Does exercising really make you live longer?

[Yousif]

On 3/19/2024 at 7:20 AM, UnbornTao said:

I mean, the alternative doesn't.

You have no idea how many times being lazy have saved my life, 

I remember a time back when I lived in iraq, I got lazy and didn’t go to school, was spared from dying in a car bomb because of this decision. 
 

being healthy, active, not lazy, will not necessarily make you you live longer. 

[Yousif]

On 3/19/2024 at 10:47 AM, Carl-Richard said:

Only if you don't know what you're doing and you over-exert yourself (or if you intentionally over-exert yourself despite knowing the negative consequences).

More muscle mass requires the heart to work harder, even when you walk your heart will beat as if you’re jogging.

[Heaven]

It’s good to question the norms. It’s nice that someone is trying to question such a popular belief. 
I observed people that do workout and do not. 
When you exercise it builds a healthy momentum in other aspects of life.(Nutrition, sleep, stress levels).

Overall I would definitely go with working out than not to. 

Longevity is overrated. Vitality is underrated.

[Carl-Richard]

On 30.3.2024 at 2:25 PM, Yousif said:

More muscle mass requires the heart to work harder, even when you walk your heart will beat as if you’re jogging.

Depends how you define "jogging". I'm a decently muscular individual; I measured my heartrate at 95-115 BPM while walking outside for 10 minutes (at a slight incline and after a large meal in the middle of the day), which is completely normal. But I get your general point.

However, less muscle mass requires your muscles to work harder, so when you walk, your heart will beat "as if you're jogging".

Both statements are true in isolation, but they're only parts of the story. It's all about balance. However, my point is that this balance is not maintained by being a 21st century sedentary couch potato. It's simply the case that some exercise makes you better at handling everyday life, and that impacts your health and longevity.

Besides, it's really hard to put on an amount of muscle that is systemically unhealthy without taking anabolic steroids and eating like 6000 calories every day. Building and maintaining muscle is an expensive activity that your body does sparingly. It takes a lot of tinkering with the system before your body decides to crush itself under its own weight in muscles.

[Yousif]

21 hours ago, Heaven said:

It’s good to question the norms. It’s nice that someone is trying to question such a popular belief. 
I observed people that do workout and do not. 
When you exercise it builds a healthy momentum in other aspects of life.(Nutrition, sleep, stress levels).

Overall I would definitely go with working out than not to. 

Longevity is overrated. Vitality is underrated.

You can live however you want.

[Yousif]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

However, less muscle mass requires your muscles to work harder, so when you walk, your heart will beat "as if you're jogging".

 

You clearly haven’t been skinny before lol, your heart or muscles will not work harder since all you’re carrying is bones 

[Yousif]

1 hour ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

exercise makes you better at handling everyday life, and that impacts your health and longevity.

 

Yeah, it may help you live longer if you go walk or jog twice a week, I don’t think becoming a gym rat or an athlete will necessarily make you live longer.

[Carl-Richard]

On 30.3.2024 at 2:11 PM, Yousif said:

the only reason your resting heart rate will go this low is because you’re extremely fit and active, and to maintain that you’re gonna  be a working out your heart day in and day out

I guess I have to spell out the earlier calculation then:

Let's assume one person is decently healthy and is physically active 60 minutes 3 times a week and another person is never physically active.

The physically active person works out 60 * 3 = 180 minutes every 7 days (and 7 days = 60 * 24 * 7 minutes = 10080 minutes). That adds up to 180 / 10080 = 0.0179 = 1.79% ≈ 2% of their life spent working out. Let's also assume the physically active person has 50 BPM resting heart rate while the inactive person has 100 BPM.

Now answer me this: how can being physically active for 2% of your life while having a 50 BPM resting heart rate for 98% of your life, be worse for longevity than being physically active for 0% of your life but having a 100 BPM resting heart rate for 100% of your life?

This is impossible if it's the amount of heart beats that is bad for longevity. If it's not the amount of heart beats, then you would have to make the case that it's the "type" of heart beats associated specifically with physical activity that is bad for longevity.

Edited March 31 by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

50 minutes ago, Yousif said:

Yeah, it may help you live longer if you go walk or jog twice a week, I don’t think becoming a gym rat or an athlete will necessarily make you live longer.

Based on the assumption of amount of heart beats, unless the athlete or gym rat spends 50% or more of their life exercising (which nobody does), I severely doubt that.

Edited March 31 by Carl-Richard

[Yousif]

7 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Unless the athlete or gym rat spends 50% or more of their life exercising, I severely doubt that.

That’s what gym rats and athletes do  that’s what makes them athletic, being extremely active.

[Carl-Richard]

57 minutes ago, Yousif said:

That’s what gym rats and athletes do  that’s what makes them athletic, being extremely active.

Are you thinking through what you're saying? If you're working out 50% of your life, that is 12 hours every single day, 84 hours a week. Nobody does that. The most extreme top athletes work out maybe 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week, 30-36 hours a week.

I'm not denying that some top athletes could be running up against the limit where their maximization of functioning "here and now" could be decreasing their longevity (although whether or not they're actually crossing that limit is not so clear). But if you're a normal individual just wanting to be healthy, 3 hours a week of vigorous exercise (intermixed with some low-moderate intensity exercise like walking) is most definitely not going to decrease your longevity.

Even if you work out considerably more than that, it's not going to decrease your longevity (based on the assumption of heart beats as shown earlier). For example, I lift weights 3.5 times a week and sprint 1.75 times a week (I lift every other day and sprint every other non-lift day). That is 3.5 * 60 to 90 minutes = 210 to 315 minutes a week of lifting weights (3.5 to 5.25 hrs), and 1.75 * 30 to 45 minutes = 52.50 to 78.75 minutes a week of sprinting (0.88 to 1.31 hrs). That is 3.5 + 0.88 hrs to 5.25 + 1.31 hrs = 4.38 hrs to 6.56 hrs a week of working out. That is only 2.6% to 3.9% of my life spent working out.

Edited March 31 by Carl-Richard

[Yousif]

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Are you thinking through what you're saying? If you're working out 50% of your life, that is 12 hours every single day, 84 hours a week. Nobody does that. The most extreme top athletes work out maybe 5-6 hours a day 6 days a week, 30-36 hours a week..

You want me to be precise while you come up with numbers such as 50% out of thin air? 
 

What I meant is athletes and gym rats whole life revolves around being extremely active, which I don’t think it’s the best strategy to live longer.

[Yousif]

9 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Even if you work out considerably more than that, it's not going to decrease your longevity (based on the assumption of heart beats as shown earlier). For example, I lift weights 3.5 times a week and sprint 1.75 times a week (I lift every other day and sprint every other non-lift day). That is 3.5 * 60 to 90 minutes = 210 to 315 minutes a week of lifting weights (3.5 to 5.25 hrs), and 1.75 * 30 to 45 minutes = 52.50 to 78.75 minutes a week of sprinting (0.88 to 1.31 hrs). That is 3.5 + 0.88 hrs to 5.25 + 1.31 hrs = 4.38 hrs to 6.56 hrs a week of working out. That is only 2.6% to 3.9% of my life spent working out.

I’ve already covered this, there are many factors at play not just the exercise itself, doing exercises will led to many things that can cause your death.

[Yimpa]

5 minutes ago, Yousif said:

I’ve already covered this, there are many factors at play not just the exercise itself, doing exercises will led to many things that can cause your death.

By that logic, so can simply breathing.

[BlueOak]

Your body is not static. It renews itself through use.

Exercise is like exorcism for the body, detox, clearing, and cleaning. If you don't run, for example, you'll never know what junk you are carrying on your chest, but this cleansing detox is going on throughout your body during elevated cardio exercise and resistance training.

You can get enough exercise through daily brisk walking a few miles, and work that involves resistance of some kind, as long you make sure your muscles are not being neglected by stretching them (exercising, etc). Most jobs are not going to work all your muscles, and if you neglect them, you risk injury later in life. Anything unused over time atrophies, this will be magnified by the aging process.

[Yousif]

1 hour ago, Yimpa said:

By that logic, so can simply breathing.

Yes, like I said above, being more athletic will not necessarily help you live longer because then you’ll become a monkey with high energy, you tell me which one you think is safer, a child that’s full of energy that jumps around like a monkey, or a lazy child that sits and watches tv? 
 

I’ve already explained my points above, you keep presenting the same inquiries as the ones before you.

[Yousif]

45 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

 

Exercise is like exorcism for the body, detox, clearing, and cleaning. If you don't run, for example, you'll never know what junk you are carrying on your chest, but this cleansing detox is going on throughout your body during elevated cardio exercise and resistance training.

 

Again, health and feeling good doesn’t necessarily mean living longer.

[BlueOak]

1 minute ago, Yousif said:

Again, health and feeling good doesn’t necessarily mean living longer.

Nothing is absolute. We do what we can to influence our life, and if you don't exercise, as you age you will feel it.

[Yousif]

11 minutes ago, BlueOak said:

Nothing is absolute. We do what we can to influence our life, and if you don't exercise, as you age you will feel it.

I never had a problem with exercising, I’m a gym rat myself, but my whole point was, don’t think being athletic necessarily means living longer, a lot of times it’s just the opposite.

[BlueOak]

25 minutes ago, Yousif said:

I never had a problem with exercising, I’m a gym rat myself, but my whole point was, don’t think being athletic necessarily means living longer, a lot of times it’s just the opposite.

Opposite, not really. It would be unrelated to exercise. Did you know someone healthy who died recently? I am sorry if that's the case and I missed it in the thread.

In the case of dying from an accident, malice etc, that's usually completely unrelated to how often we exercise. Exercise does have surplus effects, on mood, stress, and the elimination of toxins, which affect things the medical profession still lack to take into account in their entirety, though its getting better based on my last visit to the doctor about my heart. Many of the questions they asked were on point.

Many deaths are down to cumulative effects, not just one cause, and those toxins we build, the stress, the fat build-ups, the depression, etc, exercise helps correct a multitude of things in the body that we are thankfully most of the time never aware of. For example, the activation of certain genes only happens when the conditions for them come about, and exercise can prevent that.

It's a bit like how people never detox their organs or give them a chance to rest, they are always digesting, even back a thousand years ago we knew to fast and gave our bodies time to recover. Exercise can help with that, by giving you a detox as you move. 

Edited April 1 by BlueOak