The standout quote for me: "[immune cells] moved elsewhere, migrating to the animals’ guts or lungs, portions of the body that might be expected to need extra immune help after hard exercise".
Rapidly producing immune cells during exercise, then letting them (and more) die off would be a baffling response. But pumping them into the lungs (because you've been breathing hard through your mouth) and gut (for when you make up lost energy, and maybe eat some raw meat you've been hunting)? That makes a great deal of sense.
That effect is unconfirmed in humans, but it would ground our observations in an evolutionarily-sane outcome.
Best to hunt when you are loaded up on fuel. Don't want to be hunting when energy is low as you will most likely be less successful as your focus, patience, and response times will all be lower.
Hunting isn't like going to the store, success isn't guaranteed.
That is why you hunt when you are "out of fuel": you can try to hunt just after you eat, but when you fail you get to try again while "out of fuel". (Out of fuel in quotes - presumably the body has enough energy stores for a few more hunts even when it didn't find anything to eat the day before.)
I think the opposite. People that fast for a period (> 16 hours) report improved energy levels. This may be because after a while the body enters a ketogenic state where it burns body fat, which is a great source of energy and perfect for when on the hunt.
> I think the opposite. People that fast for a period (> 16 hours) report improved energy levels. This may be because after a while the body enters a ketogenic state where it burns body fat, which is a great source of energy and perfect for when on the hunt.
Ketogenesis requires over a week of carb restriction IIRC. I think fasting yields energy because the body increases various stress hormones to push you to find food so you don't starve.
Are fed hunters statistically more likely to successfully hunt than unfed hunters? It seems plausible, so hunters that took advantage of their fed state would have had an adaptive advantage.
As far as we know, humans' originally competitive advantage in hunting was long-distance running. Game could out-sprint humans but not out-distance human hunters. So, after successfully running down game, they must have had enough in the tank to complete the kill. This practice is still evident in some African tribes.
I've heard of persistence hunting, but I've never seen it suggested that was our primary competitive hunting advantage. Do you have a citation of some sort?
Yep - wasn't mentioned in the article, but I'd imagine the reason post-race marathoners are more likely to mistake coughs for colds is that marathons are also demanding. If your muscles ache and you're lethargic and coughing, that looks a lot like a cold.
One order of magnitude is a mere 45 lbs deadlift. Thus the poster must be horrifically weak. He must have wrote that from the nursing home, I'm sure the nurses love it that he spends his days quietly posting nonsense on the internet instead of bothering them.
You're ridiculous. You can say 315 is achievable in a year. 450 lbs doesn't even get on the charts for any weight up to 310 until intermediate level according to this chart [0]. Nobody with any sense considers themselves to be an 'intermediate' lifter after one year.
These are self-reported numbers mostly from novices on the Internet. I can assure you these do not represent consistent and specific training for this lift.
Very low reps (1-4) at a high resistance (85-100% of a 1-rep max) is the standard powerlifter workout. But usually you'd do that for many sets. Lifting a 1RM for a single set seems either grossly inefficient (I have a similar max and it takes me 6 warmup sets just to get into the 405+ range), or he's risking injury by not warming up enough.
Pfft what could those scientists/doctors/trainers/experienced athletes possibly know that some dude on the internet can't anecdote his way into correctness? /s
Sure you can, it's just that progress goes much slower. When I finally got into the 500s I was counting 1/2 and 1/4 reps as progress. For example, if I got 525 for 3-1/4 reps for one workout, and later got 3-1/2 reps, that was progress. Keep in mind for me that later could be weeks or months as I'm not naturally big.
You can, but it's not a lot of fun. I did it for years as a modified BBB element in 5/3/1. I have, at various times done 5x5 squat past 4 plates as well. Didn't last more then 3 weeks before I had to back off, I'm too old to recover from that, but I was working Texas Method at 415 lbs, which was just as hard as it sounds.
My point is, actually, that whenever someone says "I just do 1 set or 1 rep and am done, after warmup" that the warmup sets are really part of the exercise...
looks like mkirklions responded and really he does 5 sets with increasing weight, then does his heaviest.
So it is more like the classic "pyramid" or "increased weight until near-exhaustion" sets, which have been around since forever...
It depends on what percentage of his 1rm he's doing. I use 531 and it's based off a training max which is 90% of your 1rm. You never lift heavier than about 85% of your 1rm on the program because doing so is heavily taxing on your CNS. Unless he is using PEDs he probably won't last long-term if he's lifting close to his 1rm twice a week.
Considering the article example is a marathon (26.2 miles, burns ~2600 calories) and your example is deadlifting (4 sets of 8 deadlifts @ 175 kilograms burns ~100 calories - equivalent of running .5 miles).. I'd define this test case as 1.9% as 'Strenuous'.
Ok, seriously.... math: if you eat 3000 kcal per day and lose 1 lb per week, you're burning 3500 kcal per day. This is quite a lot. It's near impossible unless you work out a lot and are veeeery muscular... or are impossibly tall... or, well, fat. (Or a combination of those.)
Take me for comparison: I am 187cm (6'1ish) tall and weigh 75kg (165 lbs), pretty much smack in the middle of the "normal weight" range. I like running, do about 50km (30 miles) per week. I count calories and let my wrist watch measure my energy expenditure 24/7. On rest days (mostly sedentary), I burn about 2100 kcal. To get up to 3400, I have to do some sort of hard run and some lighter activity in addition, or do a long run (18km+).
Now I'm not everybody of course, but you can't be that abnormal, right? So I'm not buying your numbers.
Since about 3 years I've been counting calories and let various wrist watches with 24/7 heart rate trackers (fitbit, later garmin devices) estimate energy expenditure.
So I measure energy in and out (with unknown error bars). The energy balance I get as a result predicts what my body weight should do.
My control is stepping on the scale every time before I take a shower, log, and observe trends.
Result, consistent over the last three-ish years: my measured weight does almost exactly what the calorie counting and wristwatch estimating predicts. I see absolutely no systematic error in one direction or the other (measured over weeks, that is, to do away with short term fluctuations).
Running is probably the worst sport as far as caloric expenditure is concerned.
A serious endurance cyclist or swimmer will certainly go through 3000 kcal on a normal training day if not more.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks. What's more is I know these numbers are very accurate as we train with power meters that record our energy expenditure with minimal error.
It's important to distinguish between serious athletes and average people who exercise. It's possible that truly competitive athletes - for instance, who run 120 miles a week to your 30 - will be much more likely to get ill from their efforts. It can take serious fitness - and a mentality acquired only by years of serious training - to push yourself to the extent that you fall ill, and maybe the recreational "athlete" described in this text can't reach that point.
Depends on how you look at it. I can bike all day without getting tired, but there's no way I can jog all day. If your definition of efficiency includes duration of effort, or distance covered, then cycling is very efficient.
You need to put more effort in 1 hour cycling session to burn the same amount of calories as in 1 hour running session. Running activates more muscles.
I was "professional" athlete many moons ago. When we measured max heart rate, we did it on a bike first and then on a treadmill running and then bike again. My max heart rate running was +5 beats allways and I was not a single case. I just couldn't get to my max heart rate while cycling.
They are actually much more similar than most people realize. However, people usually burn more calories total on cycling because it's easier to put longer time periods into cycling than it is for running.
Put another way, an average cyclist will find a 2 hour bike ride to be an average ride but an average runner will consider a 2 hour run to be quite long.
As much as I enjoy cycling, I don't have anywhere near enough time to accommodate a bike regimen equivalent to my running regimen. To my mind, the only way cycling comes out ahead of running for most people is if (1) they have an usual amount of free time (e.g. enough to go on three hour rides every day), or (2) they're unable to run without injuring themselves.
> Running is probably the worst sport as far as caloric expenditure is concerned.
This is not correct. They are relatively close, though in fact swimming on average will burn slightly less calories than running per hour of activity for most paces of comparative effort [0].
> I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks
This is around 3.5 to 10 hours of cycling a day depending on your weight and speed... There is individual variation of course, but there is no way you are burning this many calories without A LOT of hours on the bike.
"Each day participants ride, on average, about 100 miles and burn some 6,071 calories"
As a competitive, but still amateur cyclist I would do something in this ballpark almost every day. Hence 3000 - 5000 calories. And I'd often run for an hour or play soccer on top of this since I wasn't a pro.
I did spend a lot of hours on the bike, as serious athletes tend to do. Years of experience with myself and many other national caliber athletes tells me that we do in fact get sick from strenuous exercise, all the time.
> "Each day participants ride, on average, about 100 miles and burn some 6,071 calories"
This is a very bad baseline for an average athlete. You are referring to pro athletes in a race event who average 40-45km/hr speeds on a notoriously hilly race. They don't maintain this level of exertion during training season, and an average athlete is nowhere even close to it.
> As a competitive, but still amateur cyclist I would do something in this ballpark almost every day. Hence 3000 - 5000 calories.
If you bike 160km a day, then you're cycling 4 - 6 hours a day. My original statement that you're not burning that many calories without ALOT of hours on the bike is correct.
> I did spend a lot of hours on the bike, as serious athletes tend to do. Years of experience with myself and many other national caliber athletes..
It's very impressive if you're able to sustain >30hrs week of exercise for weeks as you mention, but be cautious to not sound elitist.
Running is probably the worst sport as far as caloric expenditure is concerned.
Yes, running is extremely inefficient. The most efficient form of movement known is a human on a bicycle. One's choice depends on whether the goal is to burn calories, or travel efficiently.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks.
Wait a minute, what? You're going to take the most efficient form of locomotion and use that as an example of how to burn calories? The only reason you burned that many calories is because you spent all day on the bike. Maybe I'm completely missing your point, but for time spent, running burns more calories.
Rate of calorie burn on a cycle is highly dependent on speed. Riding at 32km/h or higher absolutely consumes significant energy due to wind resistance.
I'm the same height as you as recently dropped 5kg to 81kg due to fasting and cutting starch from my diet. Why wife started freaking out because I was looking so skinny (I'm not remotely fat normally either). I can easily burn 4000 kcal a day. All it takes is one hour on the bike. I burn ~3000 kcal on rest days. You have an endurance optimised build, I have a sprinters build. Everyone is different. Those numbers seem perfectly normal to me.
Yeah but the OP said nothing about biking for an hour every day... OP was replying to a guy who said "We lift 2 times a week. Warm up, then do 2+ reps of a heavy set." That does not at all sound like a guy who burns 3k kcal on a rest day and burns 4k kcal on a bike a few times a week.
A couple of years ago, I took a half-day hike up a mountain called Timpanogos with my son. According to my fitness tracker, I burned over 8000 kcal on that trip. It was a bit strenuous, but not painful. The estimate of calories burned seemed reasonable to me.
EDIT: According to this chart, I probably burned around 600 kcal per hour:
Not even close. It's highly unlikely that you burned more than about 3300kcal (and probably less). You can check out calorie counts from hikers with similar times on Strava.
Maybe. My body is definitely less efficient than those runners. :-) According to this site, typical energy expenditure on the Timpanogos hike is 4000-5000 kcal:
3500 kcal per day is nothing. One can have a basal resting metabolic rate of 2500 kcal, then do some sports and you get 3500 easily. And you seem to be a bit underweight, go build some more muscle. 75kg is featherweight for that height ;)
I think that the issue here is that we're comparing aerobic and strength sports - weightlifters usually seem to aim for BMIs around the "overweight" 25-30 range.
As others said, your exercise does not burn enough calories to impact weight loss / gain.
I suspect your weight loss may be due to the exercise affecting your eating patterns (if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why).
> if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why
I don't think that's right. Eating a hypercaloric diet will likely gain you more weight, and hypocaloric will result in weight loss. It doesn't matter when you eat the food. Eating carbs or protein right after a workout is the subject of the nutrient timing, which is largely moot for protein (as long as you get enough during the 24 hours), and only important for carbs if you are an endurance athlete or have multiple workouts per day.
"Myofibrillar hypertrophy" is the relevant search term. "Underground Secrets to Faster Running" by Barry Ross IIRC is a good read about high weight, low rep protocols. You can perform the same workout everyday of the week with long rests (5 min) between sets.
How long does it take you to get to the gym? Surely doing a couple more reps after getting to gym, warm-up, and mobility isn't going to hurt your time spent.
Ok, let's think about the energy equation. In order to do as much work with a one rep workout versus a standard 5x5 (five sets, five reps) workout, you'd need to be lifting 25 times more weight (one rep total vs 25 reps total). The problem is, your one rep max is not going to be 25 times your 5x5 max.
In any case, I don't think the premise underlying this makes sense. Resistance training is for triggering muscle growth, not burning calories. Perhaps there's some biological reason why a 1 rep workout is effective for you, but I don't think the PE equation helps here.
I used to do heavy dead lift singles (405-500+) as part of my power lifting routine. The warmup alone would crush many people, so I wouldn't exactly say you were not doing anything strenuous.
If you're going in cold right to 450+, my back is scared for you.
I gotta stash this one away. I often refer to the disaster of 20th century health science as scientists repeatedly gathering a single point of data and then drawing a line (or hyperplane) though it, but this is a great article clearly demonstrating an example of that, and how plausible it all seemed at the time.
(Not that it's a trend limited to the 20th century. But it seems to me to have been extremely bad in the health area in that time frame. Not uniquely so necessarily, but quite bad.)
I imagine the 20th century was the worst time for it because we had more sophisticated data collection and analysis methods, but failed to recognize our own inadequacies when using those tools to draw conclusions.
My personal experience with long (100miles+) cross-country mtb riding (with lots of climbing) is that in fact, catching a cold after such a strenuous ride is way more common than the base rate. This is also the experience reported by most professional cyclists (check TdF reports).
My under-researched model of how this happens, is that there is a lot of tear-and-wear in the muscles where the effort is happening, which leads to inflammation, and that's where the white-blood cells might end up.
While my (running) experience is similar, I alao believe it's possible to over-train. That is, it wasn't a single event that did the wearing down. The single big event is what finalized the lowering of the immunity threshold.
So that looks like the fault of the ends (read: the event) was actually led by the means (training).
That may be more due to inadequate preventative sunscreen/protective clothing per outdoor time, every one who spends time outdoors without it shows signs of skin aging like the a/b test in one, truck drivers, with the side closest to window showing significantly more wear and tear versus the interior facing side.
In addition to sunscreen, there are nowadays a lot of arm/leg covering just for SPF protection even in hotter temperatures - I always wear the arm protection/eyewear when outside.
Perhaps you're mistaken? The results discussed in the article claim the opposite, and point out:
"Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
The athletes probably had misinterpreted allergies or short-term scratchiness in their airways after the race as a cold, says John Campbell, a professor at the University of Bath who was a co-author of the new review."
So this is very interesting to me as a swimmer. I find that at the peak of my curve (where I train harder for the regional meet) I often get sick more often, and for far longer. In swimming, this is catastrophic to your performance for the meet, so we try at all costs to prevent illness, but it always happens to one or two of us. The question I pose, does this just apply to shot term exercise, or does intense training (5 hrs a day) for about a month have the same effect.
I have one rule: I only ever do sports if I have rested well the night before. It took me until I reached my 40s to realise that lack of sleep + heavy exercise = high chance of catching a cold.
Other sure ways how I can get sick: overdo sauna after exercising and, by far the worst, overdoing cold showers (Jim Hoff anyone? - I got seriously sick experimenting with that)
I guess the overall strength of my immune system is below average :-(
Interestingly Ive noticed the same thing in regards to exercise plus sleep. But instead of taking that as an indicator of my immune systems strength, I thoufht it was more an indicator of how absolutely filthy gym equipment is. I always shower IMMEDIATELY once Ive finished working out these days.
There is a high correlation between insufficient sleep and catching cold. It kind of made sense but I've looked it up and found several studies supporting this.
This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than to water temperature.
My takeaway is enough rest is not optional and cold showers are doable even in very cold water. I have no idea how hard would be a bath in water + ice.
for me it wakes me the f up. It's strong like having drunk coffee or something. Results may vary of course, but works wonders for me and my focus during the day.
I know of an old woman who's beed ice-cold bucketing for years and looks great and hasn't been sick in a long time. Does this with -20C outside too. Yet I find I may get sick easier if it's too cold outside and I go all out freezing shower.
I believe there is research into anti-depressive effects of cold water exercise too. It seems to be helpful when treating stubborn depression that doesn't respond to other treatments.
I still do cold showers, but just finishing with cold water for a short interval, 20 seconds or so. That seems to be entirely beneficial (I don't remember were I read it but there's some other cold shower expert recommending not going longer than that)
Nothing different than I usually wear ... t-shirt and jeans, and I keep my house at 74 degrees (it's usually a bit warmer in my office). Under normal circumstances, as you can imagine, I find it quite comfortable.
I can concur to your experience. I was knocked out for two weeks-to-month by overdoing strength, interval training and cold showers (~1 year), in combination with start up life; paradoxically sauna regime helped a lot (rigorous super hot 10-15 minutes + immersed super cold 2 minutes phases). Still, I was catching flu regardless. I also tried 3 days of salt-water fasting to reboot immune system; not sure how much that one did. Cold/coughing after a massive exercise was usually more bronchospasm/exercise induced asthma when I was not used to it. Lack of sleep was always a killer, I had 50% chance I catch some sickness symptoms when sleeping <5 hours within two days, especially when weather was bad.
This article could not be more wrong, and anyone who has been a truly serious athlete will agree with me.
There are perhaps a dozen times in my life when I was training with abnormally high intensity even for a very competitive endurance athlete and fell ill immediately afterward.
These range from 2 hr brutal races to 3-4 days of 5-7 hrs daily intense training or race efforts. I very rarely catch a cold, but it's more often than not after an effort that stands out to me as memorably difficult.
Any serious cyclist will agree with me. Even competitive high school athletes know that you are most likely to get sick right before taper.
This is an example of misinterpretation of scientific experiment, most likely by the journalists but possibly by the scientists themselves.
EDIT: I don't take issue with "immune response is heightened after exercise". I'm sure it is. I take issue with this quote: "But it is unlikely to have made you vulnerable to colds or other illnesses afterward, according to a myth-busting new review of the latest science about immunity and endurance exercise".
This is all anecdotal evidence that's pretty well countered by this statement:
> Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
The anecdotes of hundreds of national and world class athletes I have trained, raced, and interacted with over the years is worth more than any study you can paste here, my friend.
I suppose you are unlikely to see anyone here back me up since HackerNews isn't exactly an athletic demographic.
Fever, red eyes, overflowing mucus, extreme soreness and raw throat for days or over a week - are you trying to tell me that this isn't sick? Maybe that's your normal state, but I've seen hundreds of cases of amateur and professional athletes reduced to this shortly after performing national caliber efforts.
The problem with anecdotes is there is no transparency or verifiability to that data, it's all in your inherently biased memory and mind. Real data is not perfect, but at least I can plug it into my R and see if we get the same results after analysis. If you feel passionately about it, perhaps you can create a survey instrument to gather the data about your trainees, I'd be happy to analyze that data.
> Fever, red eyes, overflowing mucus, extreme soreness and raw throat for days or over a week - are you trying to tell me that this isn't sick?
I'm saying (and so is this study) that these symptoms are not necessarily due to infection. You strain your body to an incredible degree when racing, so it's perfectly plausible to me that these symptoms are just the body recovering from the strain rather than fighting infection.
I suppose you are unlikely to see anyone here back me up since HackerNews isn't exactly an athletic demographic.
One might think oneself able to safely make unfounded assertions due to the rest of HN being overweight nerds coding away in their basements. OTOH, one might be surprised to find out how many former Cat 1 bike racers and formerly national-class 5K runners frequent HN. And they're not backing you up because their anecdotal evidence says otherwise.
You only present anecdata here, and you numerous times refer to "any serious athlete" or "any serious cyclist". But where is your scientific evidence supporting your claims? The article claims these claims are myths and you haven't contradicted that here.
I have a PhD from a top institution, so I'm all for science. But the science on this matter is misleading to people who aren't experts in the field, so I don't blame you for calling me out.
Let me try to explain why there is no contradiction, and why the science here can't be relied upon across the board.
First, my anecdata pertain to athletes who are competitive on a national or regional level - Olympic Trials qualifiers, Cat 1 and pro cyclists, and similar. Science will confirm that these individuals have profoundly altered physiologies as compared to average "fit" people.
A problem with extending exercise physiology research to elite athletes is that most of the time, the scientists do not have elite test subjects available. There is a world of difference between the 4 hr marathoners they probably surveyed, or even 3hr Boston qualifiers, compared to the 2:20 and under marathoner I have in mind. There simply isn't much science published on these guys, because there aren't that many of them.
Many exercise physiology papers will say "well-trained subjects between the ages of 21 and 30", and the layman will think this means they studied top athletes. But then you look at the data and see that the average 5K run time for these people is something like 18 minutes, which is much slower than even the easy 20 mile pace for the subjects of my anecdata.
So maybe, the average marathon jogger is not more likely to fall ill after an effort. But talk to anyone who has run under 2:30 for men or under 3:00 for women and they will agree with what I have found
A quote from "Practical Programming for Strength Training (3rd ed)" is apropos:
> With the peer-reviewed literature dominated by articles on exercise, forming an “evidence-based practice” – the term fashionably applied to exercise prescription based only on evidence from peer-reviewed exercise science literature – devoted to the actual training of athletes is essentially impossible. Drawing conclusions about training for athletes based on a body of literature devoted to exercise for a few small subsets of the general public cannot be and has never been productive, and all the peer-reviewed publication-worship in the universe will not make it so.
> The observations of experienced individuals – in this case, experienced coaches who have dealt with thousands of athletes over decades – are often regarded by academics in the exercise science publishing business as mere “anecdotal” reports, tantamount to hearsay and innuendo. This is a misunderstanding of the definition of “empirical,” which most definitely includes the direct, informed observations of experienced coaches. Empirical evidence gathered from an experimental study is only one type of empirical evidence, and it is dependent on observation in precisely the same way an experienced coach gathers data through observation. It is therefore precisely as valuable, especially when you consider the fact that data from a study is only as good as the methods that generated it.
> Exercise science has its problems. The populations it studies are typically small, often fewer than 20 people in the group. These people are very seldom trained athletes, and are most usually untrained college-age kids for whom any stress is adaptive. This makes for a poor way to study the effects of two different exercise methods, and completely precludes any questions regarding training. Often the methods themselves are poorly constructed, [...], completely omitting any quantification of the movement pattern being studied (precisely what is a squat? How deep is it? What is the hip angle? Does this affect muscle recruitment? How is this measured?), or display a failure on the part of the staff to standardize its interactions with the study population (“Try really really hard this time.”). Sometimes the study duration is too short to reveal anything meaningful about the question being investigated, since we are dealing with students in the study population that will only be available for one semester. Most importantly, if the study is being directed by a person without the experience to know that the study question itself is stupid (Can more weight be bench-pressed lying on a bench or balanced on a swiss ball?), and if the review staff lacks the experience to know that the PI is asking a stupid question, then stupid peer-reviewed “evidence-based” research enters the literature and adds to the problem.
> In the absence of any meaningful experimental data generated by peer-reviewed studies regarding the long-term effects of barbell training, we are forced to rely on the observations of hundreds of thousands of coaches and athletes who carefully picked their way through the mistakes made during the process of acquiring experience. This makes a rationalist out of every effective barbell training programmer. This process – if it is to be logical, effective, and productive, i.e. rational – must be guided by a thorough grounding in the sciences of physiology, chemistry, and physics, since the “exercise sciences” have proven themselves to lack the rigor and scope necessary for the task. The well-prepared coach has either a “hard” science degree or an otherwise extensive background in biology, anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, and probably psychology as well. Textbooks on these subjects should form the basis of the coach’s library, with practical experience under the bar and many thousands of hours coaching on the platform rounding out his abilities as a coach of barbell training.
Then you appeal to science without actually citing any science, but yet more anecdotal data and thoughts from your own mind.
Your arguments are just not very strong because they're all coming from your own experience and thoughts. Your qualifications in exercise and academia (especially on a partially anonymous internet forum) do not make your thoughts any more valuable than anyone else's here without resources to back them up.
His argument is that it's inherently hard to do exercise science research because of selection biases and sample sizes. This is a fairly reasonable statement.
The problem is confounded because of conflicts of interest. Either the investigators are being remunerated by a commercial interest or the investigators are hoping to establish a commercial entity.
It's not uncommon for a study to come out with interesting results and conclusion only to be found to be completely unreproducible. It takes a while for this to happen, and even then, people are confused over who is right.
Also, linking to the wiki page for a logical fallacy is a very passive aggressive swipe and low quality.
I cited my scientific qualifications to demonstrate that I am uniquely positioned to assess the quality and scope of the scientific research we are discussing and - crucially - the interpretations thereof.
Most on HN lack the background knowledge and training to usefully interpret a review article like this, let alone a journalistic simplification. Yes, I cite "thoughts from my own mind", a mind which has spent years researching this theme.
You're wondering why I don't cite any articles contradicting the claims of the review article? That's because this paper already cites many published peer-reviewed works, only to dismiss their findings. You'd know this if you actually read the paper and had the background and training to properly interpret it!
It's an interesting review. The main idea of the paper is that we shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly when thinking that strenuous exercise can increase risk of short-term illness. The authors point out some logical and mechanistic fallacies of past studies.
I take issue with the interpretation that most people will have after reading - that strenuous exercise will not increase risk of getting sick. I know firsthand that this is not the case in truly elite athletes. But, for many people this may be true. It's important to be specific however, when discussing scientific matters, which is why I contributed my thoughts
> ...I am uniquely positioned to assess the quality and scope of the scientific research we are discussing...
> Most on HN lack the background knowledge and training to usefully interpret a review article like this, let alone a journalistic simplification.
It seems like you can't help but belittle the audience you're replying to. It comes across as if you're saying "I'm the elite academic talking down to all of you plebs." You may have some good ideas but your tone and arrogance suck. And I think you'd be surprised by the "academic qualifications" of many of the people on HN. Many in this audience are perfectly capable of understanding the article. You're not "unique."
You're right, I was honestly just testing out an elitist writing style to see what the responses would be like. It's a challenge to argue on semi-anonymous forums, and it's interesting seeing how tone plays out. It's been a good discussion for sure.
As a machinist and building maintenance engineer, I can almost guarantee any ill feeling you're experiencing after a trip to your local gym is due to the air quality.
Gyms are rarely purpose built facilities. Rather, theyre rented and renovated spaces. In turn, airflow in the structure is planned for light industrial or office space. Almost no thought goes into the fact that gyms are sometimes hundreds of occupants moving the air at two to three times what the OSHA or planning documents indicate. Paints with VoC's, sealants, and even offgassing plastics from gym mats or new equipment can turn the air quality from decent to garbage in a few hours.
I was once contracted to fix an air handler issue at a fitness center. The root cause was a set of 6 un-ventilated panini presses that were placed near the front desk as part of an effort to sell snacks and sandwiches. The added smoke and particulate had decreased the filter life and burned out a blower motor. The solution was either get rid of the electric grills, or start replacing 30 day filters every week.
You’re not even mentioning CO2 concentration. I work in a large, open office with seemingly sufficient airflow, but after buying a CO2 detector on a whim I’ve seen that it frequently reaches 1200ppm, and you actually can tell that you feel like crap when that happens.
I can’t imagine if the whole office was filled with people exercising.
Our office has those installed as a regular feature in all meeting rooms. Main takeaway lesson: never fit more people in a room than was designed for. Air quality is a balance of inflow (equals outflow) and usage. Fit 9 in a room for 6? PPM way above 1000.
I don't know, but I'd love to see some study on the impact of CO2 levels on the measures we typical care about regarding meetings: levels of alertness, qualities of social interaction, decision-making speed/quality, etc.
> Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments
> ... Methods: Twenty-four participants spent 6 full work days (0900–1700 hours) in an environmentally controlled office space, blinded to test conditions. On different days, they were exposed to IEQ conditions representative of Conventional [high concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)] and Green (low concentrations of VOCs) office buildings in the United States. Additional conditions simulated a Green building with a high outdoor air ventilation rate (labeled Green+) and artificially elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels independent of ventilation.
> Results: On average, cognitive scores were 61% higher on the Green building day and 101% higher on the two Green+ building days than on the Conventional building day (p < 0.0001). VOCs and CO2 were independently associated with cognitive scores.
> Conclusions: Cognitive function scores were significantly better under Green+ building conditions than in the Conventional building conditions for all nine functional domains. These findings have wide-ranging implications because this study was designed to reflect conditions that are commonly encountered every day in many indoor environments.
I've worked a few days in a consulting sweatshop before (lots of consultants in a warehouse like environment near clients office). I don't know if the air was rich in CO2 but it definitely was stale in there.
The overall feeling I got was "tired". My eyes didn't want to stay open. My mind felt like gauze was wrapping it. My attitude was mellowed and slightly depressed. It took more effort to move (even to walk to the door outside, which I did often despite it being allergy season). As soon as I spent 10m outside my energy started to return.
Possibly several things going on, of which O2 may be only one. Research also shows taking breaks and exposure to nature both have revitalizing effects.
It turns out measuring CO2 is expensive, but measuring VOC (volatile organic compounds, ethanol) exhaled by humans is cheap and one can map from the VOC PPM to equivalent CO2, in the datasheet referred to as CO2-equiv.
Depends on the exercises you do. An outdoor gym is feasible depending on climate, air pollution, and what's available in parks. (Or simply cycling/jogging outside)
Home gyms can cover part of it. You can do a lot with a chinup bar, bodyweight exercises, powerblock dumbell sets.
I'm actually in a city too cold to go without a gym year round, and I do barbells so I can't do those at home (space too small). But, mentioning the options above for those who don't have the same constraints.
Start sharing it with your fellow gym members and collectively demand that management make some changes to improve air quality. Crowdsource some testing devices to prove your point if necessary, now that you have an idea of which points you have to prove.
i have a pet fascination with air quality- not in any real sense, but im always just wondering about it, since its so varied and virtually invisible. are there any simple small tools you know of that are good at get information about air quality. the only thing i see people sometimes use is a particulate meter that tells them the concentration of particulate matter of various sizes. seems like it would be cool to have a kit of different tools to measure things like c02 levels, voc's, particulates etc
You can get CO2 meters quite easily on amazon. They sell them as a commodity for greenhouses measurement.
For particulates, the Laseregg is the best I've found.
Apparently the laseregg 2+ measures VOC, but I'm not sure about that. From what I heard there are no VOC meters available at a consumer level. CO2 is the best proxy, because high CO2 means low ventilation, which prevents venting of VOCs.
* I am far more diligent about opening a window at my home and office. In winter I may open one a crack.
* I leave my bedroom door open at night
* I noticed I was getting extremely high AQI index readings when cooking. I was frying things in a pan after previously cooking something else in the same meal (meat, then sweet potatoes). I now wash in between, use coconut oil (less AQI readings) and am more diligent about opening the kitchen door if the AQU gets high
It's kind of like measuring weight. Once you have it stable, you don't really need to do anything. But, keeping the readings alerts you if something ever goes off track.
Also very useful to see that even openings in windows could make large and immediate differences.
I think you have it backwards from the cursory research I did by scanning over the datasheets for various sensors. VOC are easier to measure than CO2 and for rooms occupied by people their is a strong correlation between VOC and CO2. VOC sensors qty 1 are 5-12 where CO2 is 40-120. These are sensors themselves, not full devices.
I've been running for twenty years and am currently on a half-year streak with around 15km / day.
In all those years I've been sick for about two weeks all in all. Before working out, that was like the average over half a year.
Conclusion: Figure out what works for you, have a daily routine, add a bit of obsession and stop reading stories about the pros and cons of exercising.
Same with me during my peak running period last year; even when I was feeling ill or off, a run, albeit grueling at the time, always seemed to aid in my recovery (if only for the placebo of getting myself out of bed).
I really need to start doing it on the regular again...
True that. All those pace yourself arguments are usually coming from those who're just trying to justify their own laziness. Fact is, if you want to increase or even keep your performance those two days/w a 30min followed by a protein shake won't change anything other than making you fat because you think you just burned two pizzas.
Prior to my knee injury I was a happy runner, and I definitely found that just going for longer than 15 minutes would completely clear out my nose if I was at the congestion stage of a cold.
Of course, my nose would be congested again a few hours later, but it was still a decent motivator since I hate taking medicine.
Started doing Tabata sprints a couple years ago. Amazing how much more effective they are versus running at a slower pace for 40 minutes (my old routine).
Also, never knew this, they make self-powered treadmills which are really ideal for sprinting on. I just bought a ASUNA Hi-Performance Cardio Trainer Self Powered Manual Treadmill, it's pretty much ideal for Tabata/sprinting for a home-gym.
Effective at maintaining aerobic conditioning. I wanted to get away from having to run 40 minutes 3 times a week. Doing sprints for 2-4 minutes 3 times a week is essentially the same.
Also has the added benefit over my old 40 minute jog routine of increasing my quickness. I play hockey so it was noticeable how much quicker my first 3 strides have become the past 2 years.
Anecdotally my own experience matches that of the rodents in the experiment. I've found that when I'm getting regular strenuous exercise (I bike up a steep hill as part of my commute) I almost never get sick, and can go > 1 year without so much as a sore throat. Conversely, when I'm more sedentary for months at a go, I'm more likely to become ill.
I have asthma and many allergies, whenever I have a cold, 80% chances it's gonna end up as a long and tiresome bronchitis. In HS, I decided to give no fuck, went to my 2h winter soccer practice (+ 1h total mudtrail bike to go there). That cold didnt last long and didnt end up causing bronchitis. That was surely half luck, but I always have a feeling that, to an extent, keeping your system active helps. More blood flow ? maybe trigger a more rapid and global immune response .. dunno
Anecdotally: when I was a bike racer I noted that if I was so exhausted after a hard training ride (usually 5+ hours, >100 miles) that I was involuntarily falling asleep afterward that I would inevitably come down with a sore throat leading to a cold within 12-24 hours. 100% of the time.
I've had maybe 2-3 colds in the decades since I quit racing.
Hydration was completely insufficient, I realized much later. Nutrition was the typical medium-to-large meal after a shower/nap. There was often a long car ride home, an hour or so.
I have asthma, and I think strenuous exercise is good for my lung capacity long term, but makes me feel terrible the next day or 2 days after. It's really difficult to figure out what causes my symptoms and what makes me feel better.
I wish there was a chip that monitored hormones and immune system factors, etc.
i think its not the exercise but the rest that follows after a strenuous activity that makes you prone to get sick. its been my theory that if you rest like you are on your last breath, your immune system stops being active. but if you stay active and keep moving your body like you have to survive, your immune system is boosted.
ive tested this theory time and time and seems to be on point.
there have been a number of times when i was feeling sick and instead of resting, id go out in the cold freezing and walk outside for hours. next day i would be completely healed.
but when im just home bed ridden that sickness can linger for days or even weeks.
im also a huge fan of taking cold shower the moment you feel like you are carching a cold. it works way too often to be a coincidence.
189 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadRapidly producing immune cells during exercise, then letting them (and more) die off would be a baffling response. But pumping them into the lungs (because you've been breathing hard through your mouth) and gut (for when you make up lost energy, and maybe eat some raw meat you've been hunting)? That makes a great deal of sense.
That effect is unconfirmed in humans, but it would ground our observations in an evolutionarily-sane outcome.
Hunting isn't like going to the store, success isn't guaranteed.
Ketogenesis requires over a week of carb restriction IIRC. I think fasting yields energy because the body increases various stress hormones to push you to find food so you don't starve.
Have you ever tried to focus on a hard problem at work after a big lunch?
I had the idea that I wanted to reduce time in the gym, so I used the potential energy equation
PE= Mgh
I'm not getting any taller, so the only thing I could change was either the reps or mass of weight moved.
I made it my goal to lift heavy weights so I'd only need to deadlift 1 time and be able to pig out.
TBH, it works, I lose 1 lb a week eating 3,000 calories a day. We lift 2 times a week. Warm up, then do 2+ reps of a heavy set.
I dont really sweat after a workout, but I look pretty big and I'm still deadlifting 450lbs. But I only deadlift that weight 1 time a week.
Is that 'Strenuous'?
People always overstate their level of fitness by several orders of magnitude on anonymous internet forums.
450 is almost the expectation for anyone casually lifting for a few years.
[0] https://strengthlevel.com/strength-standards/deadlift
A 315lb deadlift is obtainable within a month.
I didnt mention that I have to warm up, but the point of the workout is to complete a heavy set.
How many warm up sets do you do?
Working up to a deadlift max doesn't take a lot of time, or a ton of sets. Like, 4-6 sets of 3-4 reps.
Longevity and injury-prevention is key to long-term gym vitality... but people don't usually appreciate this until they injure themselves somehow.
<40-something lifter, out...>
1 heavy deadlift set usually means 15 minutes of warmups.
I thought using the potential energy equation gave me a little credentials.
I also wrote a book about this topic. But I didnt include it in the comment.
You cannot do 5x5 deadlift sets once you are past 4 plates.
looks like mkirklions responded and really he does 5 sets with increasing weight, then does his heaviest.
So it is more like the classic "pyramid" or "increased weight until near-exhaustion" sets, which have been around since forever...
Deadlift warmups at 45lbs, 135lbs, 225lbs, 315lbs, 405lbs, then heavy set 435lbs.
Bench is 45lbs, 135lbs, 190lbs(or whatever my workout buddy does), then 235lbs for my heavy set.
The goal is to do 2-3 since that means its good form. I am for 1 heavy set rather than 1 heavy rep.
Ok, seriously.... math: if you eat 3000 kcal per day and lose 1 lb per week, you're burning 3500 kcal per day. This is quite a lot. It's near impossible unless you work out a lot and are veeeery muscular... or are impossibly tall... or, well, fat. (Or a combination of those.)
Take me for comparison: I am 187cm (6'1ish) tall and weigh 75kg (165 lbs), pretty much smack in the middle of the "normal weight" range. I like running, do about 50km (30 miles) per week. I count calories and let my wrist watch measure my energy expenditure 24/7. On rest days (mostly sedentary), I burn about 2100 kcal. To get up to 3400, I have to do some sort of hard run and some lighter activity in addition, or do a long run (18km+).
Now I'm not everybody of course, but you can't be that abnormal, right? So I'm not buying your numbers.
Since about 3 years I've been counting calories and let various wrist watches with 24/7 heart rate trackers (fitbit, later garmin devices) estimate energy expenditure.
So I measure energy in and out (with unknown error bars). The energy balance I get as a result predicts what my body weight should do.
My control is stepping on the scale every time before I take a shower, log, and observe trends.
Result, consistent over the last three-ish years: my measured weight does almost exactly what the calorie counting and wristwatch estimating predicts. I see absolutely no systematic error in one direction or the other (measured over weeks, that is, to do away with short term fluctuations).
A serious endurance cyclist or swimmer will certainly go through 3000 kcal on a normal training day if not more.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks. What's more is I know these numbers are very accurate as we train with power meters that record our energy expenditure with minimal error.
It's important to distinguish between serious athletes and average people who exercise. It's possible that truly competitive athletes - for instance, who run 120 miles a week to your 30 - will be much more likely to get ill from their efforts. It can take serious fitness - and a mentality acquired only by years of serious training - to push yourself to the extent that you fall ill, and maybe the recreational "athlete" described in this text can't reach that point.
Put another way, an average cyclist will find a 2 hour bike ride to be an average ride but an average runner will consider a 2 hour run to be quite long.
This is not correct. They are relatively close, though in fact swimming on average will burn slightly less calories than running per hour of activity for most paces of comparative effort [0].
> I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks
This is around 3.5 to 10 hours of cycling a day depending on your weight and speed... There is individual variation of course, but there is no way you are burning this many calories without A LOT of hours on the bike.
[0]: http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburned.htm
"Each day participants ride, on average, about 100 miles and burn some 6,071 calories"
As a competitive, but still amateur cyclist I would do something in this ballpark almost every day. Hence 3000 - 5000 calories. And I'd often run for an hour or play soccer on top of this since I wasn't a pro.
I did spend a lot of hours on the bike, as serious athletes tend to do. Years of experience with myself and many other national caliber athletes tells me that we do in fact get sick from strenuous exercise, all the time.
This is a very bad baseline for an average athlete. You are referring to pro athletes in a race event who average 40-45km/hr speeds on a notoriously hilly race. They don't maintain this level of exertion during training season, and an average athlete is nowhere even close to it.
> As a competitive, but still amateur cyclist I would do something in this ballpark almost every day. Hence 3000 - 5000 calories.
If you bike 160km a day, then you're cycling 4 - 6 hours a day. My original statement that you're not burning that many calories without ALOT of hours on the bike is correct.
> I did spend a lot of hours on the bike, as serious athletes tend to do. Years of experience with myself and many other national caliber athletes..
It's very impressive if you're able to sustain >30hrs week of exercise for weeks as you mention, but be cautious to not sound elitist.
Yes, running is extremely inefficient. The most efficient form of movement known is a human on a bicycle. One's choice depends on whether the goal is to burn calories, or travel efficiently.
I've burned an estimated 5000kcal daily on the bike for weeks.
Wait a minute, what? You're going to take the most efficient form of locomotion and use that as an example of how to burn calories? The only reason you burned that many calories is because you spent all day on the bike. Maybe I'm completely missing your point, but for time spent, running burns more calories.
EDIT: According to this chart, I probably burned around 600 kcal per hour:
http://www.nutristrategy.com/caloriesburnedwalking.htm
It took us about 8 hours, so the total was probably closer to 4800 kcal.
In any case, the point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to burn a lot more than 2000 kcal per day.
Who's willing to be the truth is significantly lower still?
https://www.strava.com/segments/8428908
https://www.bettercheaperslower.com/ways/to-the-summit-of-mt...
Oh you put a smiley, that makes it alright then!
Incorrect. My BMI is 21.4, which is almost exactly in the middle of the "healthy" range for my height. (Healthy BMI range is defined 18.5 - 25)
I suspect your weight loss may be due to the exercise affecting your eating patterns (if you eat high calorie food before going to bed you will likely gain more weight than if you get same calories in a sweet drink right after a long ski race; not sure why).
I don't think that's right. Eating a hypercaloric diet will likely gain you more weight, and hypocaloric will result in weight loss. It doesn't matter when you eat the food. Eating carbs or protein right after a workout is the subject of the nutrient timing, which is largely moot for protein (as long as you get enough during the 24 hours), and only important for carbs if you are an endurance athlete or have multiple workouts per day.
Got a gym crew that probably takes the longest to put on my friends weights.
In any case, I don't think the premise underlying this makes sense. Resistance training is for triggering muscle growth, not burning calories. Perhaps there's some biological reason why a 1 rep workout is effective for you, but I don't think the PE equation helps here.
But the problem statement begins with- You need to finish the gym in less than 2 hours/week.
I like strength training, especially 3x5s.
My workout looks closer to a 5/3/1/5 pyramid due to warmup and trying to burn myself out on the last set.
I'm glad you mentioned this, I'll play with the math this weekend and try to find a point of diminishing returns.
How high do you lift it?
How's your back?
Who's we? (can I join)
Day 1 Deadlift- 435 Bench- 235
Day 2 Squats-345 OHP-160
Back is surprisingly great, my first deadlift was only 90lbs. Ive come a long way.
Here is the cheatsheet I follow: http://efficiencyiseverything.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploa...
If you're going in cold right to 450+, my back is scared for you.
(Not that it's a trend limited to the 20th century. But it seems to me to have been extremely bad in the health area in that time frame. Not uniquely so necessarily, but quite bad.)
Kind of like social media algorithms today.
My under-researched model of how this happens, is that there is a lot of tear-and-wear in the muscles where the effort is happening, which leads to inflammation, and that's where the white-blood cells might end up.
So that looks like the fault of the ends (read: the event) was actually led by the means (training).
I have an optometrist friend who says he can tell easily in eye exam which old people have worn glasses or sunglasses and which haven't.
"Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
The athletes probably had misinterpreted allergies or short-term scratchiness in their airways after the race as a cold, says John Campbell, a professor at the University of Bath who was a co-author of the new review."
Other sure ways how I can get sick: overdo sauna after exercising and, by far the worst, overdoing cold showers (Jim Hoff anyone? - I got seriously sick experimenting with that)
I guess the overall strength of my immune system is below average :-(
This winter I've tried only cold showers after running outside. Cold showers as in (sometimes) my neck hurt if I did it too long. Did not catch a cold until this spring and I think this is more correlated to insufficient rest/sleep (on top of exercising) than to water temperature.
My takeaway is enough rest is not optional and cold showers are doable even in very cold water. I have no idea how hard would be a bath in water + ice.
I know of an old woman who's beed ice-cold bucketing for years and looks great and hasn't been sick in a long time. Does this with -20C outside too. Yet I find I may get sick easier if it's too cold outside and I go all out freezing shower.
The topic was covered in a BBC programme:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047z13f
There are perhaps a dozen times in my life when I was training with abnormally high intensity even for a very competitive endurance athlete and fell ill immediately afterward.
These range from 2 hr brutal races to 3-4 days of 5-7 hrs daily intense training or race efforts. I very rarely catch a cold, but it's more often than not after an effort that stands out to me as memorably difficult.
Any serious cyclist will agree with me. Even competitive high school athletes know that you are most likely to get sick right before taper.
This is an example of misinterpretation of scientific experiment, most likely by the journalists but possibly by the scientists themselves.
EDIT: I don't take issue with "immune response is heightened after exercise". I'm sure it is. I take issue with this quote: "But it is unlikely to have made you vulnerable to colds or other illnesses afterward, according to a myth-busting new review of the latest science about immunity and endurance exercise".
> Their first conclusion was that athletes are lousy at identifying whether and why they are sniffling. The original 1980s studies had relied on runners’ self-reports of illness. But newer experiments that actually tested saliva showed that less than a third of marathon runners who thought they had caught a cold actually had. Statistically, their odds of becoming sick were about the same as for anyone else in the race’s host city.
I suppose you are unlikely to see anyone here back me up since HackerNews isn't exactly an athletic demographic.
Fever, red eyes, overflowing mucus, extreme soreness and raw throat for days or over a week - are you trying to tell me that this isn't sick? Maybe that's your normal state, but I've seen hundreds of cases of amateur and professional athletes reduced to this shortly after performing national caliber efforts.
I'm saying (and so is this study) that these symptoms are not necessarily due to infection. You strain your body to an incredible degree when racing, so it's perfectly plausible to me that these symptoms are just the body recovering from the strain rather than fighting infection.
One might think oneself able to safely make unfounded assertions due to the rest of HN being overweight nerds coding away in their basements. OTOH, one might be surprised to find out how many former Cat 1 bike racers and formerly national-class 5K runners frequent HN. And they're not backing you up because their anecdotal evidence says otherwise.
Let me try to explain why there is no contradiction, and why the science here can't be relied upon across the board.
First, my anecdata pertain to athletes who are competitive on a national or regional level - Olympic Trials qualifiers, Cat 1 and pro cyclists, and similar. Science will confirm that these individuals have profoundly altered physiologies as compared to average "fit" people.
A problem with extending exercise physiology research to elite athletes is that most of the time, the scientists do not have elite test subjects available. There is a world of difference between the 4 hr marathoners they probably surveyed, or even 3hr Boston qualifiers, compared to the 2:20 and under marathoner I have in mind. There simply isn't much science published on these guys, because there aren't that many of them.
Many exercise physiology papers will say "well-trained subjects between the ages of 21 and 30", and the layman will think this means they studied top athletes. But then you look at the data and see that the average 5K run time for these people is something like 18 minutes, which is much slower than even the easy 20 mile pace for the subjects of my anecdata.
So maybe, the average marathon jogger is not more likely to fall ill after an effort. But talk to anyone who has run under 2:30 for men or under 3:00 for women and they will agree with what I have found
> With the peer-reviewed literature dominated by articles on exercise, forming an “evidence-based practice” – the term fashionably applied to exercise prescription based only on evidence from peer-reviewed exercise science literature – devoted to the actual training of athletes is essentially impossible. Drawing conclusions about training for athletes based on a body of literature devoted to exercise for a few small subsets of the general public cannot be and has never been productive, and all the peer-reviewed publication-worship in the universe will not make it so.
> The observations of experienced individuals – in this case, experienced coaches who have dealt with thousands of athletes over decades – are often regarded by academics in the exercise science publishing business as mere “anecdotal” reports, tantamount to hearsay and innuendo. This is a misunderstanding of the definition of “empirical,” which most definitely includes the direct, informed observations of experienced coaches. Empirical evidence gathered from an experimental study is only one type of empirical evidence, and it is dependent on observation in precisely the same way an experienced coach gathers data through observation. It is therefore precisely as valuable, especially when you consider the fact that data from a study is only as good as the methods that generated it.
> Exercise science has its problems. The populations it studies are typically small, often fewer than 20 people in the group. These people are very seldom trained athletes, and are most usually untrained college-age kids for whom any stress is adaptive. This makes for a poor way to study the effects of two different exercise methods, and completely precludes any questions regarding training. Often the methods themselves are poorly constructed, [...], completely omitting any quantification of the movement pattern being studied (precisely what is a squat? How deep is it? What is the hip angle? Does this affect muscle recruitment? How is this measured?), or display a failure on the part of the staff to standardize its interactions with the study population (“Try really really hard this time.”). Sometimes the study duration is too short to reveal anything meaningful about the question being investigated, since we are dealing with students in the study population that will only be available for one semester. Most importantly, if the study is being directed by a person without the experience to know that the study question itself is stupid (Can more weight be bench-pressed lying on a bench or balanced on a swiss ball?), and if the review staff lacks the experience to know that the PI is asking a stupid question, then stupid peer-reviewed “evidence-based” research enters the literature and adds to the problem.
> In the absence of any meaningful experimental data generated by peer-reviewed studies regarding the long-term effects of barbell training, we are forced to rely on the observations of hundreds of thousands of coaches and athletes who carefully picked their way through the mistakes made during the process of acquiring experience. This makes a rationalist out of every effective barbell training programmer. This process – if it is to be logical, effective, and productive, i.e. rational – must be guided by a thorough grounding in the sciences of physiology, chemistry, and physics, since the “exercise sciences” have proven themselves to lack the rigor and scope necessary for the task. The well-prepared coach has either a “hard” science degree or an otherwise extensive background in biology, anatomy, physiology, physics, chemistry, and probably psychology as well. Textbooks on these subjects should form the basis of the coach’s library, with practical experience under the bar and many thousands of hours coaching on the platform rounding out his abilities as a coach of barbell training.
I'm sorry but any comment that starts out "I have a PhD from a top institution" reeks of Appeal to Authority: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Then you appeal to science without actually citing any science, but yet more anecdotal data and thoughts from your own mind.
Your arguments are just not very strong because they're all coming from your own experience and thoughts. Your qualifications in exercise and academia (especially on a partially anonymous internet forum) do not make your thoughts any more valuable than anyone else's here without resources to back them up.
The problem is confounded because of conflicts of interest. Either the investigators are being remunerated by a commercial interest or the investigators are hoping to establish a commercial entity.
It's not uncommon for a study to come out with interesting results and conclusion only to be found to be completely unreproducible. It takes a while for this to happen, and even then, people are confused over who is right.
Also, linking to the wiki page for a logical fallacy is a very passive aggressive swipe and low quality.
Most on HN lack the background knowledge and training to usefully interpret a review article like this, let alone a journalistic simplification. Yes, I cite "thoughts from my own mind", a mind which has spent years researching this theme.
You're wondering why I don't cite any articles contradicting the claims of the review article? That's because this paper already cites many published peer-reviewed works, only to dismiss their findings. You'd know this if you actually read the paper and had the background and training to properly interpret it!
It's an interesting review. The main idea of the paper is that we shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly when thinking that strenuous exercise can increase risk of short-term illness. The authors point out some logical and mechanistic fallacies of past studies.
I take issue with the interpretation that most people will have after reading - that strenuous exercise will not increase risk of getting sick. I know firsthand that this is not the case in truly elite athletes. But, for many people this may be true. It's important to be specific however, when discussing scientific matters, which is why I contributed my thoughts
> Most on HN lack the background knowledge and training to usefully interpret a review article like this, let alone a journalistic simplification.
It seems like you can't help but belittle the audience you're replying to. It comes across as if you're saying "I'm the elite academic talking down to all of you plebs." You may have some good ideas but your tone and arrogance suck. And I think you'd be surprised by the "academic qualifications" of many of the people on HN. Many in this audience are perfectly capable of understanding the article. You're not "unique."
Not an expert, but wonder if this is caused by a hangover from the endorphin dump from the marathon. I felt that way afterwards.
Gyms are rarely purpose built facilities. Rather, theyre rented and renovated spaces. In turn, airflow in the structure is planned for light industrial or office space. Almost no thought goes into the fact that gyms are sometimes hundreds of occupants moving the air at two to three times what the OSHA or planning documents indicate. Paints with VoC's, sealants, and even offgassing plastics from gym mats or new equipment can turn the air quality from decent to garbage in a few hours.
I was once contracted to fix an air handler issue at a fitness center. The root cause was a set of 6 un-ventilated panini presses that were placed near the front desk as part of an effort to sell snacks and sandwiches. The added smoke and particulate had decreased the filter life and burned out a blower motor. The solution was either get rid of the electric grills, or start replacing 30 day filters every week.
I can’t imagine if the whole office was filled with people exercising.
https://thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-levels-dire...
> Associations of Cognitive Function Scores with Carbon Dioxide, Ventilation, and Volatile Organic Compound Exposures in Office Workers: A Controlled Exposure Study of Green and Conventional Office Environments
> ... Methods: Twenty-four participants spent 6 full work days (0900–1700 hours) in an environmentally controlled office space, blinded to test conditions. On different days, they were exposed to IEQ conditions representative of Conventional [high concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs)] and Green (low concentrations of VOCs) office buildings in the United States. Additional conditions simulated a Green building with a high outdoor air ventilation rate (labeled Green+) and artificially elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels independent of ventilation.
> Results: On average, cognitive scores were 61% higher on the Green building day and 101% higher on the two Green+ building days than on the Conventional building day (p < 0.0001). VOCs and CO2 were independently associated with cognitive scores.
> Conclusions: Cognitive function scores were significantly better under Green+ building conditions than in the Conventional building conditions for all nine functional domains. These findings have wide-ranging implications because this study was designed to reflect conditions that are commonly encountered every day in many indoor environments.
The overall feeling I got was "tired". My eyes didn't want to stay open. My mind felt like gauze was wrapping it. My attitude was mellowed and slightly depressed. It took more effort to move (even to walk to the door outside, which I did often despite it being allergy season). As soon as I spent 10m outside my energy started to return.
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/682/Sensirion_Gas_Sensors...
1: http://a.co/afxamMd
Home gyms can cover part of it. You can do a lot with a chinup bar, bodyweight exercises, powerblock dumbell sets.
I'm actually in a city too cold to go without a gym year round, and I do barbells so I can't do those at home (space too small). But, mentioning the options above for those who don't have the same constraints.
Just more pleasant in general as well.
https://getawair.com
It does a decent job.
For particulates, the Laseregg is the best I've found.
Apparently the laseregg 2+ measures VOC, but I'm not sure about that. From what I heard there are no VOC meters available at a consumer level. CO2 is the best proxy, because high CO2 means low ventilation, which prevents venting of VOCs.
* I am far more diligent about opening a window at my home and office. In winter I may open one a crack.
* I leave my bedroom door open at night
* I noticed I was getting extremely high AQI index readings when cooking. I was frying things in a pan after previously cooking something else in the same meal (meat, then sweet potatoes). I now wash in between, use coconut oil (less AQI readings) and am more diligent about opening the kitchen door if the AQU gets high
It's kind of like measuring weight. Once you have it stable, you don't really need to do anything. But, keeping the readings alerts you if something ever goes off track.
Also very useful to see that even openings in windows could make large and immediate differences.
That wouldn't make much sense: what if you feel ill only after doing certain exercises (e.g. cardio versus weight lifting)?
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/preserving-immune-function-...
Conclusion: Figure out what works for you, have a daily routine, add a bit of obsession and stop reading stories about the pros and cons of exercising.
I really need to start doing it on the regular again...
Of course, my nose would be congested again a few hours later, but it was still a decent motivator since I hate taking medicine.
Wish my knee would stop being shitty.
Also, never knew this, they make self-powered treadmills which are really ideal for sprinting on. I just bought a ASUNA Hi-Performance Cardio Trainer Self Powered Manual Treadmill, it's pretty much ideal for Tabata/sprinting for a home-gym.
Also has the added benefit over my old 40 minute jog routine of increasing my quickness. I play hockey so it was noticeable how much quicker my first 3 strides have become the past 2 years.
Pretty good read regarding all this: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-17177251
I've had maybe 2-3 colds in the decades since I quit racing.
> The review concludes that, contrary to widespread belief, a long, tiring workout or race can amplify immune responses, not suppress them.
Would be even better if that was reflected in the title, but alas, my expectations from a modern website are not so high.
I wish there was a chip that monitored hormones and immune system factors, etc.
ive tested this theory time and time and seems to be on point.
there have been a number of times when i was feeling sick and instead of resting, id go out in the cold freezing and walk outside for hours. next day i would be completely healed.
but when im just home bed ridden that sickness can linger for days or even weeks.
im also a huge fan of taking cold shower the moment you feel like you are carching a cold. it works way too often to be a coincidence.