Posted by julianh65 1 day ago
And before you say I appeal to authority, I understand people don't respect doctors or their country's healthcare system, but I suggest they should acquire formal medical education themselves before starting to put random shit in their body. And no, reading the entire body of blogs by Scott Alexander does not count.
It's crazy to me how many people have miserable health, complain about their body and mental state endlessly, but still put up any roadblock they can think of to avoid exercising of any form.
The exercise is important for my general health but it isn't positively correlated with my cognitive functioning. Quite the opposite.
It's a ton of work at first but it's completely worth it -- post-exertional malaise sucks.
Other things that helped me personally: daily cold plunges up to the chin (so you feel it in your vagus nerve), HRV reset breathing exercises, and daily meditation. Wish you the best of luck.
- make me spend quite a lot of time on something exercise-related (since it was "opposite shift" of regular school classes)
- had me do next to zero actual exercise
- teach me literally nothing about how exercise or training works
- make me hate everything related to exercise for quite a few years
Worse than a waste of time, it was actively harmful.
I feel good with at least 4 hours a week of bodyweight training plus some cardio.
Best sleep I’ve ever gotten.
You don’t know what you’re missing out on until you’ve experienced not good but GREAT sleep.
if that’s too extreme avoid too much water before bed if you’re getting up to pee you are ruining your sleep
Do you really not eat bread? We've got to come up with better ways to categorize foods. At face value such a term seems to imply you should only eat raw food.
I'll eat steel cut oats, quinoa, rice, beans/lentils, etc.
But not bread.
How do you make bread without flour? Flour is a processed food.
The entire point of this conversation is that the meaning of "processed" is entirely unclear, and I still don't understand what beef you have against bleached, stabilized, and enriched flour.
I'd put any amount of money that whatever your concerns are can be addressed with the aphorism "everything in moderation".
We're really targeting "highly-processed" foods. Personally I draw a line between sausage that went through something resembling a hand-powered meat grinder vs. sausage that has been obliterated into a fine pink sludge and reformed. Both are processed, but the latter is highly processed, with more room for additives.
My understanding is that degree of "processing" is acknowledged to be an imperfect metric, just one that fits easily with EU labeling concerns. I just don't think that's as useful as is advertised.
I don't think it's that weird. Exercising, particularly cardio, for its own sake, without something you're trying to accomplish with your effort, feels very bad.
Right. Which is why people don't exercise. That's a lot to ask of people with other things on their plate.
To be clear, I know I should exercise. I just find it very difficult to do so, and it's very easy to convince yourself you should do something else with that energy.
I think team sports are probably the best way to get into exercise. This allows tying the benefit directly into a reward system. I ran long-distance in high school and, without teammates to let down, it was very difficult to push myself beyond the bare minimum effort. Most of us don't have the ability to summon a team sport into our work schedule though.
However once we start exercising for any period of time and observe the positive outcomes then the difficulty drops and it becomes enjoyable.
The problem is peoples expectations and approach.
> Yes, going from a modern sedentary lifestyle to running will feel rough for a few months as you acclimate
This is a terrible idea and for someone who has been sedentary they will likely just injure themselves and/or feel miserable. People don't have realistic expectations. It's better to do something like "couch to 5K" running on a grass or a dirt track. In a couple of weeks they will feel good after a run (if they are not too distracted and outward looking) then from there the runners high reinforces the behavior and they will look forward to exercising.
Team sports are harder to work into a schedule, which is why running is easier to start for many people because it just requires a pair of shoes and leaving the house yourself. For others, there's a parallel social angle where you can also make many friends you see regularly at clubs and enjoy the same activity together.
Our reward hardware doesn't work well for exercising because it wasn't needed for exercising. You either did physical activity or you starved to death.
Look up the Regeneron COURAGE trial
I unironically offer the opinion that half a teaspoon of creatine is a much better alternative.
ADHD patients seem to be able to exercise just fine (and -importantly- don't seem to be suffering widespread muscle death) when on Adderall and similar. I bet folks like that are pretty glad that the body is a complex, robust system that does reasonably well in a fairly wide range of internal and external environments.
So, respectifully to the studies, im calling bullshit.
I know that is a hurdle I have with my kids. They complain that jogging/running hurts. It is hard to convince people that that never really changes, and that it also hurts for the people that are doing it every day. Obviously acute pains are a different thing, but there is a reason recovery is a vital part of exercise. We all have to recover from pushing limits. You can't expand your limits without pushing, though.
Otherwise, you'll never stick with it.
I hate jogging, I have forced myself to do daily jogging for several month periods, but I never stick with it.
For me, incline treadmill at maximum incline and a moderate pace gets my heart-rate up and doesn't feel nearly as awful.
For my kids, I'm trying to convince them that a lot of the things they find uncomfortable are things they just aren't used to. Ergonomics have fooled a lot people into thinking "feels right" is the initial state of something, I think? You still have to train yourself to get used to a lot of things.
My suggestion is to stop your workout a little before you want to, almost as if you're disappointed it's over now, which will make you want to go to the gym the next day more consistently.
Similarly, for many nootropic reports, "just doing something" is far more effective than people give credit. Especially if it is a choice to do something. Successfully executing one choice seems to confer some success at executing on the next one. (Note, successful execution does not imply successful outcome...)
I'm convinced this is why people that start their routine with "just make your bed every day" get a surprising amount of success.
All of which is to say that I agree you shouldn't blow yourself out. My push back is that you are probably far less blown out than you think after a workout.
There's no particular reason why running on asphalt, or even running on a treadmill, shouldn't hurt. It might! It's not a natural surface. And hard surface + modern shoes might not be a good enough combo to overcome the pain it creates.
I live near a beach and run on sand every other day; I don't have body pain problems. But change the surface and I think I would.
The shoes things is an odd one. Current thinking is that a lot of the effort people went through to dampen the shock to knees oddly resulted in people accepting longer periods of stress on their knees than they would have had they learned a different gait. That said, building up callouses on your feet, as was the norm before shoes, by definition hurts?
I hate that I put "running" as my example. Standing and walking would also make my point. Physically using your body is more difficult than not. And if you aren't used to it, it is a type of hurting.
Heck, learning to play a musical instrument is the same way. Guitars hurt your fingers as you build up the ability to play. Piano doesn't have the same pain, but expect a sore hand after a few sessions.
As I've gotten older, I've found other activities to fill the void such as rock climbing and mountain biking. Both can be strenuous when you want them to be, but you can also take it easy. Combined with low level weight training, I've found it a lot more enjoyable since both require your brain to be 100% engaged when doing it so there's also a mental boost as well.
You reference that they can be strenuous. My bet is that you often choose to push to a strenuous feeling often during the training period of each of these. My further bet is what you call "strenuous", I'm asserting that those unfamiliar would call "painful."
To be clear, I'm not claiming that you are constantly hurting yourself. I am claiming that if you weren't familiar with the feeling, you'd call it a pain. I'm thinking back to the original Matrix, "why do my eyes hurt?"
I'll also posit that you do the boring stuff now so that you can do the exciting stuff later.
And agreed that acute pain should take special care when folks are doing something. But the research is getting somewhat clear that cushioned shoes and such can be awkwardly counter to avoiding problems.
It's much easier on your joints, and you can adjust the difficulty gradually.
That is, I'm not hurting in my joints from running. My pains there will be much more attuned to how hard it is for me to "push" at speeds. That said, pushing at any speed is how I have managed to increases the speeds that I can push.
Yep. It's seen as just a waste of time, because you can be doing something else (like looking at your phone).
For me the trick was to get a TV in front of a treadmill, and to listen to audiobooks during my walks outside.
> My pains there will be much more attuned to how hard it is for me to "push" at speeds.
That's why walking is so good! With jogging you have to work pretty hard to run even at the lowest speed.
Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months... No wonder all athletes are on BPC 157, TB 500 and friends...
I talked to exercise professors and random people alike, and they all tell the same story. Professor said that I should get used to pain.
Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+ and no amount of good nutrition and vitamin megadosing will suffice for optimal health and particularly insuline resistance. Prior to that age though, you can get away without it.
What is the muscle building theory? Not everyone who does weightlifting is aiming for hypertrophy. Some are aiming for strength.
Honestly, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself not to do it. That’s okay. It’s difficult to know where to begin and avoid potential injury. It does take some time to learn. I like to recommend starting with a functional training class. This kind of class provides a guided session in building strength in everyday movements and provides a steady pace to really tune in to your body. It’s very difficult to injure yourself.
I am still doing it, and I do feel good in general. However, I have constant pain in one part of the body or other which is something I can manage (if its too strong, ibuprofen or friends). The entire gym is full of NSAIDs.
It's just that nobody underlines this aspect of exercise. I know its good for metabolism, brain health, cardiovascular health, looking good etc so you trade serious disease for more or less pain.
As a counterpoint, since you seem to like anecdata: I am around 50 and have been doing weightlifting for the last 8 years. No pain. No injury. Extreme positive effects on my entire life.
I would respectfully suggest that you need to a) know what you are doing, e.g. start with a trainer, and b) not try to be an olympic athlete, e.g. reach reasonable benchmarks and not try to be a weightlifting champ.
I don't know what "exercise professors" are, but you might want to talk to different people.
Your experience is extraordinary, you seem to be protected for some reason or have high pain threshold or simply do not exercise hard enough. "Extreme positive effects on your entire life", that's so unbelievable, there is no such thing apart from acute drugs. I would respectfully suggest you to not deceive others, if you are deceiving yourself.
I am not trying to be an athlete, I am just observing the world around me. I also recommend exercise, its just not a silver bullet the guys like you are promoting. Its also almost totally useless for weight control, the thing that most people exercise for.
- Before I exercised regularly, I developed aches and pains in upper and lower back, also a shoulder for some reason. These all went away thanks to pull-ups and pushups. Lack of exercise will also wreck your body—if you have not experienced this I have to assume you are very young.
- Exercise also causes lots of random little injuries. For example basketball gave me an ankle and a knee that have never been quite the same. But, I find that exercise itself helps dampen the pain response and makes them more bearable. I have ankle and knee warmup routines that help a lot.
Among people I have met, exercisers with injuries have full lives who are able to live around their injuries. Non-exercisers also develop little pains over time of being sedentary, and end up being much more constrained in what they can do.
So, I disagree with you. If you take it slow and listen to your body and maintain good form youre golden.
It seems that people just widely overhype their lifestyle or simply get accustomed to everyday pains.
Reading your comments you seem to have a really immature attitude about excercise and you seem to be hell bent on making your point so, whatever
Soreness is not a bad thing. And it's true that people who regularly exercise will often be in a state where they feel some level of soreness somewhere. That's the kind of pain people say you should embrace.
It's also true that lots of folks injure themselves exercising. Sometimes this leads to having to take time off to recover.
But people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general. This is because their tendons, bones, and muscles are less able to deal with sudden stress.
> And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
And last of all - this is plainly not true...
But I agree with you, people who don't exercise are more at risk of injury in general.
> > And yet, nobody mentions how supplements can't generally damage you
> And last of all - this is plainly not true...
It's true, its just that pharma wants to sell you drugs. No wonder Pauling called it orthomolecular medicine, claiming that "right" molecules are basically non toxic.
Unless you are a complete retard and take millions IU of vitamin D or you are a special case. There are no reported deaths with supplements in the last 30 years.
Hahahahahahahahaha
Been doing ~daily resistance training for > 10 years, have a hell of a build, and do not experience anything like this. I have had a couple of injuries, but never anything that caused me pain outside of the gym.
Ditto for many of my friends/colleagues.
Sounds like you may just be in a bubble of fatties
The fact is resistance training is vital for able bodied folks to avoid feeling pain later. And of course it has many other benefits than that. Even just pulling on some resistance bands can save your back and shoulders and the chance of injury there is minuscule.
I am 50, take 0 drugs, and look better than in 20. Back doesn't hurt.
Metformin did help more than exercise, though.
Note that I didn't exercise at all until 45.
I got muscle problems from _not_ doing resistance training, my bad posture caught up with me finally. And I was doing quite a bit of cardio (treadmill walking), so my general health was OK.
It took months to build up muscles enough to avoid stressing the same overworked muscles, but eventually I had no pain whatsoever.
That kind of pain quickly subsides after relaxing your routine though. It's not chronic.
The inflammation pathways aren't the same as disease state pathways.
> Maybe if you are underdoing it its possible but if you follow the muscle building theory, you are certainly going to get fucked eventually. Even the slightest position issue can make your tendons hurt for months...
I think your definition of "underdoing it" is what's fucked. If your goal is to optimize your enjoyment of your body now and in the future, then do whatever works best to serve that goal in the gym. I have no idea what "muscle building theory" is, but if it causes constant injuries that require pain medication, then it probably isn't the best way to pursue your goals.
> Too bad exercise seems to be a must after you are 50+
This really varies from person to person. Judging by the people I know, the non-resistance-trainers are worse off at least by forty, earlier for many. Everybody has pain, but people doing resistance training have less pain while being able to enjoy more activities.
Personally, I started having occasional back pain in my mid-twenties, often when I woke up in the morning. My dad said it started at the same age for him and got slowly worse over time, and he just put up with it. A few years later I discovered weightlifting, and a year later I wasn't waking up with back pain anymore -- one of the many things about lifting weights that completely surprised me. (I got into it in the early 2000s, when 99% of the information online was meathead bullshit just drenched in testosterone, sexism, and homophobia, and I was lucky to stumble across a single web site that made a case for lifting weights without the off-putting machismo. I never had a bunch influencers promising that lifting weights would cure every problem in my life, so almost everything positive about lifting weights came as a surprise to me.)
A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain. It took me a couple of years to figure out some contributing factors and fix them, but now I don't have knee pain, while still enjoying a lot of activities that my parents gave up long before my age.
My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb? Why are you doing things that hurt you? And my question back to them is, can you even play soccer? How many years has it been since you could play soccer for even five minutes without seriously hurting yourself? I'm going to take a few weeks off and then I'll be able to play soccer again, what's your plan? Late thirties and early forties is when sedentary people discover that attempting to join in on fun physical activities is not as pleasant for them as they remember, and/or likely to result in an injury that takes a long time to heal, so they start to opt out. When you see someone in their forties look particularly satisfied while they stand to one side at a gathering while others are playing a casual pickup game of soccer or Ultimate, it's because they're internally congratulating themselves on having the wisdom not to try.
Obviously I'm going to hit limitations that exercise can't fix. But in the meantime, I'm hitting one problem after another that exercise can fix, and seeing my sedentary friends hit the same eminently fixable problems like brick walls.
Why would my goal be enjoyment? I follow the science and do what must be done. I don't enjoy broccoli or fish too, but still eat them. I enjoy sugar, but I totally do not eat it.
> A problem that both my parents started experiencing around forty, and which I encountered on the same schedule, was chronic knee pain.
I never had a knee pain until I started exercising. Taking turmeric now for it.
> My friends sometimes say things like, you hurt yourself playing soccer, isn't that dumb?
Your friends are right. I played basketball entire life, and now I stopped it, because if somebody hits me I am in pain for days. You have to aknowledge your age and that you are more fragile and heal very slow, even with optimal nutrition and supplementation and gadgets like red light.
At first I thought the mispelling was intentional irony. But the leak to the guide shows that it's just unintentional irony
Also, regarding weightlifting... there was no mention about the risk of continuous muscle trauma, scar tissue build-up, nerve damage, and ligament damage.
1. Apart from ADHD medications, which are very powerful, most drugs and weird obscure supplements have little effect (there are some intriguing but noisy results about peptides).
2. Exercise— especially weightlifting and HIIT— is also very powerful. There's evidence of a dose-response curve where light exercise is good but intense is better.
Arguably this is pretty unsurprising, from an evolutionary perspective. It would be strange if our brains had "one weird trick" to perform a lot better with no downsides, since if it existed evolution should've found it. But being in good shape confers large benefits.
It would not be strange at all. We are constantly evolving and so is our environment. This argument is very similar to the "efficient market fallacy", if the market was perfectly efficient there would be no opportunity to create value, but in reality it is highly imperfect.
I wish! If you're lucky (or not particularly unlucky) that might be true.
I don't feel any mental benefits, nor do I sleep better. Fun kinds of exercise (badminton, football, BJJ) always seem to injure me me over longer time periods (and it takes months, or even years, to heal when you're in your forties). And they are not very forgiving, schedule-wise.
Lifting weights or rowing on a machine is painfully boring, but it does make me feel better physically. It's a great upside, but the downsides are real too.
Also a blind study with these would be hard, as Modafinil has a noticeable effect on heart rate and blood pressure, and general response to stress (at least in my case), and also causes a distinct chemical smell of one's urine.
The best was galantamine, noopept, acetyltyrosine, and cdp-choline. It was beloved by many.
However, my magnum opus could have been stacks that changed daily, to prevent any neurochemical adaptation or tolerance.
But, at some point the almighty paycheck hijacked my brain. Why not include money as an anti-nootropic in your study?
Judging by the boundless stupidity we are seeing in the world of oligarchs now, maybe too much money is tge ultimate anti-nootropic /s
All therapy, practiced with any consistency, is effective -- probably because sacrificing for one's self builds up self-investment, and self-investment leads to self-protective decision-making that improves outcome and outlook.
Nootropics with perceptible feedback will always seem to be working. This might make their practice more consistent initially, but actually undercuts the build-up of self-regard by replacing it with dependency.
The statistical and analytical perspective is the mature way to handle objective decisions over stochastic processes, and it's the right approach for validating drugs at population scale.
But for personal assessments, decisions, and planning, the statistical can at best provide warnings about addiction or ineffectiveness. But more dangerously, it can give a veneer of objective confidence reinforcing self-destructive feedback loops, and suppress the uncertainty that would drive reflection and personal integration.
It's much better to embrace uncertainty, and share with a friend.
This is just clearly false?
I don't mean to go super-literal here, but unless you have a very narrow definition of what counts as therapy (or if your definition of "therapy" is simply "any thing which, practiced with consistency, is effective") this is not even wrong.