion is that exercise is not guaranteed to prolong your life, but no exercise will almost certainly shorten it. Once you get your pre-approved scooter and handicap tag, it’s a short, quick slide to the Pearly Gates.
It is important to find an active activity that you enjoy and if it requires a little extra exercise that is less enjoyable to help you enjoy your main activity, all the better.
Exercise is a waste of time. What’s not a waste of time? The thing you have to do. If you’re lucky enough to have such a thing you actually have a life, as opposed to an existence stretched out (perhaps) by exercise.
“Exercise is a waste of time.”
Among the most ridiculously absurd things I have read lately. Whether you like it or not, regular exercise is good for the mind & the body.
Dr: stop smoking, stop eating anything that tastes good, stop sex , stop drinking and you will live 100 years
Patient : 100 year for what?
Thew man that created jogging died at 54 running a marathon.. seven years older than his smoking father
Exercise in a gym is pointless. You do not get 10 extra years as an 18 year old. You get 10 extra years to wear diapers. Do hard, physical work throughout your life. It has double the beneficial effects. Your body gets a workout and you accomplish something. Tend a garden for 3 hours when you get home from the office, build houses, put on roofs and other stuff like that in your spare time as your exercise. Every 60 year old should be a framing carpenter for 5 years to retirement. I know I’m a crank but gym exercise is a total waste. Unless, of course, you are there for the fillies. In which case it’s not a waste of time.
Good comment; much better to expend energy in the pursuit of a tangible and achievable task. However, given our urban lives, not everyone has access to a garden, or the skills or opportunity to frame a house. Still, whenever possible, I try to exercise by actually achieving something concrete — in the end, it’s much more satisfying…
Or, you could have a lifestyle that does not require you to be behind a desk 8 to 14 hours a day. Since I stopped being an System Enterprise Management guru and started raising goats and rabbits and taking care of our 80 acres, I get exercise – and I get it because the critters depend on me. I have slowly lost some weight, but I am so much stronger because I walk the fence line, explore the woods, and chase the kids who have gone astray.
It is so much more fun and natural to get exercise this way instead of going to a gym and walking on a treadmill or stairstepper or eliptical thingy every day for an hour.
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. – Red Foxx
Beth, you have hit on the answer. Strength is the key to a more comfortable living later in life. I prefer to take at least the minimum effort required not to be a hunched over old skeleton. My length of life is likely fated by genes (or fate, i.e. accidents), but quality in life in late life can be massaged. (I wonder if also the life you live now is also simply more fulfilling).
Exercise follows the power law. As the experiment above shows, it’s the first 15 minutes that really matter. If only people realized how little exercise they needed or that it not be the boring rat on a wheel kind that most conceive.
“. . . medical truth now universally acknowledged . . .”. Whenever I read a phrase like that, I lose interest. Personally, I think exercise probably shortens life, but may make what years you have more productive. But perhaps there is a small amount of exercise that could actually prolong life. At any rate, maybe the rest of the universe acknowledges this medical truth, but I don’t. I guess I’m outside the ‘verse.
So, if I understand your math, if I exercise enough every day I will become immortal.
Good to know.
Still, it’s not worth it.
My in-laws are all pushing the high end of their eighties. They were never overweight, always fit, hard workers, never overindulged in anything. And yet, today, they are in such bad shape physically and emotionally, I do not want to be them. Quality of life, yes. Quantity, not so much.
I generally refuse to acknowledge ANYTHING that is universally acknowledged!!!
That said, I admit that I exercise because I’m personally persuaded by the apparent facts that I personally NEED to “exercise” in an artificial manner because my job as an accountant is just too darned sedentary. I walk and lift weights; I’d engage in sport if it was convenient but I won’t go out of my way for it. I don’t run/jog anymore because I think it’s too hard on my feet and joints. I have no idea if I’ll live longer; I just know intuitively that sitting on my rear end all day is physiologically problematic. No need to make a big federal case out of the issue, is there?
It has been my experience that darn few females over the age of 16, and even fewer males of any age can look really good in a bathing suit without getting a significant amount of whole-body muscular exercise. Weight training will suffice; so will jazz dancing.
And after age 50, completely sedentary people find themselves increasingly unsuited to the ordinary demands of daily life — whether we’re talking about moving the furniture, carrying suitcases, opening jars, bringing in the groceries, changing a tire, or shoveling the snow off the driveway. Eventually, by eighty they may need to be pushed through the airport in wheelchairs.
Mr. Stephen Ryan and everybody else:
But why does one have to do boring exercise like swimming and weight-lifting?
Why cannot one play some kind of ball game with friends, ride a bike fast and enjoy the speed, climb a mountain and enjoy the vista, dance, engage in martial arts and enjoy the thrill of combat etc.?
My experience about the healthiness of exercise: if I do not tire myself out with exercise, I need to tire myself out with alcohol. That is surely less healthy.