{"id":3186,"date":"2010-02-08T08:29:13","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T06:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ultimatefatburner.com\/?p=3186"},"modified":"2015-02-15T09:25:13","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T14:25:13","slug":"the-telegraph-misses-the-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/the-telegraph-misses-the-point\/","title":{"rendered":"The Telegraph Misses the Point…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wow.\u00a0 It’s been a while since I’ve read an article about exercise that was THIS carelessly written… From the Telegraph<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Millions of people ‘waste their time by jogging’<\/strong><\/p>\n

Millions of people who strive to keep fit by jogging, swimming or going to the gym are wasting their time, scientists said.<\/p>\n

Researchers have discovered that the health benefits of aerobic exercise are determined by our genes – and can vary substantially between individuals.<\/p>\n

Around 20 per cent of the population do not get any significant aerobic fitness benefit from regular exercise, according to an international study led by scientists at the University of London.<\/p>\n

For these people, regular jogging and gym work will do little to ward off conditions like heart disease and diabetes which aerobic exercise is generally thought to resist.<\/p>\n

Researchers say they would be better off abandoning their exercise regime and focusing on other ways of staying healthy – such as improving their diet or taking medication.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whaaaa????\u00a0 That isn’t what the researchers actually said! Here’s the actual paper…<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Given that ~20% of subjects fail to improve aerobic capacity with intense endurance training, while ~30% do not enhance their insulin sensitivity (12) it is clear we must develope genotype tailored lifestyle interventions. The present data now enable us to test the efficacy of a molecular screen for exercise responses (8) so that, for example, low responders for VO2max can now be\u00a0randomised to alternative interventions to establish if they are low responders for additional parameters such as changes in post-exercise insulin sensitivity.<\/strong> Such an application of our data is consistent with the idea of using personalized medicine (48) to tailor life-style modification and hence we feel we provide a significant new milestone for the field. For those humans with an impaired ability to improve or even maintain their aerobic capacity, with exercise therapy, we may need to promote alternative exercise intervention paradigms<\/strong> or offer more intensive pharmacological and dietary protocols to help compensate for their genomic profile.<\/p>\n

Two points: 1) the people who fail to significantly improve their VO2max may NOT be the same people who are “low responders” for changes in post-exercise insulin sensitivity. Although the article implies that insulin sensitivity was determined in this study, in reality, the researchers were citing numbers from a related\u00a0paper published in 2005<\/a>. Thus, low responders in one area but not the other\u00a0could conceivably still benefit from\u00a0standard aerobic exercise.\u00a02) By establishing a dichotomy between “their exercise regime”\u00a0and diet\/medication, the author of this article makes it sound as if low responders should abandon exercise altogether.\u00a0 Timmons et al., however, make it clear that “alternative exercise intervention paradigms” may be part of the equation. In fact, some of\u00a0the\u00a0Timmons’ \u00a0other work lends itself to this interpretation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The low volume, high intensity training utilized in the current study significantly reduced both glucose AUC (-12%) and insulin AUC (-37%), with a sustained improved insulin action until at least day three after the last exercise session. This was achieved without changes in body weight, and with a weekly energy-‘cost’ of training of ~225 kcal during the first training week and ~275 kcal during the second training week. This very modest increase in calorie consumption is in stark contrast to the ~2000\u20133000 kcal\u00b7week-1 <\/sup>consumed during a typical aerobic training program [25, 34]. This implies, but does not prove, that the mechanism underpinning the benefits we observed with HIT, may be distinct from those responsible for the more modest improvements in insulin action with classic time-consuming aerobic training.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In this study, high intensity training produced improvements in insulin sensitivity better than those of conventional aerobic training.\u00a0 Thus, other exercise modes may be more efficacious for low responders… not NO exercise, as implied.<\/p>\n

In sum,\u00a0the author\u00a0takes\u00a0a typical, “contrarian” attitude (i.e., exercise isn’t all it’s cracked up to be) and puts words in the researchers mouths to do it.\u00a0Even worse, he\u00a0fails to\u00a0acknowledge the\u00a0possibility\u00a0that there\u00a0might be\u00a0benefits to\u00a0aerobic exercise\u00a0that have nothing to do with either preventing heart disease or diabetes.\u00a0 These include\u00a0stress reduction,\u00a0prevention of osteoporosis<\/a>\u00a0and\/or fat loss\/weight maintenance.\u00a0 Heck,\u00a0sometimes I’ll do\u00a0short (20 – 30 min), moderate-intensity, steady-state cardio workout just as a pick-me-up: it’s energizing and helps lift the fog without being particularly strenuous. So, it’s\u00a0premature\u00a0to suggest that low responders\u00a0would be better off\u00a0“abandoning their exercise regime” – we don’t actually know this, yet.<\/p>\n

Honestly, is it too much to ask that reporters properly convey the\u00a0points they’re writing about, and not leave erroneous impressions?\u00a0 Not enough people exercise as it is, and in the absence of that “personalized medicine” directing\u00a0folks to more targeted interventions,\u00a0we’re better off encouraging – not discouraging – as many people as possible to get moving.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wow.\u00a0 It’s been a while since I’ve read an article about exercise that was THIS carelessly written… From the Telegraph: Millions of people ‘waste their time by jogging’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14,28],"tags":[83,610,843,931,1266,1641,1740],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3186"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8957,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3186\/revisions\/8957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ultimatefatburner.com\/ufb-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}