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Comment by sz4kerto | Hacker News Reader

Cognitive dissonance?

>Not to mention health problems caused by exercise itself. Or even worse, weekend exercisers that go and overexert themselves then causing a heart attack.

Well, it's extremely rare that people get heart attack because of excercise. It happens, but it's really rare. It's so rare that we can safely say: excercise is good for your health, and not having any excercise is bad, period. You can screw it up by not doing it right, however, overdoing it is almost impossible -- given you do it right. Running too much, for example, is almost impossible, if you get over the initial period of losing excess weight, and you drink and eat enough, etc.

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It's not very common, but it also isn't nearly as rare as you're making it sound. I'll look for the study, but IIRC, if you're over 50, and you vigorously exercise more than 2 hours a week, your chance of a heart attack is actually greater than if you vigorously exercise only a couple minutes a week. And I think it's around 1 in 15k. Which although not common, is far from almost impossible.

Did you find a link to that study? 2 hours of vigorous exercise a week can still represent a vary sedentary lifestyle.

I would in no way be surprised that people who are over 50, overweight, and start a strenuous exercise program as if they where still in there 20's had a significant risk of heart attack. On the other had if there only looking at healthy people with long term exercise programs that's another issue entirely.

http://running.competitor.com/2012/06/news/how-much-running-...

"Repeated extreme exercise or long-distance racing can cause a buildup of scar tissue on the heart, which can lead to the development of patchy myocardial fibrosis in up to 12% of marathon runners. The effects of “chronic exercise” can also include premature aging of the heart, stiffening of the heart muscles, and an increase in arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation."

"A 15-year observational study of 52,000 adults found that the highest degree of survival and health was found from running less than 20 miles per week, in runs of 30 to 45 minutes over three or four days, at about an 8:30 to 10:00 pace. The benefits decrease at amounts greater than that."

"Originally, it appeared the race-related damage was less severe in people who trained over 45 miles per week, but O’Keefe says that doesn’t prove to always be true."

As with most things, it appears that exercise is neither a panacea nor an unqualified good thing, but no doubt under-exercise is more prevalent than over-exercise...

That's really quite extreme over-exercise, though. If you don't train for a marathon, but rather go jogging a few times a week, you'll be fine.

I'm 54. I walk 8-10 miles every morning and lift weights 2 times a week for an hour. I use to have high blood pressure and the only (I tried them all) drug that worked for me was causing abnormal gum growth. So getting off the drug was my primary motivation. I'm 6'2" and now a lean 180 pounds.

That's awesome. I'm not saying that older people can't do that much exercise, just pointing out that it's worth starting slow. I entirely agree with you that exercise is good, and that's why I left the reply I did: I was arguing that exercise is almost always a good recommendation.

I have to tell that to my father (seriously). He's running many marathons a year, when people see us the first time sometimes they think we're brothers. He's 60.

Read what I wrote again, I am not considering the whole of people exercising, but those who don't exercise regularly and overexert themselves on some occasions

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