Energy-based model explains how chronic stress transforms into disease over time

This paper reminds me of the “insight” / factoid that all mammals are basically born with the same rough number of heartbeats, and then they die. Smaller animals like mice have shorter lifespans and faster heartbeats. Larger ones like whales and elephants have slower heartbeats and longer lives.

The humorous (and obviously false, though apparently not if this paper is out there) corollary is that any exercise and non-sedentary lifestyle means you lose years of your life

I think the theory is that exercise has many other benefits that make up for the increased energy usage.

Naked mole rats live over 30 years, because they have additional copies of a gene known to protect against DNA damage.

This is the battery “theory,” and is obviously untrue from all evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of the strongest predictors of life and health span. A lack of exercise also transpires to significantly increase global inflammation in the body - in fact regular exercise forces the body to adapt to a new homeostatic use of calories away from random inflammation to conserve daily caloric expenditure towards that exercise. There’s no evidence to support the battery “theory,” despite certain anti science politicians popularizing it.

> This is the battery “theory,” and is obviously untrue from all evidence collected. Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max, which is the bodies ability to pump and process a volume of blood and oxygen in a period of time, are some of the strongest predictors of life and health span.

Exercise and specifically improvement of VO2max also decrease your average heart rate, so it's quite aligned with the battery theory.

OG study that found a roughly same number of heartbeats was only concerned with averages - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9316546/ . Interestingly humans are outliers with 2-3x the expected number of heartbeats. The way the data was presented always gave me a strong "everything looks linear when plotted on a log scale with big marker" vibe... however it could be totally possible that there is some correlation there.

Maybe evolutionary, there is optimal amount of time for organisms to survive relative to their size. Organism size, in turn, correlates with heart size and heart size correlates with how fast it beats. Probably totally missing the mark, but if it was true, it would be interesting to look into why there are outliers.

Anywho, I find it humorous to think about a battery theory car analogy - "every car has a preset number of miles and maintenance would decrease usable lifespan of the car because you need to drive to the mechanic".

Haven't done the math but maybe they aren't so disconnected. If I can trade off an elevated heart rate of 170 for an hour every day or two in exchange for dropping my resting heartbeat from 70 to 50, I should end up with more years to use those finite heartbeats. As with most things in life it's about balance. Extremes and absolutes in most everything tend to result in poor outcomes. You don't want to be sitting 24/7 or running 24/7.

Do the people downvoting my comment think I believe in this theory, or is there another reason?

“Factoid” means untrue by definition. I thought it an interesting novelty

Down voting on HN on HN seems to be a sign of "this idea breaks the model I have in my head, and my biases tell me I can't be mistaken."

Starting with 60 RHR:

+120 bpm for 60min = -7200 beats off your life -20 bpm for 23 hours = +27600 beats added to your life Net: +20400 beats, or 6.8 hrs added, every day you keep it up

Obviously some factors missing in that, you can't live forever.. but back of the envelope it nets positive not negative

Why don't we try doing that? Multiple backups sounds like a no-brainer "fix".