So, no, it's not equally accurate to say the opposite is "equally accurate" unless we're playing pedantic games where we ignore the study and pretend it's all just meaningless words.
> Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no. It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.
I like to swap out any of these maybe-headlines with the exact opposite. It may help us, or it may not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
From the article:
> Just five minutes of activity a day was estimated to potentially reduce blood pressure, while replacing sedentary behaviours with 20-27 minutes of exercise per day, including uphill walking, stair-climbing, running and cycling, was also estimated to lead to a clinically meaningful reduction in blood pressure.
Sounds like 5 minutes of exercise is where it has a statistically significant measurable impact in blood pressure, but 20-27 minutes is where it's a meaningful impact.
> More time spent exercising or sleeping, relative to other behaviors, was associated with lower BP. An additional 5 minutes of exercise-like activity was associated with estimated reductions of –0.68 mm Hg (95% CI, –0.15, –1.21) SBP and –0.54 mm Hg (95% CI, –0.19, 0.89) DBP. Clinically meaningful improvements in SBP and DBP were estimated after 20 to 27 minutes and 10 to 15 minutes of reallocation of time in other behaviors into additional exercise. [1]
[1] https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.124.0...
I'd be very skeptical of defending something like high blood pressure. People do the same with high cholesterol. It's a bunch of cope and wishful thinking that they're very different from everyone else who gets heart disease, our #1 killer.
My smart ring detects if there are potential arrhythmia, same with the Apple Watch. Wearables are far more effective at determining heart attack risk than measuring blood pressure which fluctuates in correspondence with your circadian rhythm.
Some cursory googling leads to recent research showing that they do: "According to new research, both high systolic and high diastolic blood pressure can lead to heart attack and stroke." [1]
> HRV results
I feel there is hype over HRV. Mainly a new thing that watches and other monitors can measure, and the number is being hyped. That put aside, the sources I've listened to have concluded that HRV is not really that valuable. Do you know of research showing otherwise? (grant it, some research is good here, for most things medecine and science there needs to be a lot of research. My impression there is a lot of research around blood pressure, thus I am not digging out more sources to show the counter-point).
Then somebody took a sample of people, and measured their body temp and also asked if they were feeling well.
Average among those who felt well was 36.88 °C (98.38 °F) and that was declared normal. (Then in geneal education books it was rounded+shifted and any variation found by the study forgotten)
I found it quite interesting, because I knew normal temp value whole my life, but never even stopped to think where it came from. (I guess in passing thought I imagined that this value was fundamental constant of the universe derived from quantum physics)
My conclusions:
- Studies by necessity are performed on groups on people.
- when it comes to healing an individual, medical knowledge is huge and complex network of rules of thumb (that work on average but there is no such thing as whole medicine field tailored for you)
- there is no better way (listening to your doctor is a good idea)
The NHS doesn't seem (as an outsider looking in) to do well with preventative care. I firmly believe (without necessarily a lot of evidence) that if we focused more on healthy lifestyles and made them more cost effective for people the amount of money we plough into the NHS every year could be reduced drastically.
The UK now has a sugar tax on soft drinks that seems to be having a measurable positive effect. Whether it is a meaningful effect remains to be seen though:
"The findings suggest that a year after the sugar tax was introduced, adults reduced their daily free sugar intake by about 10.9g, and a reduction in soft drinks accounted for over half of this reduction. This translates to a reduction of around 40 calories daily, which if maintained, and assuming no other changes, could lead to 1.5kg weight loss over a year."
https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-the-uks-sugar-tax...
So perhaps instead of exhorting people to do better the state should continue to try to make bad habits more expensive and good habits cheaper.
Ultimately it's down to the patient to put in the work but if the NHS focused more on creating community practices where these things could be more widely available then maybe we should see more meaningful change.
We don't need "more" evidence exactly, but rather a better model of how the effects of exercise map to a given individual's physiology. Exercise is good overall, but it's also considerably overhyped due to a procession of weak and narrowly-applicable results being misconstrued as adding up to a massive pile of benefits that applies to the average person. In reality, the average person does not get anywhere close to the sum of all the touted benefits; they get some constellation of some of the benefits, while other outcomes are flat or even regress [1].
So yes, "exercise is good" at a sufficient level of abstraction, but it's much harder to make the case that it's "good for [specific outcome] for [specific person]". Which is one reason that it's such an obnoxious trend for specific health complaints to be met with generic recommendations to exercise (or exercise more, or exercise differently).
It's not as true in some places in some circles, but it's hard not to notice a difference when you temporarily visit the others.
Of course doing 1 hour a day is better than nothing but it may not be effective
I was about to be put in blood pressure medication. Then I started a gym, with a trainer. I noticed that, after the exercise, blood pressure would immediately drop and stay low for a few hours.
Over time, the amount of time it spent lower than average increased, and it got lower and lower. It crossed 24h.
Now? I can go to the gym Mon/Wed/Fri and it will remain low at all times. I did stop for a couple of weeks and it started creeping back up so it's not a 'cure', but functionally, as long as I keep it up, I have normal BP.
I still have some weight to lose, that can further help things, most likely. And removing sugars also did help since I dropped a lot of liquid I was retaining.
Anybody can spike to 180 in a sufficiently stressful situation. (And, personally, I would very much notice 180. Otherwise calm, I'll probably notice 140.)
[1] https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/1996/10000/Effec...
I have a getting out the door in the morning with my running shoes on habit.
Whatever happens after that is a bonus. The goal is to just step outside in the morning ready for a run.
I still hate it though, but it doesn't take as much effort
I got myself injuries from overtraining for not listening to body already twice. And I was not fit or competitive, anything like that. Just physically average person being more ambitious then is reasonable.
Same thing for food. Trying to switch to a healthier but difficult diet wholesale fails essentially always. But what's relatively easy is finding a healthier alternative to one single thing you eat regularly, that you like just as well. This takes some experimenting, but is usually doable. Then once you've gotten used to the healthier option it becomes automatic.
Then you can replace a single other food, and so on. I think that gradual and sustainable are the most important things to focus on for most people looking for general health improvement.
Bike is getting dusty but pull up bar is great for “well I am passing by, let’s do 3 reps”.
The growing research into how even a small amount of activity can confer significant benefits to the sedentary may be yet another mechanism entirely.
I agree shorter workouts are much easier to stick to though, especially since I'm easily bored.
[1] The results on my running performance, specifically over two miles, weren't clear, by the way. I wasn't running my best times when I started the experiment, nor at the end of it. But at least I didn't get worse despite averaging only six miles per week. I've done much better on 15-25 miles per week with a wider variety of speed work.
For disproportionate benefits, one needs to define which benefits exactly. A max effort will burn a lot of calories quite quickly and potentially increase V02 max (which is highly correlated to overall longevity). Zone 2 training has become popular and has other benefits, notably increases 'fat max' threshold - which gives different benefits (specifically the ability to work harder for longer while still using fat as an energy source for the exercise).
> I found that it's indeed difficult to strike a legitimate 100% effort, even when it's only for 20 seconds and only 5-10 times.
This is essentially the point. At the end of Tabata, the last interval should be the last bit of energy you have in the tank. It should be entirely draining. Doing this routine daily will not allow recovery to then properly do the training well.
FWIW, I heard it paraphrased as this: the body has essentially too modes, hard & easy. When going hard, it only matters how hard you go, not how long. When going easy, it only matters how long you go for, not how hard. At the same time, zone 2 training and HIIT/Tabata are not mutually exclusive in their benefits, but it's more which systems receive the most benefit while other systems in the body receive benefits but to a lesser degree.
Now that I'm quite a bit older, despite maintaining my body weight and two-mile running time since then, I'd probably get hurt if I repeated the experiment.
That is true of any exercise regime with much intensity. For muscular activity: pushing towards anything like your limits technically causes lots of minor damage, which the body repairs back better. If you don't give yourself sufficient recovery time within your weekly routine you miss out on a lot of that benefit because the body's repair/improve systems don't have time to properly do their thing. This is one of the reasons¹ why overtraining injuries are a thing. In terms of cardio this still applies, the heart is a set of muscles. Mentally I think there is a similar effect, but pinning down a cause for this is much more hand-wavy and subjective compared to the far better understood² mechanisms of how the body repairs, regulates, and improves, physical structures.
Some people seem to manage with minimal recovery time, but they are either lucky³, kidding themselves, or storing up issues ready for a big nasty surprise later.
----
[1] Other similar reasons include damage & fatigue in parts of the body other than muscles, and sometimes just being tired to the point of getting form wrong and hurting yourself through that.
[2] though still not entirely understood
[3] I'm counting being young as being lucky here. I'm trying to get back into running and other regular exercise (after a period of illness, looking after family with medical issues, and general burn-out) and the biggest thing getting in the way of improving from here is that I'm now in my mid/late 40s rather than early 30s like last time I was at this level of conditioning!
Walking is one of the best mild exercises, if you can do it in a safe place, where you can't trip or fall into a hole or be mugged (or some other risk), because you can think while walking. So you can use the time to think about your work (if applicable, like for software people, at least in some cases), or your life, or anything else. You can also not think deliberately (although thoughts may come anyway), and just enjoy the walk.
For example, I think about my side projects while walking, and have been surprised to find that I have sometime made good progress on some of them while doing so.
..In the states. Ask people from Amsterdam or Berlin about running out of breath from stairs.
I even remember seeing a study that claimed that people who lived in higher floors with no elevator had in average better cardiovascular health, an easy peasy way to nudge people into the right direction.
I feel terrible with HIIT either way, which means it does work
And I mean, psychologically, the feeling of nearly dying would have been enough to scare me off any exercising had I started with that. Being able to push yourself physically, and enjoying it, is a skill that needs to be learned gradually for most people.
We go on about what's optimal from a raw time perspective, but time slows subjectively when you suffer. So people who don't conceptualize themselves as athletic, they may have insecurities if not outright skepticism, aren't going to last.
You can make a culty cultural glue to get habits to stick (because fitness is all about habits). You can do CrossFit, the social and positive aspects. That encouragement can bring habit and a change of self perception.
But if you're just a self-driven type, and you're dipping your toes in the water, my observations are that whatever is fun (an individual experience) is what you'll be creating a habit with, and time foes quickly. So explore a brunch of things until you encounter fun. Tennis, running club, weightlifting club. Etc.
So my point is that fitness is a problem around how people experience exercise and training, instead of what's optimal in a paper or in terms what's efficient in terms of time.
Was this prematurely dismissive? Maybe, I'm going by the comments.
I have always been thin and tried to start workouts on my own several times over many years, and never could do it, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. Hiring a personal trainer, if you can afford it, is a great way to get over this hump. I quit after a couple of years and workout on my own now, but couldn't have done it without the trainer.
It's not at all obvious that their findings - which became part of Crossfit "religion" - generalize to both sexes, all fitness levels, and all ages.
Basically any time we do a study which asks "Is doing a bit more exercise better for you?" the answer is yes. Like doing a single walk around the block every week is better than doing none. Even five minutes of exercise is better than zero. But obviously these have much less positive impact than several hours of moderate to intense exercise weekly. There are diminishing returns but they don't really kick in until you're already pretty fit, they are only really a concern that athletes need to think about.
So in terms of individual decision making things are really simple. Are you not fit? Do you feel bad? Are your basic markers for this looking bad (blood pressure, weight etc.)? Do more exercise. Do what you enjoy, do it safely, and do as much of it as you can as intensely as is reasonable, and the numbers will go in the right direction. This will put you way ahead of the average American in terms of fitness, it's not until a higher level that things really start to get technical.
Huge guy. Former NFL tight-end. Still very fit.
I notice he only does 1 hour at the gym and then he leaves.
Granted, this is very low quality anecdata.
But seeing how brief his workout is opened my eyes to the benefit of consistency over volume.
Edit: Also, I've been on a 4 day Bukgarian split before and had very good results. If you want proof there is a 30 minute routine that can kick your ass I recommend looking up Ryan Humiston's take on it.
If you bulk up and turn into Hercules over the course of a few years you can scale back your training volume dramatically and as long as you keep your diet right, you will continue to be a jacked and cut dude for many many years.
I'm sure this gets less true as you age but it seems to apply to me in my 40s.
Maintenance is just way easier than the initial buildup.
I discovered this pretty much on accident when I scaled back the volume and intensity of my own training and noticed... Huh would you look at that... Very little changed.
Like on some level, it would be harder to return to the state of roly poly schlub that I was once in, than to continue being the fairly fit person I am now. I just autopilot twice a week to the gym after work, zone out and listen to podcasts for an hour while doing some pretty moderate intensity lifts, and the body stays in pretty decent shape. I barely break a sweat now compared to the first year or two.
When I stop compulsively eating and drinking, when I look for every opportunity to do something as an exercise, I snap out of my [self-diagnosed] depression and malaise in a few days, and feel great.
The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business".
The problem is that the doctor has very little to offer other than to tell people to do that, and the vast majority of people will nod and continue doing whatever they were doing.
When I went to a doctor complaining about low energy, literally the first question was about weight gain and exercising, so I'm not sure where your comment about the pills comes from.
> The doctors rarely tell you to eat your salads. "Here is a pill, thank you for your business"
which makes it appear as even with your “self-diagnoses” you’re under the impression that doctors rarely ask about exercise and diet and then move forward from there. which is the exact opposite of what i’ve seen from a college roommate, a close friend, and an ex who saw multiple different doctors, and each of those doctors first insisted on:
a) find a hobby, dive into it. and,
b) exercise multiple times per week. and,
c) get a nutritionist. and
d) only after those things showed little results would they prescribe SSRIs or other long term drugs.
i promise this isn’t coming down on you, i promise, but, we seem to have a massive trend of confidently wrong people implying they’re smarter than actual doctors or (just about any other subject it seems), they just guess what doctors do and don’t do. and even far more concerning is how often these confidently wrong people issue blanket advice to randoms online as if they’re at all qualified and as if they know any of the important intricate details of the randoms they’re advising.
we desperately need to get back to a place where people can confidently say “i don’t know” again. we’re (including myself) too desperate to chime in even if we’re woefully ill equipped.
maybe every secondary-university semester everyone should get a refresher session on the most basic ass socrates/plato: the smartest person is the one who knows, understands, and admits about how much they are ignorant.
I'm guessing you are in the US? There is a lot of medical advice here (UK, and Europe more widely) which is essentially “eat better and move around more”. A great many don't listen to that, but it is definitely said.
> When I stop compulsively eating and drinking [and do some] exercise
This is a key issue: not what doctors are prescribing but what people do to self-medicate. The harmful side of self-care when “a bit of what you like does you good” becomes overconsumption and underactivity. It can be even worse for those of us with significant mental issues over the norm (bit of a bipolar pillock myself, got a piece of paper saying so & everything, and like you describe with depression I find the right exercise, while not at all a panacea, helps regulate my mind quite a lot as well as stopping my body falling apart).
That's because advice like this is useless. Everyone knows they should eat more vegetables, you need someone to guide you through habit formation, which is not what the doctors are for.
Bear in mind that for many people therapies like SSRIs and weight loss medications (or even counselling/therapy) can get them into the right mental and physical place to start doing more exercise and eat better.
It's easy to advise people to eat well and exercise, but it can be a bit like telling a miserable person with a migraine to smile more. Improve the underlying issue artifically, then they can have a better chance of starting the natural things. Doctors do need to do both, though, merely handing out medications without encouraging the next step is irresponsible IMO.
If someone's hit the point where they're thinking "I'd rather be dead than leave the house", improving their mental health by any means necessary should be the first step. But not everyone should be given pills as the first option and many doctors are guilty of such laziness (over prescription of opioids and antibiotics are other examples of this – some patients urgently need them, most don't).
Would only change "This will put you way ahead of the average American in terms of fitness, it's not until a higher level that things really start to get technical." striking out "American", just because it works everywhere.
Unfortunately, it's people at both ends of the fitness curve that have to be careful about increased exercise frequency/intensity. On the less-fit side, the primary concern is accumulating minor injuries that reduce capacity for exercise even further leading into a downward spiral.
The car centric lifestyle seems like such a prison.
Motivation certainly, but if we accept the results of the study, you really don't think you can find 5 minutes of time in your day to walk up some stairs or do some jump rope?
It's like that classic sedentary worker ailment of the sore back. Many people take this as a sign to rest more, but these types of issues are often caused by weak musculature and the best thing to do is start resistance training. Obviously not a blanket solution, but one that definitely seems overlooked.
Doing so very carefully!
I will agree though. Before going on a long cross-state bike trip, I had some back issues and was cramming in work (too much sitting). I went out with lower back pain, resolved itself after a few days of riding for most of the day.
I very much agree that counter-intuitive behavior is often what is called for. The exercise or sedentary habits are habits. They really become normal one way or the other quite quickly.
Is there anything that will convince you this isn't true for all (perhaps not even most) people?
The right type of exercise matters. I've often gone on bouts of cardio on a treadmill for months at a time (multiple times a week - at least 30 minutes each session). It never ceased to suck.
I can do a hike and never feel bad. But a treadmill or cycling device? Always feels bad. I hope it benefits me in the long run, because it definitely reduces the quality of life on days I do it.
My only real hope is to find some other kind of cardio that doesn't annoy as much.
I would experiment at least, there are things. A good instructor in an aerobics class can also help, although I find that too hit or miss to be sustainable.
As I've said here several times: the best exercise is the one you'll stick with over the long haul.
Put another way: anything you'll still be doing in 2026 is better than anything else you'll quit before next Memorial Day.
Rule of thumb is that your systolic blood pressure will drop by 1 mmHg per 1 lb of weight loss, eventually slowing down to 1 mmHg per 2 lbs of weight loss as you get back down to more normal blood pressure range / weight range.
Source: went from 160/110 to 120/90 in several months by dropping 60 lbs.
For what it's worth, I'm on a intermittent fast. I only eat between 5pm to 10pm, with no real restrictions on what I eat. I was surprised how quickly weight fell away, and how easy a diet it was to stick to. 'Eat after work' was a simple behavior to adapt to.
People are very individual, and this might not work for a lot of people, but it's doing great for me. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life on blood-pressure drugs.
I think the usual window is 8 hours, so people should first try eating between lunch and dinner, say 12PM-8PM.
A lot of people eat breakfast out of habit, and I found that once I got older, I just stopped needing it. It made me bloated and sluggish. You just don't need that many calories per day when you stop growing or not working in construction.
However, high blood pressure and weight are not as simple as one might think.
My friend has had problems with blood pressure since his 40s, but he is not overweight at all and has never been. He exercises at least weekly.
I am 60, at least 15 kgs overweight for the last 20 years (not obese), but my blood pressure is very good. I have always excercised daily, often for 1 - 2 hours, but at low intensity. Nowadays even lower because I have knee problems. Probably lower weight would have helped with those.
but if it ever comes out with a surplus, I'll turn on a dime (and turning on a dime for 5 minutes a day probably lowers blood pressure)
My point, that there's a cost to all this that might not get repaid, is a fresh take that you never see unless you've read one of my other comments making the point.
This is the part that we know is false. The benefits outweight the costs. But fine, suffer if you want.
So sure I might have gone fishing a bit to respond to a random HN comment but the data is out there and you have a brain.
Doctor never prescribed any drugs but told him that he had to start exercising. Signed up for judo class. He couldn't believe the amount of exercise he got from the warm up alone. Been doing judo 3 days a week for 20 years now. Haven't had any heart or blood pressure issues since.
My long term avg blood pressure varies with weight. It's lower when I lose weight, higher when I gain weight.
I guess generalising health advice isn't necessarily useful. Health advice should be tailored to individuals, instead.