London Times April 21, 2001

'Aimless sloth' is secret to a long and happy life FROM ROGER BOYES IN BONN

JOGGERS who get up before sunrise to pound through the park, executives who try to work off stress with a game of squash, muscle-builders and takers of cold showers are all significantly shortening their lives, draining the finite energy that is given to mammals.

According to Peter Axt, a relaxed-sounding former marathon-running German researcher, laziness is good for you. The secret to long life is “aimless sloth”, Dr Axt, a 60-year-old zoologist from the University of Fulda, said. He told The Times that he had once been a leading member of the German Track and Field Association and a long-distance runner. He has since seen the error of his ways.

“No top sportsman has lived to a very advanced age,” he said, reeling off a catalogue of athletes who have died of heart attacks in middle age even though endurance sport is supposed to strengthen cardiac activity.

Prominent among these victims of their own obsession with health was Jim Fixx, who advocated daily running and almost single-handedly launched the American fitness revolution through The Complete Book of Running. He died in July 1984 at the age of 52.

Dr Axt, who has written a book, On the Joy of Laziness, with his daughter, Michaela, a doctor, said that there were three keys to long life: to play less sport, to reduce stress and to eat less food.

An Italian village with an unusually high number of centenarians seems to owe its good communal health to following the Axt principles. No one runs, siestas stretch through the afternoon from 1pm to 4pm and the main activity seems to be sitting in the shade playing chess or gossiping.

Lifestyle mistakes begin in the morning. According to the research accumulated by the Axt team, those who wake up before 7.20am live shorter lives than late risers.

“In 1910 people used to sleep 9½ hours a day; now we sleep for 7½, a destructive development,” he said.

Animals that hibernate over the winter live longer; bats, for example, outlive most kinds of mice. The longest-living animals, including crocodiles, spend a great deal of their time idling in the sun.

Dr Axt is challenging a fitness ethic that is at the core of a huge service industry in Europe and the United States, influencing not only exercise patterns but also fashions. Hundreds of millions of pounds a year are ploughed into promoting running shoes; almost nothing is spent on advertising hammocks. Yet the hammock could be the key to a healthier life.

Dr Axt’s idea is based on the work of physiognomic researchers compiled at the beginning of the 20th century. They argued that animals have only a limited amount of energy. Those who burn up energy quickly live for a shorter time. Those who conserve energy live longer. Thus an executive who wants to compensate for a stressful day by a fierce burst of physical exercise is merely multiplying his problems.

Germany, rather than British public schools, first propagated the virtue of cold showers as a way of boosting stamina. Yet Dr Axt said that cold showers are a typical example of the kind of energy wastage that is shortening lives.

“The body has a thermostat and has to burn up energy — energy that you need for other things — to restore your body warmth,” he said.

Dr Axt does not entirely practise what he preaches — “I like to jog gently for 20 minutes three or four times a week,” he said with a note of apology — but he has no time for men over 50 who insist on running several kilometres a day.

“All they are doing is measuring their own physical decline.” According to Dr Axt, 50-year-old sportsmen are at risk of premature senility and demonstrate high levels of memory loss.

Of course, the Axt thesis is not uncontested. Danish researchers announced last year that joggers lived up to seven years longer than their sedentary counterparts, based on a 25-year study of 20,000 Danes. Doctors and medical councils across Europe warn citizens against becoming couch potatoes.

Yet it is the timing of his book that is stirring the biggest interest in Germany. The country is in the midst of an energetic debate about laziness. Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, has been telling Germans on the dole that they do not have a “right to laziness”.

Now sociologists have begun to argue about how idle Germans really are, since they have the longest time studying in Europe, the most public holidays and the earliest retirement age.

An analysis of excuses presented by the unemployed who are offered work include: “I’m only available in the mornings”; “I’m taking medication”; and “I have to paint my flat”.

Advice to the unemployed trying to wriggle out of job offers is available on the Internet. Apparently the trick is, when talking to a future employer, to emphasise allergies, difficult relationships with previous bosses and one’s passionate, time-consuming hobbies. Most personnel managers, faced with such remarks, blanch and send the reluctant job applicants back to the safety of their hammocks.

Dr Axt would no doubt approve such acts of selfpreservation.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 21, 2001

Answers

Dr Axt’s idea is based on the work of physiognomic researchers compiled at the beginning of the 20th century. They argued that animals have only a limited amount of energy. Those who burn up energy quickly live for a shorter time. Those who conserve energy live longer. Thus an executive who wants to compensate for a stressful day by a fierce burst of physical exercise is merely multiplying his problems.

I remember a similar but different thesis that was proposed in the 80s. It was published, I don't remember where. The premise was that we are born with a certain number of heart beats. So, if we can develope a slower pulse, our lifetime will increase. One way to achieve a slower pulse is by aerobic exercise. Therefore, there is an optimum amount of aerobic exercise time that will produce a low enough resting pulse that will maximize our lifetime.

Personally, if the urge to exercise occurs, I rest until it goes away.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 21, 2001.

If exercising uses up the finite amount of energy I already have stored up, why do I need to eat?

-- SimpleGuy (ThisIs@Simple.Enough), April 21, 2001.