I am skeptical of the widely-held view that induced exercise extends lifespan. To my knowledge, there has been no study that demonstrates the effect that could be considered definitive. The physiological mechanism seems like wishful thinking. Reducing resting blood pressure is undoubtedly a good thing. But to lower resting blood pressure through exercise, your blood pressure has to be increased during exercise. So you haven't really changed the equilibrium. The likely result would be to reschedule cardiovascular events away from periods of rest to periods of exercise.
You sound like you're just having some sort of pointless thought experiment. We don't know if exercise will extend ones life. It might reduce, increase or have no effect on our life span. We simply don't know. What we really need to figure out is how to better measure changes in our bodies. What's going on in our cells, for example? How can we better measure everything about our bodies?
Exactly. We dont, but exercise studies are not treated with sufficient skepticism, as if the life-extending effect is so obviously logical that it's exempt from criticism. My thought experiment was meant to show that it's hardly obvious. Strange, but scientists seem to need reminding.
