Why working out is beneficial for longevity (systemic answer)

[Carl-Richard]

To understand this, we need to view everything in life through the lens of work/stress/energy. Every breathing moment of your life is work/stress/energy (let's just call it stress). When you breathe, that's stress on your lungs. When you sit, that's stress on your skeleton and muscles. When you stand up, that's even more stress on your skeleton and muscles. When you walk, when you think, when you speak, when you digest food; everything is stress on your system. It's work your system has to do, and it can do it better or worse, more efficiently or less efficiently.

A crucial distinction is chronic stress vs short-term stress. Chronic stress occurs all the time. That's the stress of everyday life. That's the stress you want to reduce the effects of, because it's constant. Working out on the other hand is short-term stress. It only makes up a small fraction of your day (1/24th if you work out 1 hour a day). It's in the larger scheme of things not very important (only if you train e.g. 12 hours a day).

Now, what working out does is it makes you more capable of handling stress in general, and also chronic stress, the stress you want to reduce the effects of. When you train your ability to pump blood to the right organs, when you train the ability of your cells to perform metabolic processes, to breathe, to walk, to stand; when you train your body to respond to stress, you will adapt in such a way that you will be better able to handle stress.

And because working out only induces short-term stress, which again is only a small fraction of your day, and because it reduces the effects of chronic stress, the stress of being alive as a human, working out will have a positive effect on your lifespan (as stress is virtually synonymous with reducing your lifespan; it's your life-clock). Again, there are cases where working out too much could start to tip the balance in the wrong direction, which could be the case for those who work out intensely for say 12 hours a day (which is no one); I've done the math on this and it seems to add up. But if you are 99.999% of people who work out somewhere below that, working out will positively impact your lifespan.

This is also why I think you can probably never replace working out with e.g. drugs like Mike Israetel might wish could happen with things like myostatin inhibitors and the like. Working out produces a holistic response on the system, it's not something you can fix with one receptor or one chemical. It's the entire system responding to something the entire system is doing. It will probably not be reproduced by anything, or something which is indistinguishable from magic.

Or anything which could reproduce it would look something like working out in a big way (taking a streak from Bernardo Kastrup's "when we'll be able to create conscious AI is when we'll be able to create life from non-life; abiogenesis", essentially deconstructing the AI vs life distinction). So maybe you could sit in a chair that makes your muscles contract spontaneously without you having to do anything, but this also means you lose things like coordination, balance, movement patterns. In reality, it seems like you have to be willing to get off your ass at some point and work out.

Edited Tuesday at 07:07 AM by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

35 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Again, there are cases where working out too much could start to tip the balance in the wrong direction, which could be the case for those who work out intensely for 12 hours a day (which is no one)

Way less than that is needed to send you in the wrong direction, especially if you're older.

Working out is wear and tear on your system. If your goal is longevity, the ideal workout would be one that minimizes the amount of wear and tear, but maximizes the benefits.

[samijiben]

Hey Carl, just to get a better understanding of WTF you are talking about, please elaborate the activities one must do once in the gymnasium in order to experience the physiological and emotional (stress-coping-whatever-thing) benefits u were on abt...

 

That is, must I cardio for 30min and lift for the other 30? Or is it cool if I just lift the whole time (smoker lungs, :()? Or what if I play pickle ball with elders and hit the steam room? The gym even has a pool. It is a big place, and so "going to the gym" could also mean just sitting on the lounge chair. 

 

Please elaborate the activities to do ONVE YOU ARE AT THE GYM so I can implement them and start becoming a badassmotherfucker. 

 

I'm bout to go the gym in a few minutes. Would Love to hear a response b4 I go

 

Love,

.......

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, aurum said:

Way less than that is needed to send you in the wrong direction, especially if you're older.

How much is that? You can do a rough estimate by comparing the lifetime heartbeats between an average untrained person and a super-athlete (and remembering to factor in heart rate when working out).

 

2 hours ago, aurum said:

Working out is wear and tear on your system. If your goal is longevity, the ideal workout would be one that minimizes the amount of wear and tear, but maximizes the benefits.

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Working out is wear and tear, just over a short period which causes an adaptive response. So you have to figure out the right balance between wear and tear and adaptive response. According to Mike Israetel, you get the most effects per time spent (important caveat) if you work out 2-4 days a week with maybe 45-minute sessions where you perform high-intensity resistance training with short breaks so that you also get integrated cardio. But you could definitely get more effects if you want to sacrifice more hours in the gym, but then you also of course lose those hours outside the gym, so from a purely "usable" longevity standpoint, it's maybe not worth it (but from a health and wellness standpoint, it could be worth it). Me personally, I work out for health and wellness (and because it's fun), mental functioning, and of course to look like I work out, and then longevity (maybe not the very last thing but somewhere later in the equation).

Edited Tuesday at 01:35 AM by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

7 hours ago, samijiben said:

Hey Carl, just to get a better understanding of WTF you are talking about, please elaborate the activities one must do once in the gymnasium in order to experience the physiological and emotional (stress-coping-whatever-thing) benefits u were on abt...

 

That is, must I cardio for 30min and lift for the other 30? Or is it cool if I just lift the whole time (smoker lungs, :()? Or what if I play pickle ball with elders and hit the steam room? The gym even has a pool. It is a big place, and so "going to the gym" could also mean just sitting on the lounge chair. 

 

Please elaborate the activities to do ONVE YOU ARE AT THE GYM so I can implement them and start becoming a badassmotherfucker. 

 

I'm bout to go the gym in a few minutes. Would Love to hear a response b4 I go

 

Love,

.......

I would say some form of resistance training 2-4 times a week and some high-intensity cardio training 1-2 times a week, but be mindful whether you're getting enough rest at higher frequencies.

I've been doing resistance training 3.5x a week (every other day) and sprints (lately also rotated with 4x4 intervals) 1.75x a week (every 4th day) for 1.5 years now. I've realized I should probably cut down on some of the sprints/4x4 because I sometimes don't feel fully rested even after sleeping well. I will maybe try rotating between sprints/4x4 every 4 days and every 6 days ([1.75+1.17]/2 = 1.46x a week).

Edited Tuesday at 06:55 AM by Carl-Richard

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Enjoyed this post.

I think the adaptive response element, as a product of the friction of the exercise, is a key variable I have really been paying attention to.

For myself, as I have aged, I really have to precisely assess and keep an eye on my own bodies adaptive response becoming slower. I also perceive additional fatigue, as more of my energy is devoted to the recovery process. The energy drain of an exercise I do now causes mental and physical fatigue far greater than when I was in my 20s. 

It is a fine balance assessing the benefits of the exercise vs cons, when recovery and functionality are variables with age (on top of nutrition/sleep etc).

Age was never anything to even think on previously for me.

Now I am consistently assessing this process more than ever.

[aurum]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

Me personally, I work out for health and wellness (and because it's fun), mental functioning, and of course to look like I work out, and then longevity (maybe not the very last thing but somewhere later in the equation).

How are you differentiating health & wellness from longevity?

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

How are you differentiating health & wellness from longevity?

If it's the case that working out less is more conducive to longevity but it leads to things like lesser bone density, lesser muscle mass, lesser VO2 max, lesser testosterone levels, lesser endogenous endorphins levels, etc., then you are trading health and wellness for longevity. Think about this: we are not wired for longevity. We are wired for sex and reproduction. What makes us feel good today, what makes us more healthy today, does not necessarily map on perfectly to living until you are 120.

The super-athlete who works out 12 hours a day and focuses all of their life around that does not actually run themselves into the ground with too little restitution and too much fatigue. They have adapted to that life at that moment, they are functioning at the highest levels and they feel on top of the world. But the brightest stars burn the quickest as they say. They might develop health conditions down the line despite being the healthiest at their peak (if we define health as maximizing functioning in any given metric), not just in spite of their previous health but in fact because of it.

Edited Tuesday at 06:51 AM by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

@Carl-Richard you're essentially talking about the lifespan vs healthspan debate.

I think there is a tradeoff between performance and lifespan, as you mentioned. It depends on what you want to maximize in your life.

Personally, I'm okay with less than "peak performance" if it gets me longevity. 

[Carl-Richard]

5 minutes ago, aurum said:

@Carl-Richard you're essentially talking about the lifespan vs healthspan debate.

I think there is a tradeoff between performance and lifespan, as you mentioned. It depends on what you want to maximize in your life.

I was going to mention "antagonistic pleiotropy", which is probably my favorite concept in biology: traits conferring fitness early in life decreasing fitness later in life. For example, testosterone being associated with performance and fertility while also reducing longevity. 

It also destroys people trying to argue for diets based on what our ancestors ate (because again, evolution doesn't care about longevity).

 

5 minutes ago, aurum said:

Personally, I'm okay with less than "peak performance" if it gets me longevity. 

I might have to burn through some gorilla karma before I get there myself. Maybe when I turn 30 or something.

[aurum]

15 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

I was going to mention "antagonistic pleiotropy", which is probably my favorite concept in biology: traits conferring fitness early in life decreasing fitness later in life. For example, testosterone being associated with performance and fertility while also reducing longevity. 

Damn biology and its tradeoffs 

Where's my gene that just maximizes everything forever?

15 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

 I might have to burn through some gorilla karma before I get there myself. Maybe when I turn 30 or something.

If you're not yet 30, that makes more sense.

[Carl-Richard]

21 minutes ago, aurum said:

Damn biology and its tradeoffs 

Where's my gene that just maximizes everything forever?

The God Gene, the one Richard Dawkins didn't write about when he was busy writing The God Delusion. Interesting how denying God also means you write books like The Selfish Gene? 🤔

 

[aurum]

2 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The God Gene, the one Richard Dawkins didn't write about when he was busy writing The God Delusion. Interesting how denying God also means you write books like The Selfish Gene? 🤔

Richard Dawkins is my favorite form of God denying that it's God 

[Carl-Richard]

33 minutes ago, aurum said:

Where's my gene that just maximizes everything forever?

Actually, we have genes for that: it's called cancer. It's just not sustainable, on a finite organism with finite resources, on a finite planet with finite resources. Enviromentalism is baked into our genes also.

Edited Tuesday at 06:21 AM by Carl-Richard

[aurum]

13 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Actually, we have genes for that: it's called cancer. It's just not sustainable, on a finite organism with finite resources, on a finite planet with finite resources. Enviromentalism is baked into our genes also.

Indeed.

God intelligence wins again.

[Sugarcoat]

Would it be a good idea for longevity to do like David Goggins, run so hard you get rhabdomyolysis and kidney failure, pissing blood and shitting yourself, and breaking all the bones in your feet etc? 

Edited Tuesday at 06:11 PM by Sugarcoat

[UnbornTao]

51 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

Would it be a good idea for longevity to do like David Goggins, run so hard you get rhabdomyolysis and kidney failure, pissing blood and shitting yourself, and breaking all the bones in your feet etc? 

Of course.

 

 

 

this is a joke

[Sugarcoat]

12 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Of course.

 

 

 

this is a joke

Responses from mods always make me think I did something wrong before I read them, it’s like a surprise 😂😂😂

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

Would it be a good idea for longevity to do like David Goggins, run so hard you get rhabdomyolysis and kidney failure, pissing blood and shitting yourself, and breaking all the bones in your feet etc? 

Working out implies not injuring yourself.

[Sugarcoat]

3 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Working out implies not injuring yourself.

I was joking, but injuries could happen during workouts but ofc we wanna try to avoid them