Is Exercise Research Just a Bunch of B.S.?
“The thing with research is that you can find out whatever you want to find out if you’re looking hard enough.” We have heard this sentiment being knocked around lately. We have followed health- and exercise-related research for over a decade now, and have probably lost perspective on what the average person thinks about it. So, it’s good to hear what people think. It is true–there is a lot of bullshit out there. There is research that is funded by certain industries that most certainly leads to a bias, and there are certainly researchers that want to find a certain result and therefore find it. But there are other more complicated things going on.
The major news outlets will jump on a story about research that proclaims, “Vegans are much less likely to have heart attacks.” (Scott is not a great poster child for this.) Statements like this are very hard to make in the field of nutrition research. It is impossible to control for other lifestyle factors that the vegans in a study like this might have. For instance, if someone has the discipline to eat very restrictively, as in a vegan diet, they are much more likely to have the discipline to be doing other things–exercise, meditation, yoga–that might have a big influence on their likelihood to have a heart attack. Controlling for all these factors is extremely challenging, if not impossible. Of course, this doesn’t stop special interest groups from latching on to these studies and running with it. And the major news outlets seem to love these kinds of headlines.
Another concept that you may have heard before is that correlation does not imply causation. This means that you cannot deduce that there is a cause-and-effect relationship between two variables in a study, based solely on an observed association or correlation between these variables. However, when you play by these rules, you end up with an infinitely less-sexy headline: “Eating a Vegan Diet Could Possibly Be Associated with Less Incidence of Heart Attacks, But It’s Really Impossible to Tell.”
You can substitute in any variable–eating red meat’s possible association with cancer is a big one right now–and you will still have the same problem. What else are the subjects that aren’t eating red meat doing? Or not doing? It’s very difficult to draw some kind of definitive conclusion.
There are, however, these really cool things called “natural experiments.” These are situations that can be observed in the real world, free of manipulation of any kind. Peter Attia was talking about a famous one in a recent podcast with Mike Joyner. In 1949, a London epidemiologist compared the incidence of heart attacks in bus drivers vs. the ticket takers that walk up and down the aisle of the buses. These were all men of a similar social class. It turned out the ticket takers had 50% less heart attacks over time, and it was deduced this was because of the exercise the ticket takers got—vs. the sedentary bus drivers.
When it comes to things you can do for your health, nothing compares to exercise. Even the 500-750 extra steps the ticket takers got, gave them an amazing protective health benefit.
It is often said that when it comes to health, exercise is King and nutrition is Queen. When it comes to reliable scientific data, exercise really is King and Queen, and nutrition is a much more lowly subject.
So get out there and move—and find a way to do it throughout the day. It will always be the greatest bang for your buck when it comes to health.
Until next time,
Scott and Lennart