TIL Olympians live 5 years longer on average than the general population : til

[+] [email protected] 38 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

Injects spaghetti bolognese with extra parmesan

Orally, I presume .... unless otherwise, no wonder you aren't getting that extra five years

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Check out Loma Linda where you can get 10 years more than the American average if you change your habits.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I wonder how much if this is just not being poor.

Like, I suspect you just can't become an Olympic level athlete staying broke. At some point you have to be able to commit and be supported by outside resources.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

LMAO...I don't thinks sponsors are into slow walk. If you ever watched it you would be like WTF. And yes this is an Olmpic sport.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

It's not really about the sponsors, it's about needing to come from wealth in order to be able to take the time to train, buy the equipment for the sport, make it to the regional/national/internation events to qualify for the team, or even afford to get to games for the event.

You need to be not-poor enough to even get to a level to where sponsors would be interested.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

The Olympics really was meant for rich men who enjoyed sports. It only developed a gigantic support apparatus over time.

[+] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Athletes get exercise and probably have a healthier diet

Yes on the exercise, but I'd argue that most athletes pretty much have to consume low-quality, high-calorie food in order to keep up to their caloric needs.

Basically, you can't consume 10,000 calories of healthy food... too much volume, even if you spread that out through the entire day.

So in that sense, the power of exercise is pretty amazing, if it can combat the effects of a poor diet for all those years. Then again, if they are consuming a healthy diet when they are not actively competing/training (i.e. on their off days), they're probably undoing a lot of damage just from that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There's no such thing as a "healthy food" or "unhealthy food" in absolute terms. It's all dependent on the totality of your diet and everything else going on in your life. You don't use an excavator to clear the table after dinner in your fifth floor apartment because that comes with a whole host of problems, but you would use one to move multiple tons of gravel across a construction site. Saying that exercise combats the effects of a poor diet in this context is like saying that working on a construction site negates the negative effects of using an excavator.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There's no such thing as a "healthy food" or "unhealthy food" in absolute terms.

Sure there is.

You can measure damage causes by eating unhealthy food, often within hours of their consumption.

Inflammatory response, release of certain chemicals in the body, blood flow, etc.

And the opposite it true when you put healthy food into your body.

You can't outrun a chronically poor diet, especially if its a paleo diet, but it seems like athletes can get away with eating junk food.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Inflammatory response, release of certain chemicals in the body, blood flow, etc.

Examples? None of the things you've listed are inherently bad effects. It all depends on the magnitude, duration/timing, and probably a bunch of other factors, and any negative needs too be weighed against the benefits of consuming that food.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Examples?

With my limited time, here are a few:

Magnitude and Timing of the Postprandial Inflammatory Response to a High-Fat Meal in Healthy Adults: A Systematic Review

The effect of high-protein diets on coronary blood flow

Higher ultra-processed food intake is associated with higher DNA damage in healthy adolescents

A single high-fat meal provokes pathological erythrocyte remodeling and increases myeloperoxidase levels: implications for acute coronary syndrome

There are countless other studies showing both positive and negative effects of food after consumption in both the short and long term.

None of the things you’ve listed are inherently bad effects. It all depends on the magnitude, duration/timing, and probably a bunch of other factors, and any negative needs too be weighed against the benefits of consuming that food.

Yes, there are healthy immune responses and damaging ones; healthy chemical release in the body, and damaging ones; good blood flow and harmful blood flow, etc.

Because diet is often not a one-and-done deal, most of the population is putting themselves in a chronic state of harm with every meal and snack.

For an athlete, they choose these foods only because they offer higher calories. Some can tolerate pure carbohydrates in the form of gels and liquids, but those can cause stomach upset. So, eating 20 pancakes drenched in syrup is a "perfect" meal for an ultra-distance runner, while it would be absolutely terrible for a non-athlete.

With food and diet, there is always nuance when it comes to risk/benefit. If athletes ate the way they do when they are training or actively competing as a regular thing, they'd live 10 years less! LOL

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I get the impression that we're in agreement but just arguing semantics here. Instead of categorizing food as either healthy or unhealthy, we should be asking what food to eat in order to achieve a given goal with your life circumstances. And not everyone has the same goal or life. Saying that something is healthy/unhealthy in absolute terms implies that it's always/never a good idea to consume them, regardless of your situation.

There's merit in using the terms "healthy" and "unhealthy" from a public health perspective when you're giving broad nutrition advice that applies to the majority of people, but that's not what's happening here. We're specifically talking about athletes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Mortality rates due to nervous system disorders (eg, Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons’s diseases) and mental illness (eg, dementia, schizophrenia) were not different from the general population.

That's really a shame. Living longer is great, but dying from a slow, degenerative disease is extremely hard on people and their families. It's almost better to just drop dead from a sudden heart attack five years sooner, if you had to pick one or the other.

[+] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

For 1-2 decades of rigorous exercise and diet, I'd be pretty pissed if I only lived an extra 5 years.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

The last five years don’t seem worth it to me 🤷

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Makes sense. I wouldn't think the average person taking on the exceptional training of Olympians would be good for you, but of those with the natural health and talent to try, Olympians are the ones who got that far without injuring themselves, and will therefore likely continue with some safe training with proper technique, and maintaining good health into old age. I'd imagine that benefit outweighs the damage extreme sports and training does to your body.

I'd assume that measuring generally fit people who exercise regularly and eat well, without pursuing the extremism of world class athleticism, would live even longer on average.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I am old. In fact I am so old that things are failing. 5 more years would be a curse.

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