It might be empirically sound, but it does not make a priori sense that exercising a body will improve it. If I use almost any object in the universe frequently, it typically degrades rather than improves.
The health benefits of exercise are most likely due to improved blood flow and related physiological effects. In principle, pills could theoretically achieve similar outcomes by enhancing circulation or other underlying mechanisms.
> It might be empirically sound, but it does not make a priori sense that exercising a body will improve it. If I use almost any object in the universe frequently, it typically degrades rather than improves.
Rejecting all evidence, denying observations, and leaning heavily on half-baked hypothesis that culminate somehow on a gotcha. That sounds an awful lot like something someone who "does their own research" would say.
Yes, extreme levels of high-intensity exercise have adverse side effects. Cross-fit and rhadbo is an example.
Drinking water also does everyone good, and everyone's health will improve if they increase their water intake, but drinking water in excess can also be fatal. Does this mean that the idea that drinking water does you good "does not make a priori sense"?
i kinda see where he's coming from, wear and tear on joints and such
however any kind of "pill" that would have anywhere near the same health effects as exercise is decades away at least.
hips and knees acls tend to be a failure point but the non-existance of said "pill" is probably a fairly big tick for the excercise side, and our tech for repairing those failure points continues to progress at speed
In the context of running, physiological benefits I’m familiar with include improvements to bone density and joint health, increased capillarisation and therefore blood flow in the muscles and improved energy efficiency in cells.
I suspect you’re not going to find a pill or combination of pills that can achieve those outcomes. And again, we’re ignoring the mental health benefits.
Doing resistance training will mechanically stress the ligaments, bones and muscles which results in your body reinforcing and strengthening them. This is important to do on a localized level, as hypertrophy of the heart is not good whereas hypertrophy of the leg muscles is. You cant do this in pill form (at least yet)
It turns out that there's a wealth of evidence which shows that appropriate introductions of stress (cardio training, resistance training, fine-motor-control practice) do in fact lead to improvements: greater heart health, better pulmonary function, increased strength, greater bone density, improved blood sugar regulation, decreased overall stress response, and more.
Yes, overtraining is possible (and not infrequent, particularly by those who fail to read or ignore the evidence). But an absolutely sedentary lifestyle is exceptionally fatal.
Medications (as with exercise) come with both intended and unintended consequences, as well as costs and inconveniences. Generally the more extreme the condition you're treating, the more likely that medications will carry some of these disadvantages (e.g., chemotherapy against cancer, where the goal is often to kill the malignancy at least slightly faster than one kills the patient). Exercise operates through complex feedback cycles and mechanisms, not all of which are well-understood (as an example, why muscle grows in response to strength training being a fundamental case despite much information on how muscle responds to which specific training protocols). Medications can amplify training response (e.g., anabolic steroids for strength training athletes), but often don't by themselves substitute for it.
This is why, in a broader sense, that the Baconian scientific method does not rely simply on a priori hypotheses, but tests these with experiment and evidence, that is, empirically. The ultimate critique of pure reason is that whilst it can be a useful guide for what you then want to test empirically, it has a phenomenal tendency to lead one to utterly fallacious and/or irrelevant conclusions.
One of the more robust sets of evidence on both the negative effects of a zero-stress lifestyle and of the benefits of regular cardio and strength training is that accumulated through long-term space missions, largely aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Microgravity would be the ultimate low-stress environment, and it turns out to be seriously harmful. Astronauts there are tested before and after missions, with various measures of fitness loss. With time-in-space being an immensely valuable resource, astronauts also spend two hours per day engaged in physical exercise (<https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/astronauts/living-in-space/phy...>), or 1/8 of their waking schedule.
Online, ExRx (<https://exrx.net/>) has a large library of fitness information, including a list of online journals (<https://exrx.net/Journals>) and expert talks (<https://exrx.net/Talks>). Good books on fitness will link to research substantiating recommendations (Lou Schuler's New Rules of Lifting series is a good example of this).
Medication frequently (though not always) provides benefits that may be achieved at least in part by non-medical means: lifestyle (adequate sleep, low stress, reduced exposure to contaminants and pollutants), diet (preferring healthier to unhealthier foods, generally), and exercise (itself comprised of multiple modalities, including cardio, strength training, fine motor control, and others).
The best results are achieved when these are working together toward some health or fitness goal. It's far more effective to align your lifestyle, diet, exercise, and medications than to have these working against one another (I'll take this pill to compensate for my drinking / smoking / drug use / pollution exposure / stress, etc.). Of course, that's not always possible, and there are circumstances where it's difficult or impossible to attain some of these mechanisms (parapalegic, living in a highly polluted environment, inherently stressful living conditions, GI compromise limiting eating or diet, congenital or genetic conditions or predispositions). Even here, if the patient can make some progress in a specific modality, they'll probably see some benefit.
Some of the most impressive athletes I've seen, from a sheer grit perspective, are those who are working against some major limitation: the swimmer at a health club long ago paralyzed in both legs, the one-legged open-water swimmer, old farts with their pacemakers showing through their chests swimming in the San Francisco Bay, patients with diabetes, heart failure, Parkinsons, recovering from cancer, with various injuries or scars, still at it. Some are astonishingly good by any measure, many aren't, but damned if they're not trying and generally living far better than if they weren't.
This isn't "don't take your meds", it's "use all the available tools". Lifestyle, diet, an exercise are underrated and powerful tools.
"You don't look like your medical history" is a high compliment coming from a doctor, and I'd strongly recommend earning it.
> This isn't "don't take your meds", it's "use all the available tools".
Agreed - low dose daily cialis/tadalafil (e.g. 5mg/day) is very common among elite athletes, bodybuilders, etc. As are GLP-1's despite elite athletes rarely being overweight.
Tadalafil is taken for its endothelial benefits (erections are a convenient side effect), and GLP's for its nutrient partitioning and insulin sensitization effects.
Medications are very often most effective when paired with good lifestyle habits, rather than one of the other.
It also depends on what your goals are, obviously.
At a baseline, healthy vitals (blood pressure, blood sugar, heart function, preservation of bone mass/density, and lean/muscle mass, avoiding accumulation of excess fat, particularly visceral / mid-section fat).
Beyond that, if goals are for specific performance targets, in some athletic or competitive activity, you'll want to tune your training toward that. Again, the baseline is remarkably consistent, it's the high-performer tuning which varies.
Going off-label on prescriptions, especially without a doctor's supervision, carries its own set of risks. If you're lucky, it's only wasted money. If you're not, it's markedly worse.
> Going off-label on prescriptions, especially without a doctor's supervision, carries its own set of risks.
The biggest hurdle I've encountered personally is primary care doctors deal with very sick people every day (terrible diet, terrible body composition, terrible alcohol/drug habits, etc). And that's who they optimize their care for.
If you show up to a PCP and you're in shape, all vitals on point, all bloodwork looking good, the last thing the PCP wants to do is prescribe anything because "you don't need it" and "you're not sick".
Most doctors simply don't care about helping you optimize your health once you've reached "healthier than average" status.
This leads a lot of people to doing their own research, and finding health clinics outside of insurance that cater to health optimization, anti-aging, and non-standard treatments (like prescribing GLP's to people who aren't overweight, or Cialis for people who don't have ED). These clinics also aren't very good because, while they are indeed doctors or NPs, they make money off selling you prescriptions, so they are biased and usually push medications you might not really need or want. (Which again emphasizes the importance of self-education and doing your own research).
For drugs like GLP-1's, there are a whole lot of anecdotal benefits outside of weight loss. The problem with the drug industry is once a drug is approved for its most profitable use case, drug makers don't bother to pursue additional FDA approvals for additional indications because the headache isn't worth the (marginal) extra revenue.
I very much wish there were a category of doctors specializing in treating healthy people looking to optimize their health further.
You might also look into nutrition and dietetics and exercise physiology. If you're looking at cognitive function, neuropsychology and possibly some psychotherapy specialisations.
"Wellness coaching" is starting to get into the woo / overly-self-interested / conflicted domain, though there are probably a few good apples. I'd proceed with extreme caution however. There are plenty of docs who're more than happy to provide what a patient asks (and is willing to pay top dollar) for.
What's much more likely is that you and I are thinking of different scenarios. I'm not thinking about your average hellos, thank-yous, good-mornings, questions, requests for assistance, short remarks, et cetera. Few people would find those objectionable, and neither do I.
But the person monologuing about a singular uninteresting topic is so universally disliked that comedians have for decades been joking about sitting next to them on the plane. Or the salesman, questionnaire filler, petition peddler, or beggar trying to get something from you. I have yet to find anyone who likes those people. And then there's the chatterbox who just. won't. stop. talking. I think you can fill books with the number of articles written about dealing with them.
The problem with all those people is that they are hard to get rid of once you allow even a little bit. It's far easier to not let it get started in the first place. Headphones are a popular way to prevent that. You can even see it mentioned as a strategy in this thread.
Anyway, those people are imposing themselves. Loads of people dislike that, and so do I. These people are either out to get something from you, or are using you as an audience for their own stuff.
I think these responses represent a pretty narrow Reddit/HN/"Chronically Online" asocial attitude and not indicative of the general public's view about spontaneous interactions with nonthreatening people.
Yes, nobody wants Jehovas Witness, Salesmen, or Mentally Unwell people barging in and throwing a word salad at you. But, I don't know anyone (outside of very vocal online posters) who would be offended if we were standing in line and I casually brought up the weather.
> But, I don't know anyone (outside of very vocal online posters) who would be offended if we were standing in line and I casually brought up the weather.
I agree, BTW. It's the kind of thing I meant with "short remarks".
But while I'm not annoyed at such conversations, I won't miss them. They're a cheap sacrifice to make for not having to deal with proselytising and the like.
> Reddit/HN/"Chronically Online" asocial attitude
While remarks about the weather don't offend me, it does offend me when I'm being called "asocial" for refusing to be religiously converted. Please don't.
Interestingly, the 'Reddit/HN/"Chronically Online"' monickers are also anachronystic. I've not just been referring to books as a way to deflect the knee-jerk response smartphones usually get, though there was some of that. But for the most part, that is the implement people used "in my time" to avoid cumbersome people on trains. It works less well than headphones though, so I'm not surprised those gained in popularity.
I don't know where you live but here those kinds of people tend to pretend to be normal and use such innocent topics to strike up a conversation. At which point they unleash the rabidly insane side of them.
I've had religious nuts, people who thought I should give them money after making light conversation, hookers, even people following me when I declined to give them money. I've even taken to carrying pepper spray at night (more forceful items are not allowed where I live). Never had to use it but I have been pretty close to it. I don't think it's allowed to use it on people here but when it comes to self-defense I'm the kind of "better a year in jail than a week in hospital" person.
If something happens worth talking about I'd strike up a conversation with a stranger in the metro or something, but on the street I'm a lot more careful.
I think most humans make a difference between wanted and unwanted contact. It is the difference between rape and love making. Between letters between friends and spam. And so on.
The whole conversation is about the novelty and usefulness of something that doesn't exist in the mainstream. Those who are skeptical can eternally say "show me more examples". Maybe your critique isn't as useful as you think it is.
I take this point but would offer that the culture you reference is also quite real. By contrast, in southern cities you will find some of the most impassioned progressives you’ll ever meet. There is nuance.
These people show up, offer trivially incorrect or untenable solutions to the trickiest problems. Rarely do they have the insight that fixes them. Often they do things that introduce more risk.
