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chaosmage comments on How to become a PC? - Less Wrong Discussion
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I read on Neil Gaiman's blog (wish I had a better source) that one hour of exercise (up to 30/week) gives about two hours of extra life expectancy. That's a very useful thought, because my akrasia likes to make excise feel like a waste of time. That feeling is absurd (i.e. easily shaken off) when I know what I'm doing actually gives me a net time gain.
Also, those two hours are going to h be in the future, making them more awesome, with flying cars and stuff. Right?
I too wish you had a better source. That is an extraordinary claim.
It's probably also worth keeping in mind that although those two hours will be in the future, which will (one hopes) be much awesomer than the present, they'll also be when you're old, which will (one frets) be less awesome.
If exercise postpones the breakdown of age, those two hours are right now. It's not like the date of decrepitude is fixed, while the date of death is postponed, like Swift's Struldbrugs.
I see what you're saying, and that could be true. But it might not; an hour of exercise might push death away by two hours, but only delay decrepitude by one (or less).
Or worse, exercise might bring on some early decrepitude, by wearing down joints. (The added life could come from improved cardiovascular health.)
Joints are built up by (edit: sensible) exercise more than they're worn down. People involved in heavy labor or athletics have stronger joints than sedentary people.
EDIT: I need to note that excessive, high impact, stressful exercise in individuals not trained for it will of course harm the body. The body is a complex system that, when damaged, repairs itself to be just a little bit stronger than before. Exercise is a means of 'damaging' the body to cause that strengthening response. Too much or too intense exercise will cause more damage than the body can repair from adequately.
For example, my last deadlift workout was 325lbs for 10 reps. This would be impossible for a beginner, and would be too easy to be worth doing for someone stronger than me.
Any links? We're not talking about how strong joints are, we're talking about how worn out they are (in terms of cartilage thickness, I presume). And while exercise hasn't been shown to contribute to osteoarthritis, for example, it hasn't been shown to prevent it either.
Oh. Well, that shows how much I know. For some reason I thought over the long term, strenuous activity would lead to damage and general "wearing out."
Whenever I'm enrolled in a PE course that involves anything that resembles running (dance, fencing, badminton) my knees feel swollen and unwilling to bend and start aching spontaneously many times a day. A few weeks after the course is over they go back to normal. Totally unconvinced that exercise is beneficial or even neutral at least for my particular joints.
Maybe the causality goes the other way and people with crappy joints avoid heavy labor and athletics.
All the sports you mention are high-impact and high-stress for the knees. If you're not trained or adapted for these, then yes, you'll be hurt from it.
If you increased your knee joint strength in a sensible and progressive manner (ie doing full squats with very light weight for three sets of five repetitions, and slowly increasing the weight) then your knees would become stronger, and those activities would be less stressful.
This is my favorite typo ever.
I was more amused by chaosmage's anthropomorphization of akrasia. An underutilized anti-akrasia tactic?
(nods) I totally endorse that, and often anthropomize depression that way. It really hates when I point at its penis and laugh.
The returns are actually more like 5:1 for the first few units (this is complicated not all exercise is equal).
If you have more accurate information, does this mean you have access to a good source for it?
Are you trying to say <citation needed>? http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/40/5/1382.long
One of the other replies to the original comment was one asking for a source, I was trying to echo that sentiment without actually saying <citation needed> myself because I didn't find the claim extraordinary.