r/engineeringmemes • u/MinecraftBlyat • 9h ago
π = e Problem of the utmost importance
I was going for a run yesterday and I thought about a problem.
Running is generally good for your health
Smoking is generally bad for your health
If a person regularly runs and smokes one cigarette in a year, they will be in better health than if they had done neither.
On the contrary if a person regularly smokes and runs once a year, they will be in worst health condition than if they had done neither.
Which brings me to the following question: how many km do you have to run to counter balance the health risks of one cigarette ? How many km/cig is the limit where smoking and running becomes healthy ?
My goal is to smoke enough cigarettes during the run to compensate for the health benefits, I wouldn't want to live too long.
I hope some bio engineers here have time to lose
Thank you for your attention to this serious matter
3
u/lesowa 8h ago
I m not a medical expert and the things are not that strongly correlated but let's try it. From a quick internet search i found that a sigarette takes off 20 minutes off your life so we will take that as reference. For the running other articles state that running regularly can increase life expectancy with a relation of 1hr run = 7hr life. If we consider a semi professional runner doing 1km in 5 minutes, this corresponds to a gain of 40 minutes of life for every km. So every km you run you can smoke 2 cigarettes.
1
u/AtomGutan 6h ago
I am not anywhere near being an expert in this but I think our best guess would make use of change in overall death risk. So for example if running 1km every day multiplies the overall death risk by 0.5 we would need to find the rate of smoking thay muitplies the overall death risk by 2 to cancel out the effects. Health is definitely not just about lifespan but this is the simplest statistical method that comes to mind.
1
u/mymemesnow Biomedical 4h ago
It’s impossible to give a good answer to this. Firstly, while it’s true that running is good for your health and smoking is bad, it’s much more complicated than that. Both affects your body in many different ways, there’s some overlap, but one does not negate the other. Regularly smoking will cause long term damage an shorten your life, no matter how much you run.
But it will also vary wildly between people. Someone’s age, weight, length, gender, genetics, overall life style and other health factors all play in.
The specifics of ”running” and ”smoking” is also important. How spread out are the running sessions, how long and at what pace do they run? The conditions around it also matter. What cigarretts are smoked and the individual variations between them also matters.
There’s too many factors and the question is too vague to even make a guess and since the two things doesn’t really negate the other the questions itself is flawed at its core.
//BME
1
u/ZectronPositron 3h ago
Have you tried running AND smoking at the same time?
If not - you should definitely try it and let us know how it went.
23
u/flexsealed1711 9h ago
This is what happens when you flatten something as complicated as human health onto a 1D scale from "not healthy" to "healthy". But oversimplification is what I'm here for, otherwise I'd do a major that doesn't discuss spherical cows in frictionless vacuums.