[sternocleidom]

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".

[jxcl]

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.

[sternocleidom]

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.

[WhompingWindows]

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.

[mikestew]

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.

[jxcl]

> 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.

[WhompingWindows]

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.

[sternocleidom]

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

[WoodenChair]

> I have a PhD from a top institution

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.

[sternocleidom]

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

[WoodenChair]

> ...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."

[sternocleidom]

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.

[danmg]

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.

[mikevm]

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.