I'm kind of curious to what degree lifting weights is actually beneficial. I like lifting weights. But more than once, I've seen very red, almost inflamed looking people that lift weights. not sure if its the meat diet, or if they self select.
My cousin died of a Brian aneurism, from a vein that popped due to high blood pressure. He used to get very red in the face. So I think I recognize that look now.
There's a youtube channel called Boho beautiful. It's a couple that does yoga videos, and are fit vegans.
I would be curious if you did blood work on them, vs a fit weight lifter who would have the better results, and possibly life expectancy.
So if you were to chose one life style (meat eating weight lifter) vs Vegan Yoga Training. Which would be better for you. I suspect the vegan yoga would be better.
There’s plenty of people who work out badly and eventually their injuries stop them from working out. You don’t hear much about them though.
I for one messed up my shoulders when I was a teenager and not knowing what I was doing in the gym and all that took years of stretches and re-learning how to engage the muscles and proper form. I have a childhood friend who worked out so badly as he was obsessed with muscular mass he worked himself out into a massive hunched hulk, I think he was also taking steroids at some point. He evetually had to stop due to health reasons and massive headaches from a badly worked out neck. These are just 2 examples but there are lot more people who misuse weights. You only hear about the success stories unfortunately…
I prefer calistenics as it is a bit harder to mess up. One can build a beautifully harmonious and resilient body just with these. As far as strength goes I need just enough to leverage my body smartly but that is my personal choice.
I did the same for bench pressing. I had to adapt as well. I now mostly use smith machines for most of my workout. As I find that they control the movement better, to keep you aligned, and actually the duration of the contraction / pump can happen for a longer time span of the motion.
I used to keep reef aquariums. I've learned that keeping the same aquarium successful at one year, is very different than success at ten years. As the probability of something catastrophic killing the tank increases with time.
Log term, I've had things like pumps failing, tanks cracking, a power grid going out for a week. Catastrophic things are almost inevitable long term. After all something 3,000 wars in recorded human history. So even war breaking out could happen.
Your childhood friend was definitely taking steroids. And thing is, they don't really develop your tendons and other supporting tissues, and definitely not your cardiovascular system. So they tend to gain strength and muscles so fast the rest of the bodies doesn't have time to adapt. And in the case of "massive hulks", no body can really adapt to all that muscle mass.
About calisthenics, I think it's for people with proper motor coordination. You have to be able to pay attention to your whole body because one hand out of position can also mean an injury. Gym equipment, or even free weights, have way more "form cues" you can use to see if you're doing them right (if you truly care about form, that is).
I'm not sure why you'd equate "some weightlifters sometimes have red skin" with "my cousin sometimes got red skin and he died" with "vegan yoga is good for you."
Veganism is associated with a slew of health problems.[0] But regardless of that, the first two statements are completely unrelated. Weightlifters don't naturally have higher blood pressure, and lifting weights regularly lowers your blood pressure, it doesn't raise it. I've seen the flushed, red, vascular look you're talking about. I'm sure in some people it's natural due to low body fat and I'm sure in some people it's a combination of pre-workout and creams designed to give exactly that look.
> Veganism is associated with a slew of health problems.
As compared to what?
Yes. You can’t get B12 on a vegan diet. Vegans supplement it.
Side note about B12: a B12 deficiency from a vegan diet largely comes from environmental sterilization. B12 is bacteria-produced. You could drink stream water and get your B12 “naturally”, too.
To some degree I do believe people can spot health problems in other people.
After all we do chose mates and assess their overall health based on looks.
In terms of longevity, I feel there's probably some minimum amount of exercise you need to do, after you might be better off at addressing other things if you have other deficiencies. (dental health, snoring, etc)
Thinking in terms of a sports car. You can do all kinds of things to maintain and improve the engine. But if you want long term success, don't forget about the breaks or other systems that might need take you out a lot earlier.
> By diet group, there were 116,894 omnivores (whose diet does not exclude animal products), 329 lacto- and/or ovo-vegetarians (whose diet excludes meat, but includes dairy and/or eggs), 310 pesco-vegetarians (whose diet excludes meat except for fish and seafood) and 140 vegans (whose diet excludes all animal products). After an average follow-up of 18 years, 39,763 participants were deceased. The risk of all-cause mortality did not statistically significantly differ among the four diet groups.
I'm curious if a) they looked at self-reported exercise regimes, b) they looked at objectively measured exercise (everyone thinks they exercise more, and better, than they actually do), c) 140 vegans is enough to draw conclusions broadly given the total sample size.
This is my thought. For most of us, any exercise is more than what we're actually getting, and the best form is the one you're likely to keep doing. Even people who look unhealthy may be healthier than if they didn't exercise.
My main source of exercise, for 40+ years, has been cycling. Therefore I have very little upper body strength. This may be a liability when I get older and start losing that strength, increasing the chances of injury.
I personally think that young people should do some strength work in addition to the easy and fun aerobic activities like walking and cycling. The dangers of over training are their own beast, but not a worry for most people.
If I get the time, I'll link the studies (if someone else has them handy or wants to dispute these claims, please do so):
Strength and muscle mass do seem to be very good predictors for longevity. Lifting weights does seem to be one of the best ways to increase these two things. The acute effects on blood pressure don't seem to be problematic for healthy individuals and don't really cause a chronic increase in blood pressure.
There's a lot of controversy over being vegan vs. being an omnivore, but it seems like the actual data on outcomes (read: not theoretical mechanisms) suggest that:
1. If you tell the average person to follow an omnivorous diet vs. telling them to eat a vegan one, even if you give them some basic guidance on how to eat healthy (try to stick to minimally processed foods, etc.), doing the latter does tend to improve various biomarkers associated with longevity. [0] for example, suggests this.
2. There's no clear case that this difference is caused by something other than differences in:
a. Average caloric intake (meat-eaters tend to eat more calories, and very broadly speaking, more calories = worse health)
b. Saturated fat (meat tends to have more saturated fat, which is associated with higher apoB, a big factor that contributes to heart disease)
c. Nutritional opportunity cost (obviously, all else equal, eating meat means you're not going to be eating something else - for example, eating a lot of meat could mean you don't get sufficient fiber intake, which seems to have positive effects on health).
That is, if meat-eaters controlled for these things - making sure they didn't overeat, making sure they didn't overconsume saturated fat (by, for example, eating leaner cuts of meat), and making sure they had a balanced diet, it's not clear that meat has some other detrimental effect.
I think weight lifting being good for your health is relatively uncontroversial. The data does not really seem to suggest that meat in a balanced diet has detrimental effects, though the jury is still out.
It might very well be the case that the vegan yoga trainer lives longer than the meat-eating weight lifter, but it would probably be a mistake to infer a causal relationship between an otherwise healthy diet with meat in it/weight lifting and lower life expectancy.
> 1. If you tell the average person to follow an omnivorous diet vs. telling them to eat a vegan one, even if you give them some basic guidance on how to eat healthy (try to stick to minimally processed foods, etc.), doing the latter does tend to improve various biomarkers associated with longevity.
I'm interested in this study, if you could link it. Most comparisons I read are observational studies, not experimental.
Would it be the same kind of phenomenon as heart failures when doing harder runs (marathons and longer) past 40 yo ?
While the runners are well trained and otherwise healthy, the activity puts enough stress on the whole body that weaknesses are surfaced and something somewhere will fail at some point.
Good point, blood pressure is probably the key indicator. But I also suspect that maintaining a lower body weight is probably better for the cardiovascular system.
I watched a video from Brian Johnson, a guy that is spending millions to try and live longer, and get all kinds of tests. The way he measures progress is by comparing how well his organs function vs someone that is younger. I think blood work is big part of that.
That's a bit of my thinking too. But maybe the amount of extra calories you are consuming is not good for you.
Or maybe just the meat. My local food store has a butcher section and you can see them working. The head butcher, a large man, has this characteristic red look on his face too. I'm guessing his diet is probably a lot of meat.
I remember my statistics class, we would calculate the probability of event B given event A.
So I wonder if perhaps if you are prone to high blood pressure, a vegan yoga training would be better for you, than meat eating and heavy weight training.
Or even a just a life style where you are eating less, while still having some muscle mass, is just better.
But people will do what is easier, since they perceive they are better at it. Being a heavy set man, pushing weights is a lot easier than going for a mile run.
There's a youtube channel called Boho beautiful. It's a couple that does yoga videos, and are fit vegans.
I would be curious if you did blood work on them, vs a fit weight lifter who would have the better results, and possibly life expectancy.
So if you were to chose one life style (meat eating weight lifter) vs Vegan Yoga Training. Which would be better for you. I suspect the vegan yoga would be better.