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by arcanus 656 days ago
The study appears to be misrepresented. From the paper at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10274991/

"Although biological ageing was accelerated in sedentary and highly active classes, after adjusting for other lifestyle-related factors, the associations mainly attenuated."

"Conclusion: Being active may reflect a healthy phenotype instead of causally reducing mortality."

Therefore, the paper isn't supporting the article claim that too much exercise is speeding up aging, rather, that this is dominated by genetics.

3 comments

> "Conclusion: Being active may reflect a healthy phenotype instead of causally reducing mortality." Therefore, the paper isn't supporting the article claim that too much exercise is speeding up aging...

The article claim as of when I clicked through:

“This outcome suggests that the longevity associated with physically active individuals could stem more from their overall healthier lifestyles rather than the exercise itself.”

So my takeaway from the article was it's less about the exercise, more about overall health, and, moderation rather than long tail. That seems consistent.

> rather, that this is dominated by genetics.

On the contrary, not sure that's what the paper says, as that implies the exclusion of overall health lifestyle.

Note that phenotype can mean observable characteristics or traits, rather than strictly/solely genetic traits. The usage is common to mean something like "overall health profile".

The paper describes aim to remove paired environments and paired genetics. Diagrams depict control for "familial factors" described as covering "environmental" and "genetics", aiming to remove these from the comparison.

> mainly attenuated

> may reflect

So the study acknowledges that this is all not yet settled. The (potentially damaging) effect of excessive exercise may be stronger what the study found, or it may be neutral (i.e., not actually extending lifespan, but not damaging it either)

It remains to be seen what further studies reveal, but for now the blog is not far off in speculating a potentially damaging effect.

So is it like if a man is physically active but works blue collar low paid job with a lot of physical activity and lives alone and has no degree and probably drinks/smokes lots etc then it is correlated with quicker aging? No shit.

Why even report non adjusted stats then? They just wanted sensational press buzz? Or maybe these stats are still significant?