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40+ Push-Ups in a Row for Men to Reduce Heart Disease Potential? - Study on Firemen
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From the article you linked,No, your findings provide evidence that observational studies from Harvard are usually meaningless garbage dressed up as science. It’s a wonder anyone keeps funding these turkeys
It's as if people forget that the reason people live as long as they do, various hybridized plants exist, they can even buy protein powder, small pox has been eradicated, and they're able to, say, have any surgery that doesn't result sepsis is because of studies done at institutions like Harvard.
edit: I'm not saying that the study is good, but to use it as an example of why research in general is somehow useless, bad, and/or shouldn't be funded shows an ignorance to the importance of research on our day to day lives (never mind that most people don't know how hard it is to actually get funding... it's not like get gets handed out like candy on halloween)5 -
From the article you linked,No, your findings provide evidence that observational studies from Harvard are usually meaningless garbage dressed up as science. It’s a wonder anyone keeps funding these turkeys
It's as if people forget that the reason people live as long as they do, various hybridized plants exist, they can even buy protein powder, small pox has been eradicated, and they're able to, say, have any surgery that doesn't result sepsis is because of studies done at institutions like Harvard.
edit: I'm not saying that the study is good, but to use it as an example of why research in general is somehow useless, bad, and/or shouldn't be funded shows an ignorance to the importance of research on our day to day lives (never mind that most people don't know how hard it is to actually get funding... it's not like get gets handed out like candy on halloween)
I understand that science and studies are important. I agree. I am only alive because of some amazing research.
But I just don't see equating doing more than 10 pushups with lower CVD risk being on the same level as developing surgical techniques and smallpox vaccines. I think the money might have been more helpful somewhere else.
As the author pointed out, his baldness probably correlates quite well to CVD risk. Many institutions seem to forget, or maybe it is just the press messing up, that correlation does not equal causation. A strong correlation just shows that further study could be warranted. That is all.3 -
From the article you linked,No, your findings provide evidence that observational studies from Harvard are usually meaningless garbage dressed up as science. It’s a wonder anyone keeps funding these turkeys
It's as if people forget that the reason people live as long as they do, various hybridized plants exist, they can even buy protein powder, small pox has been eradicated, and they're able to, say, have any surgery that doesn't result sepsis is because of studies done at institutions like Harvard.
edit: I'm not saying that the study is good, but to use it as an example of why research in general is somehow useless, bad, and/or shouldn't be funded shows an ignorance to the importance of research on our day to day lives (never mind that most people don't know how hard it is to actually get funding... it's not like get gets handed out like candy on halloween)
I understand that science and studies are important. I agree. I am only alive because of some amazing research.
But I just don't see equating doing more than 10 pushups with lower CVD risk being on the same level as developing surgical techniques and smallpox vaccines. I think the money might have been more helpful somewhere else.
As the author pointed out, his baldness probably correlates quite well to CVD risk. Many institutions seem to forget, or maybe it is just the press messing up, that correlation does not equal causation. A strong correlation just shows that further study could be warranted. That is all.
Honestly I'm more than willing to bet that the money wasn't spent solely on this article. Most of the funding appears to have been related to occupational safety. Given the data they have, there are a number of papers that could have been written. A quick google search of one of the grant numbers that I didn't exactly expect to net useful results shows that to be the case. At least one of the authors (Kales) appears to have a primary research interest in the cardiovascular health of firefighters.
If I think about my own, very junior, scholar experiences with being a part of research groups that have gotten grant money, it doesn't make sense to say, "well we have this data, now we're going to write a single article from it."2 -
I read ^^^this^^^ article and I totally missed the smokers versus no smokers component before posting the original article.
Mark Twain probably said it best - There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
The original article probably falls in the "statistics" category.1 -
MikePfirrman wrote: »I do like 200 some pushups twice a week just because it's a very easy and convenient way (for me) to supplement my Indoor Rowing. Though I do it throughout the day in sets of 20 to 25, I'm sure I could bang out over 40. This means nothing in terms of my risk of having a heart attack. I'm sure that Bob Harper could have done 60 pushups weeks before his heart attack. I'm not a huge fan of some of Bob Harper's workout tapes because many are too strenuous, but the guy was in incredible shape and still had a "widow maker" heart attack.
Bob Harper had an underlying hereditary medical condition that led to his heart attack, it wasn't due to his workouts.0 -
ExistingFish wrote: »MikePfirrman wrote: »I do like 200 some pushups twice a week just because it's a very easy and convenient way (for me) to supplement my Indoor Rowing. Though I do it throughout the day in sets of 20 to 25, I'm sure I could bang out over 40. This means nothing in terms of my risk of having a heart attack. I'm sure that Bob Harper could have done 60 pushups weeks before his heart attack. I'm not a huge fan of some of Bob Harper's workout tapes because many are too strenuous, but the guy was in incredible shape and still had a "widow maker" heart attack.
Bob Harper had an underlying hereditary medical condition that led to his heart attack, it wasn't due to his workouts.
That was kind of my point. He was in awesome shape, could likely do double the amount of pushups of most in the study, but still had a genetic condition that predisposed him. No correlation at all between pushups and heart attack in his case, which was what this study claimed.0 -
In a way, the pushups one (like, to perhaps a lesser extent, the squats and getting up from the floor ones) are especially goofy: That's something that's (I believe) objectively easier to do at a lighter body weight with respect to frame size.
That's exactly what I was thinking -- the underlying factors here are being lighter and having a better muscle to fat ratio. It's not surprising if that correlates to being more healthy overall, especially if one is a middle aged man with an active job, but doesn't mean that doing push ups vs. other exercises is meaningful.
I do think that remaining active and including strength-bearing exercises to maintain muscle mass as we age is going to be overall important.
So if I can do 82 consecutive pushups, will I have a 20 year free pass on heart disease?
(IDK how many I can do, lol)
On a more serious note, I agree with the above. While there may be some entertaining cocktail party conversation around this study, its really of little use as far as I can tell. And I worry that too many in our "get fit quick" culture take these studies/ads/recommendations too literally and exaggerate their importance.2 -
From the article you linked,No, your findings provide evidence that observational studies from Harvard are usually meaningless garbage dressed up as science. It’s a wonder anyone keeps funding these turkeys
It's as if people forget that the reason people live as long as they do, various hybridized plants exist, they can even buy protein powder, small pox has been eradicated, and they're able to, say, have any surgery that doesn't result sepsis is because of studies done at institutions like Harvard.
edit: I'm not saying that the study is good, but to use it as an example of why research in general is somehow useless, bad, and/or shouldn't be funded shows an ignorance to the importance of research on our day to day lives (never mind that most people don't know how hard it is to actually get funding... it's not like get gets handed out like candy on halloween)
I understand that science and studies are important. I agree. I am only alive because of some amazing research.
But I just don't see equating doing more than 10 pushups with lower CVD risk being on the same level as developing surgical techniques and smallpox vaccines. I think the money might have been more helpful somewhere else.
As the author pointed out, his baldness probably correlates quite well to CVD risk. Many institutions seem to forget, or maybe it is just the press messing up, that correlation does not equal causation. A strong correlation just shows that further study could be warranted. That is all.
Honestly I'm more than willing to bet that the money wasn't spent solely on this article. Most of the funding appears to have been related to occupational safety. Given the data they have, there are a number of papers that could have been written. A quick google search of one of the grant numbers that I didn't exactly expect to net useful results shows that to be the case. At least one of the authors (Kales) appears to have a primary research interest in the cardiovascular health of firefighters.
If I think about my own, very junior, scholar experiences with being a part of research groups that have gotten grant money, it doesn't make sense to say, "well we have this data, now we're going to write a single article from it."
It was an interesting snippet of info on the firefighters. It just isn't worth a large amount, imo.
It's funny how risk goes up for the 31-40 push-ups category too. You are golden if you can do between 21 and 30 push-ups, or over 41 pushups, but your risk rises if you do 35 push-ups. 1 -
From the article you linked,No, your findings provide evidence that observational studies from Harvard are usually meaningless garbage dressed up as science. It’s a wonder anyone keeps funding these turkeys
It's as if people forget that the reason people live as long as they do, various hybridized plants exist, they can even buy protein powder, small pox has been eradicated, and they're able to, say, have any surgery that doesn't result sepsis is because of studies done at institutions like Harvard.
edit: I'm not saying that the study is good, but to use it as an example of why research in general is somehow useless, bad, and/or shouldn't be funded shows an ignorance to the importance of research on our day to day lives (never mind that most people don't know how hard it is to actually get funding... it's not like get gets handed out like candy on halloween)
I understand that science and studies are important. I agree. I am only alive because of some amazing research.
But I just don't see equating doing more than 10 pushups with lower CVD risk being on the same level as developing surgical techniques and smallpox vaccines. I think the money might have been more helpful somewhere else.
As the author pointed out, his baldness probably correlates quite well to CVD risk. Many institutions seem to forget, or maybe it is just the press messing up, that correlation does not equal causation. A strong correlation just shows that further study could be warranted. That is all.
Honestly I'm more than willing to bet that the money wasn't spent solely on this article. Most of the funding appears to have been related to occupational safety. Given the data they have, there are a number of papers that could have been written. A quick google search of one of the grant numbers that I didn't exactly expect to net useful results shows that to be the case. At least one of the authors (Kales) appears to have a primary research interest in the cardiovascular health of firefighters.
If I think about my own, very junior, scholar experiences with being a part of research groups that have gotten grant money, it doesn't make sense to say, "well we have this data, now we're going to write a single article from it."
It was an interesting snippet of info on the firefighters. It just isn't worth a large amount, imo.
It's funny how risk goes up for the 31-40 push-ups category too. You are golden if you can do between 21 and 30 push-ups, or over 41 pushups, but your risk rises if you do 35 push-ups.
When I put one of the grant numbers into Google Scholar it came back with 14 articles. So really this is just a drop in the bucket and who knows what the grant money was actually used for. Data storage, data entry, analysis, various software licenses that institutions weren't willing to pay for, etc.1 -
I can do 67push up in one set0
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