Perceived Physical Activity and Mortality: Study

With the first study, I notice that they didn&#x27;t take into account the participants&#x27; general attitudes and happiness levels. It&#x27;s possible that the people who &quot;thought they were more active&quot;, felt that way because they were more optimistic&#x2F;confident&#x2F;happy in general, which in turn leads to the reduction in mortality.<p>The second study is more convincing, since it relies on randomly assigned groups. However, I don&#x27;t think they measured the participants&#x27; actual level of activity during the course of the experiment? It&#x27;s possible that the different interventions led to differences in activity level, during the experiment period, which led to the physiological improvements later seen.<p>Perhaps I&#x27;m being overly cynical in not accepting the study&#x27;s conclusion. It just seems too fantastic, that someone can lose weight and reduce their mortality, merely by deluding themselves on how active they really are.

I would read that as &quot;adhoc guess of people outperforms statistical model,&quot; so the model probably misses some factor that people just take into account. As an example, someone who knows that they have cancer and that therefore their health will rapidly decline in the near future will likely not report that they are leading a healthy and active live, even though data right know shows that they are trying to keep in good shape. Or a combination of many similar but less spectacular things.<p>Not to belittle the researchers, but trying to outperform a brain that gets data about the individual situation 24 h a day is a quite hard task.

I wish physical movement was somehow integrated with software engineering more. Weak solutions like standing desks don&#x27;t make it the cardio equivalent of something like a cleaning job.<p>It&#x27;s sad that we sacrifice health for more money only to spend it on health-related issues we accumulate from our career choice.<p>I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun.

The little review “suggesting that how fit you think you are affects your risk of death more than how fit you actually are,” seems to not have parsed the studies it claims to be quoting.<p>“No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.).”<p>This was -after- controlling for actual fitness (eg. BMI). That doesn’t mean “perception matters more than BMI,” it means “perception matters a lot in explaining the variance that remains after removing all the variability explained by actual fitness.”<p>The second study wasn’t just about “activity perception.” It came with a positive message from authority figures, and offered an additional validation of an otherwise low-prestige job. Both of these things might contribute to a motivation-driven short term effect that has nothing at all to do with long term self-perception not long term mortality.

While I don&#x27;t doubt that thinking of yourself as fit helps (not least by encouraging you to remain more active), I have to wonder if people who feel physically unwell on a frequent basis are not more likely to think of themselves as not fit.

&gt; No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were “a lot less active” than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were “more active.” Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.).<p>Knee-jerk, hobby-horse-compliant hypothesis: reduced levels of perceived activity are a symptom of below-average&#x2F;impaired interoception [1], and effects of that deficit (less efficient homeostatic feedback, inability to recognize progressive injury and illness in its early stages) are responsible for the increased mortality.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Interoception" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Interoception</a><p>&gt; Interoception is contemporarily defined as the sense of the internal state of the body. It encompasses the brain’s process of integrating signals relayed from the body into specific subregions—like the brainstem, thalamus, insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced representation of the physiological state of the body. This is important for maintaining homeostatic conditions in the body and, potentially, aiding in self-awareness.

&gt; &quot;Our mindset affects our motivation.&quot;<p>It effects more than motivation. Take stress for example. Under stress - e.g., &quot;am I fit enough?&quot; perhaps? - the body releases cortisol. To the best of my knowledge, cortisol has been linked to weight gain. Stress effect sleep, which has system-wide implications. Etc.<p>The mind is the body and the body is the mind. The Western separation of the two is a myth that should be considered irrelevant at this point.

Wasn’t there a study of hotel cleaners whom had an overall increase in health because they were told their jobs already included exercise? This also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, whereby a “healthy” thinking person makes slightly different choices than someone else whom believes themselves to be “unhealthy.”

I can&#x27;t get the math to work to reach 475 million American adults.<p>Our current population is only 347 million and the birthrate is about 1.25%. Running a total for the last 20 years or so I can&#x27;t get more than 300 million adults or so.<p>Any math folks that want to analyze the number of unique adults entering&#x2F;leaving the US from 1990 to 2011?

Perceived Physical Activity and Morality would also be an interesting study.

It&#x27;s quite difficult to measure a potential reality that could be outside accepted reality using the tools of accepted reality.<p>That is to say, there are so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science. Those who do not accept such possibilities naturally do not see proof of them, and those who do accept those possibilities may see them or even perhaps imagine that they see them when there may be a simpler explanation.<p>I find it ironic that some rabidly religious people cannot accept any explanation for events other than what their book(s) tells them, while at the same time strictly &quot;scientific&quot; people likewise behave the same, but using different books. Neither group sees their mirror image in the other...

...or people can &quot;feel&quot; their general status and therefore those that think they will not live long didn&#x27;t actually live long.

People had a measure of fitness that was accessed by asking &quot;how active &#x2F; fit are you?&quot;<p>Researchers had a different measure of fitness.<p>If the researcher&#x27;s measurements are less predictive than people&#x27;s estimates, one possible reason is that there&#x27;s some powerful mental effect going on.<p>However, a more parsimonious interpretation might be that self-perceived fitness was a better measurement than the one the researchers came up with. This isn&#x27;t completely unreasonable because the subjects have access to more information about their own health than do the researchers.

&gt;a representative sample estimated to reflect over 475 million US adults.<p>Thems some odd numbers

The brain has pretty direct contact to all the cells of the body. Regardless of overall activity, if the brain has an idea in mind, it can make it happen.<p>There&#x27;s a tribe in Africa that comes to mind. They studied them, because they don&#x27;t eat that much and they do a ton of activity. It turns out, when they run, they just burn fewer calories than most people. So, intake, calories burned, overall health, it all seems to not follow a hard and fast rule, apart from the intention of the mind.<p>Ignore politics for a second, the amount of time he spent on his feet and the amount of energy it must have required during the campaign, and how Trump&#x27;s doctors say he&#x27;s really healthy(assuming you believe them), but his diet looks pretty bad, but you know in his head, he&#x27;s saying, &quot;I&#x27;m the healthiest, I&#x27;m so healthy, my health is great, it&#x27;s the best&quot;.<p>Take-away from article? &quot;I&#x27;m so healthy, I&#x27;m the healthiest, my health is huge, it&#x27;s the best.&quot;

Yes mindset is important. But having run 8 marathons I can tell you wishful thinking is not a substitute for training.<p>You can’t really quantify fitness, there are too many subtypes (running? swimming? weightlifting?) This study used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I’m not sure they’re reliable indicators.<p>The point of the article (as I understand it) is that positive thinking can influence your health. Fine. But let’s not get carried away: you’re not going to roll out of bed and complete an Ironman without training just because you think you can.<p>EDIT: Mods have updated the title to better reflect the first underlying study (which focuses on mortality, not fitness).<p>But 1) even with the focus on mortality, it&#x27;s still hard to correlate PMA and mortality and not control for diet, exercise, history, genetics, etc. and 2) if PMA doesn&#x27;t correlate w&#x2F;fitness, it&#x27;s hard to see how it can make you live longer (i.e., can you be morbidly obese and positive and live longer than an athlete with a bad mental attitude?)<p>PMA is good. But I&#x27;m having a hard time believing you&#x27;re going to live longer -- seems like there are 50 other factors that are more important.

I can&#x27;t believe this waffle qualifies for a Harvard medical school publication. Clearly the wooly-haired management and soft science types have overrun Ivy League Medicine.

You need to be logging at least 150 workout days a year to be considered fit.