The standard medical advise right now is that half an hour of moderate exercise, five times a week, is the ideal amount of exercise for health. A recent study with a very large number of participants has shown that that amount is too low:
I feel vindicated here. I’ve long advocated that the recommended amount of exercise was way too little. And just moderate exercise is not hard enough; you need vigorous exercise to get the best benefits. The 600 minutes/week should be the minimum, not the maximum. But then I usually get 150-180 minutes per day. I expect they didn’t have very many people who get more than 600 minutes/week in that study, though.
The article gives a range of 150-600. 600 is an average of almost 86 minutes per day. That’s a huge chunk of daytime if you’re working or caring for children.
Also, few people enjoy exercise to the point of working up to that.
You need to read the article more carefully, because none of this is a valid conclusion from the data in the article. I’ll note also that the headline of the article is quite misleading, when you look at the actual data. There is no link to the original paper, but this is what the article reports:
…
This is how much mortality is lowered compared to no exercise at all:
Moderate activity
Current (short) recommended time = 20-21%
2-4 times as long as current recommendation = 26-31%
Vigorous activity
Current (short) recommended time = 19%
2-4 times as long as current recommendation = 21-23%
…
So the data tell us:
(1) Moderate activity is better than vigorous activity, the opposite of what you assert.
(2) Most of the health benefit is achieved with the short exercise times of the current recommendations. Exercising for longer gives only a small incremental benefit, and from a health perspective is arguably a waste of time, especially for vigorous activity.
Unless I missed it, I don’t see where this was either controlled or peer-matched in order to try to control for confounding variables.
What I mean is:
More leisure time to exercise more may correspond to a higher income, more flexible work schedule, higher rank within an organization (Sapolsky’s work), or maybe ‘just’ having fewer demands and stressors on one’s life
More money may correspond to more regular and/or better medical care
More time spent exercising, more vigorous exercising, may tend to increase the amount of vigilance and diligence about no end of other lifestyle factors besides alcohol and tobacco (eg, a consistently great diet vs. a sporadic or suboptimal diet, organic foods and cleaners, a ‘healthier’ house, more sunshine exposure). Money tends to play an obvious role here, too.
I wouldn’t quibble with the directional findings of the study, but it seems a bit weak in terms of drawing solid conclusions absent that more granular investigation.
(Holding mine) I don’t think that was ever the assertion. The 30 min, five times a week was the minimum to positively impact your health, not the ideal. No one ever suggested that more was worse or even just as good, in my experience.
But in fact, contrary to headline, I would say the conclusion from the data here is that the current recommended times are in fact close to ideal. The incremental benefit from doing double to quadruple the current recommended amount is quite small. Assuming that your time has some value, arguably doing more than the current recommendation is a waste of time. You would be losing far more time doing the extra exercise (unless you enjoy it for its own sake) than you would be adding to your healthy lifespan.
Yeah, I’m not sure any health practitioners claim a given amount of time is ideal. That might depend on goals and whether training for a specific sport. Thirty minutes five times a week is much better than nothing, and the percentage of people who meet this goal is probably only between 10-25% for most age groups in many Western countries (IIRC).
Because exercise is hugely healthy, and most people do not get enough, most doctors would emphasize any exercise which the person enjoys and so is more likely to sustain. The assumption that strenuous exercise is best is not borne out by all studies or may be best for every person - this may be hard on the nervous system and require a lot of rest; many people have limited time and other responsibilities.
Walking and lighter exercises definitely have their place. Strength training and stretching also have benefits. Probably a mix of all different types and levels of strain would be best for most people not specifically training for a given sport.* The more strenuous an exercise is, the harder it is to continue increasing session time. To encourage people to exercise, a lower time is reasonable, especially if one accrues most of the benefits.
For example: one strenuous weight session, one moderate weight session, one stretching class, one or two longer things like jogging, and a short daily walk might be very good for most people.
Thanks for posting the study, I am glad you like the longer times and hope you follow and benefit from this. But you can’t seriously expect everyone to do that, especially when few meet minimum times. If we disagree with you in part, would you prefer we just nod our heads sagely and comment on your genius?
(Then we could perhaps change the board name to Nicely Done, Snowflake! However, this is not my preference. And if you can exercise ten hours a week at high intensity you may or may not be a mighty blizzard. Few adult amateurs could do that.)
Then how about, rather than just vaguely calling people argumentative, you respond to the facts that I pulled out of the article you linked, which contradict your claims? The journalism was poor, but you apparently just accepted the headline uncritically without reading the article in any detail.
Ok. The article says that meeting the guidelines for vigorous activity reduces risk of death by 19x and 2-3x the rexommendation gets you 21-23%. So all those hours away from friends and family and things you want to do gets you ar most 4% extra? Seems like a poor trade off to me.
That is just an absolutely insane number. At my peak fitness, both in high school when I ran distance track and in my mid-30s, I didn’t even get close to those numbers. Half that, maybe. Maybe you meant to also figure in intensity of training. 85 minutes a day would be something like a 12 mile run for me every day in those days. Keeping it moderate (for my shape at the time) would make it like 8 miles a day.
Maybe that’s a bit harsh. I’d say OP accepted the poor journalism at face value, which in the headline and the first few paragraphs presents a misleading picture that is not supported by the data.
But OP certainly has no right to get pissy with people who DO bother to read the entire article more carefully and look at the actual data.
If you’re going to basically write “this study vindicates me” I think you have an obligation to not trust the first few paragraphs of a write up on a scientific regurgitator site. Or at least notice that the second paragraph of said (paid self-promotion?) article also clearly states that the current recommendations are a minimum, torching the strawman in the OP.
Still, I apologize for not taking the time to give a more nuanced reply to the OP and the OP’s follow-up:
[and not in a Josh Hawley way]
)