SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the couch-potatoes-are-not-hit-by-cars dept.
There's no question that running changes your heart.
The issue is whether these changes are good or bad. I don't mean the occasional 3 miles once or twice a week, although even this minimal amount of exercise seems to have positive health benefits.
A famous 2014 study led by Duck-chul Lee that followed 55,000 adults for more than 15 years concluded that even modest amounts of running, around 50 minutes a week total, causes a 30 percent drop in all-cause mortality risk and an average increase of three years in lifespan. The results of this study were fairly flat with respect to running time, distance, frequency, amount and speed, compared to non-runners, although persistent runners "had the most significant benefits, with 29 percent and 50 percent lower risks of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality, respectively, compared with never-runners." However, the authors caution that "further research is needed to determine whether there is an upper limit to the amount of vigorous physical activity, beyond which additional exercise provides no further mortality reduction."
In other words, can too much running be bad for you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @09:10AM
The question is not if running is bad for your health. The question is just how much good it can do for your health.
Heart health, anyway. A little bit of running is good for you in general, but too much can be hard on your joints.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 16 2016, @09:21AM
Heart disease in marathon runners: a review. [nih.gov]
Diverse patterns of myocardial fibrosis in lifelong, veteran endurance athletes. [nih.gov]
Myocardial Adaptation in Response to Marathon Training [ahajournals.org]
Dose of Jogging and Long-Term Mortality [onlinejacc.org]
"Light and moderate joggers have lower mortality than sedentary nonjoggers, whereas strenuous joggers have a mortality rate not statistically different from that of the sedentary group."
(Score: 1) by aim on Friday September 16 2016, @01:39PM
Agreed. After a few years of essentially no sports at all, I started running mid-february this year. I started slowly,
short distances... and did feel the knee joints at first. With practice, I got faster, managed longer distances, didn't
have trouble with the knees any more... but I keep it at a reasonable level, no marathon distances for me, thankyouverymuch.
I hardly get back aches any more (which happened often enough before), have better fitness to play around with the kids,
generally feel better - mens sana in corpore sano, as the romans used to say. Also, the after-run beer tastes even better.