Wall Street Journal article says running 20+ mpw is detrimental to one's health

Lets see..Started running in 1966 now 56 and running 100 mile weeks with 30 nice and slow10 min miles with my wife for her fitness level .But I am still under 19 min for 5k and weight is 150 range at 6 feet tall

.Feel great would not change a thing of the 46 years of running .

Bob Dobbs wrote:

I don't think anyone has claimed that running extends life expectancy.

This claim has been made and is well substantiated by a number of studies. Various studies diverge only when attempting to answer the question "How much is too much?"

My initial reaction was how this was no different than seeing someone start training for a race and do too much too soon. Your body can easily be overtrained if you don't pay attention to how much or how hard you workout, and this happens no matter your age.

Like all training, it's not the actual exercise where you reap the benefits, it's how well you recover from your workouts. When you are proactive and take care of yourself through proper hydration and nutrition, stretching, sleep, etc., your body adapts and becomes stronger and more efficient, decreasing the likelihood of injury and overtraining. All of this is significantly more important as you age, and if there's any silver lining in this article it's that there may be a ceiling as to the volume to which an older running should train and still reap the benefits.

Did anyone else notice how the article did not include a particular age group where these benefits start to decline? The issue here is that the article leaves out all the health benefits prior to hitting the "elderly wall" and therefore concludes that since it can lead to no mortality advantage, there's no need to start. They go to the extreme case of atrial fibrillation, which is 1/3 of all cases of stroke. My question is: why aren't we more concerned about the other 2/3? I would be curious to find that the major case for the other 2/3 of cases would be from the lack of exercise.

So, in essense, all they are doing by publishing this article is warning old people to be mindful of their volume.

My initial reaction was how this was no different than seeing someone start training for a race and do too much too soon. Your body can easily be overtrained if you don't pay attention to how much or how hard you workout, and this happens no matter your age.

Like all training, it's not the actual exercise where you reap the benefits, it's how well you recover from your workouts. When you are proactive and take care of yourself through proper hydration and nutrition, stretching, sleep, etc., your body adapts and becomes stronger and more efficient, decreasing the likelihood of injury and overtraining. All of this is significantly more important as you age, and if there's any silver lining in this article it's that there may be a ceiling as to the volume to which an older running should train and still reap the benefits.

Did anyone else notice how the article did not include a particular age group where these benefits start to decline? The issue here is that the article leaves out all the health benefits prior to hitting the "elderly wall" and therefore concludes that since it can lead to no mortality advantage, there's no need to start. They go to the extreme case of atrial fibrillation, which is 1/3 of all cases of stroke. My question is: why aren't we more concerned about the other 2/3? I would be curious to find that the major case for the other 2/3 of cases would be from the lack of exercise.

So, in essense, all they are doing by publishing this article is warning old people to be mindful of their volume.

For some people, running 10 miles a week is probably detrimental to their long-term health and fitness. People whose biomechanics are not suited for running, people who need 13-oz. Asics jello bricks + orthotics to not be in excruciating pain every time their heel clunks to the ground 10 inches in front of their center of mass - yeah, those people probably shouldn't run at all. Whoever told them they should?

Just like some people have no business in the weight room at the gym but can easily crank out 75 mpw well into their 60s by simply slowing their pace and phasing out the high-intensity workouts.

This so-called study and the WSJ article are tabloid nonsense. No real runner takes that sh\it seriously.

Certainly the jury is out.

Does the study mention diet? Not that I saw.

Diet is critical; if you gorge on fatty foods, meat and dairy, running ain't gonna help you much. You eat the wrong stuff, and you invite kidney and liver disease as well. Not to mention diabetes.

How about drinking? If you slug 3 or more drinks per day, you are stressing your heart (Now, I've done the research on that!)

I saw the study is motivated by the agenda of the perps. They are a buncha peckerwoods, yup.

I'm gonna stick to my 20 - 25 miles per week. And I'm gonna keep racing. I'm 55 and I still get the endorphin high. Let's rock it.

And, like every other human being, I will die. Oh well. Hopefully not for a good long while.

heres the deal yo wrote:

yeah, they do look healthy. that is what people of their culture look like normally whether they run a ton or not. its genetics. now dont go calling me racist, im talking from my experiences visiting africa. everyone where i visited is thin like that.

Just because most everyone of them is scrawny doesn't mean they're healthy. This has to do with nutrition and discipline.

Meet Fred Sanya, Kenyan bodybuilding champion:

That guy is huge. But he probably doesn't drink sweet tea all day and instead busts his a$$ in the gym for hours.

chrisbikeman wrote:

Ha! There is always someone that believes running is bad for you...

Neil Armstrong's famous quote: "I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street."

I'll take scientific research over reporter research anyway!

I will take scientific research over that crap any day of the week.

While I respect Neil Armstrong as a human being and the first man on the moon, his quotation is stupid.

As a result of running my resting heart rate is under 50 bpm. If I weren't a runner, my resting heart rate would undoubtedly be higher. I would think even with raising my heart rate during exercise, my heart beats less in a given day than it would if I never had become a runner.

You're right. I just did the math, and the runner would have over 20,000 fewer heart beats in a day. Interestingly, you go back to having more total heart beats in the 90-120 minutes/day range of exercising.

The converse analogy however would be whether it is best to drive your car on the red line all the time or moderately. I'm not for this research, but I must point out that there is more to human cardiac physiology than just an integer sum of beats.

Xfitguy_the_real_one_1 wrote:

Meet Fred Sanya, Kenyan bodybuilding champion:

http://www.naturallyintense.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fred-sanya-in-kenya1.jpg

That guy is huge. But he probably doesn't drink sweet tea all day and instead busts his a$$ in the gym for hours.

OK, you win. I take it back. I guess it is possible, even with Kenyan genetics, to develop great muscles. But for most it probably isn't. Oh well...

Xfitguy_the_real_one_1 wrote:

heres the deal yo wrote:

yeah, they do look healthy. that is what people of their culture look like normally whether they run a ton or not. its genetics. now dont go calling me racist, im talking from my experiences visiting africa. everyone where i visited is thin like that.

Just because most everyone of them is scrawny doesn't mean they're healthy. This has to do with nutrition and discipline.

Meet Fred Sanya, Kenyan bodybuilding champion:

http://www.naturallyintense.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/fred-sanya-in-kenya1.jpg

That guy is huge. But he probably doesn't drink sweet tea all day and instead busts his a$$ in the gym for hours.

I don't think this guy looks any "healthier" than a pro marathoner. They're both kind of freakish to some extent.

20 miles a week ???I guess all marathons will be over!!Lets be real here this article is flawed in so many places .

Moderation is key! Running 4 to 5 days a week after 40 maybe 2-3 miles a day is great! Running on the treadmill offers less pounding than concrete ete also. You can run 12-15 miles a week, maintain it and be super fit but well resting and the body doesnt take a super pounding!

I'd rather die running a slow 5k than sitting on my butt eating prunes and doing crossword puzzles. That's for sure.

The article mentions atrial fib and goes on to attribute 30% of strokes to a fib, implying that running can be the cause of 30% of strokes, which is laughable at best. Most of those atrial fib strokes are in sedentary, elderly patients.

ummm..... wrote:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323330604578145462264024472.html?mod=ITP_personaljournal_4

Thoughts?

What this study REALLY means is we need more science to more clearly indicate if there are risks, particularly for those, such as myself, who are over 50. If someone disagrees with the conclusions of this study they need to clearly site research that contradicts or fails to corroborate the study: OR, conduct it themselves. I don’t like the conclusions drawn, but I’m not arrogant, nor self-deluded enough to pretend to be able to excoriate “flaws” in a study, of which I do not even have full access.

Read the couple of sports-med journal articles on which the popular-press coverage is based. They are interesting and sobering. You obviously don't understand the concept of statistical'controls,' as in the matter of weight. If you have access to Medline, read the O'Keefe article (an N of over 50,000) and then read the article referenced in their footnote 7. The major variable missing from their model is diet--meat v plants, mainly. Campbell et al's China study is a place to start.

Maybe it is.