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Exercise intensity is associated with cardiometabolic health

37 points qclibre22 1 hour ago 15 comments

motionlessveloc 45 minutes ago | parent

TL;DR: for some biomarkers, "sprint-interval exercise" (SIE) bursts as short as 5 min can be as effective as much longer periods of "moderate-intensity exercise" (MIE).

Specifically: MIE consisted of 90-min of continuous cycling at 90%–100% of the predetermined first lactate threshold, while SIE consisted of 6 sets of 30-s all-out cycling at a resistance of 0.075 kg·kg−1 body mass, with 4-min rests between the sets (Figure 1A).

The study's sample size was small and the period studied fairly short, but they did measure the levels of several thousand proteins.

YZF 34 minutes ago | parent

"The One-Minute Workout: Science Shows a Way to Get Fit That's Smarter, Faster, Shorter"

EDIT: This book is maybe a bit old but covers a lot of ground on high intensity interval training vs. traditional training. I guess this study adds to the body of evidence that HIIT is effective. My take as a random person interested in this stuff is that ideally you are mixing both high intensity and longer duration workouts for their different benefits. But if you are limited in time it seems high intensity is a winner.

tim-projects 30 minutes ago | parent

I found that setting a two minute timer and running up and down a stair case with high intensity once per day can resolve a whole host of seemingly unrelated issues.

bkishan 24 minutes ago | parent

Issues such as?

akoboldfrying 19 minutes ago | parent

The elevator not working

asdfman123 13 minutes ago | parent

I'd bet money he's talking about... men's issues

jkingsman 8 minutes ago | parent

I'm not OP, but when I started run-jog-walking one mile, three days a week (which is a bit more than two minute stairs every day, but still asking muscles, joints, and heart to wake up), that my back pain lessened, some niggling knee tightness stopped bothering me, and I noticed an increase in how long I could go doing something moderately strenuous before craving a rest (e.g. moving boxes, or walking with a heavy object, or running after something or someone). It doesn't have to be a massive lifestyle shift -- walking a couple times a week can give similar benefits. But the jump from "basically sedentary" to "loading muscles and joints and heart for ~20 minutes 2-3x a week" is truly ENORMOUS when it comes to our biological systems, and a lot of those systems start running a lot happier with that.

Exercise is not a panacea, and those who say it will fix everything and cure depression and make you perfect are quacks. But, it pains my contrarian ass to say, some light cardio every now and again is much closer to what our bodies are happy with than desk life, such has been my experience.

bohrbohra 24 minutes ago | parent

Same. I found that picking up a 28-kg kettlebell and climbing up a 20-storey building within 6 mins (switching up hands every couple of floors) is an awesome "functional" exercise.

Hits cardio, grip strength and unilateral stability stuff.

mimo84 22 minutes ago | parent

At first I thought they found something new, however it is known that exercise intensity should be of various types for the best health outcome. In my training regimen I already have a weekly session of high-intensity training, and other session at a lower intensity.

asdfman123 11 minutes ago | parent

High intensity by far gives you the best gains for the time you put in, but there's only so much you can do without overtraining.

The way to really maximize your potential is to do high intensity 30 mins 3x/wk and then intersperse it with a great deal of low intensity cardio. Like 4x more if you can, per the 80/20 rule.

It works because it's starting to approach the most exercise your body can handle. (Although some athletes definitely fit in more.)

takee 7 minutes ago | parent

I built this HIIT timer tool www.hiitmeup.fit for exactly this reason as I try to squeeze in a compact exercise during my busy work days. I put this out on show HN a few weeks ago and hope others will find it just as useful as I do.

jandrewrogers 20 minutes ago | parent

As an anecdote of one, I was doing moderate intensity endurance exercise for a couple years with only modest improvements in basic cardiovascular metrics that kind of flatlined over time.

As an experiment, I switched to high-intensity interval type training for a couple months, which required about half the time to do. All of my cardiovascular metrics immediately changed in a strongly positive way. When I did the old endurance training, performance was much higher than it had been before the high-intensity training.

It is the strongest positive effect I have ever seen from any exercise/gym theory that has been widely promulgated. I never expected to see my cardiovascular metrics change as quickly or as much as they did.

asdfman123 14 minutes ago | parent

You probably spent all that time training your cardiovascular base, which takes a long time to do. Then, you capped them off with anaerobic gains that were only possible with that prior work.

For optimum gain you should mix moderate exercise with intense exercise, but the time you put in likely made your later success possible.

manmal 12 minutes ago | parent

I like sprinting a couple times up our hill, ca 10s each, 4-6 times. It’s full out, and when I‘m untrained (like now), I‘m quite exhausted afterwards.

But the dopamine boost I get from this is immense. It lasts 24-48h. I‘m in a general good mood for this period. Sometimes, a little more competitive than normal - that’s a downside.

Normal jogging or long walks don’t have this effect, at all.