Jed Rothwell wrote:
This guy is amazing! Almost as stupid as Mark Mills. See his latest here:
"The Scientist and the Stairmaster
Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner -- and why we're
wrong."
http://nymag.com/news/sports/38001/
His hypothesis is that you always eat more to compensate for exercise.
Apparently he has never met manual laborers.
Or men in the military subject to "forced marches".
But in any case it's almost irrelevant, IMHO. Exercise has major
benefits that have nothing to do with losing weight, and besides, as
every famine victim knows, losing weight can be done without exercising.
Mild exercise may or may not do much, but occasional _vigorous_
exercise, done intensely enough to get you out of breath, is certainly
worthwhile. (Your body seems to react to getting out of breath the way
it would to being chased by something large and hungry -- it tries to
"adjust" things so you can run away more effectively next time. If you
don't get out of breath, though, your body seems to think the danger
couldn't have been imminent, and the "gosh we need to be able to run
faster" switch doesn't get thrown.)
* Reduces intraocular pressure (it's good for preventing
or helping treat glaucoma). Exercise alone, sans drugs,
can drop intraocular pressure by ~ 10%.
* Can reduce, relieve, or prevent migraine attacks.
* Relieves depression. (Short term effect -- but isn't everything?)
* Reduces anger, helps with interpersonal relations.
* Reduces inflammation in general. The number of inflammatory
diseases is too long to list and they probably all benefit,
to some extent, from occasionally revving up your endorphin
system.
* Leg exercises followed by stretching can help relieve RLS,
without the occasionally disastrous side effects of the
drugs which are sometimes used. (10% of users of one
common RLS drug turned into compulsive gamblers ... drugs
which play games with your dopamine and serotonin systems
should not be treated lightly. Can't recall the drug
name off hand -- if anyone cares, I can dig
up more information on this one.)
George Bush and Vladamir Putin are both exercise fanatics, and, IMHO,
they're both borderline looneytoons as well. This is not coincidence:
It's regular vigorous exercise that helps them "keep it together". If
exercise can keep someone as whacked out as George Bush on a
sufficiently even keel to function as President, think what it can do
for someone who's just got the normal run of the mill set of issues...
