Marathon runners have heart damage and we should all exercise less..

i'm 64, been running for 49 years, ran my first marathon @ 17. guess i dodged that bullet.

Marathon running lengthens telomeres.

Now you've read that too.

Lifestyle matters. Donuts and beer after a run cause more inflammation and damage

Sure some fast runners get away with it,but tend to have short careers

I've run 12 Boston Marathons, and I haven't died from a heart attack yet....uhhhhhhhhhhh! My HEART!!!!!!! I'm having a heart attack!!!!!!

Wait a minute...wasn't there a cardiologist at the height of the running boom who claimed that nobody who can finish a marathon will suffer a heart attack? (Really! A major idiot and egomaniac!)

In that case, I'm good to go for many more marathons, despite my 3 packs of unfiltered Camels a day and lots of red meat and foods high in fat in my diet. I just love that gristle with my steak!

Whatever, 70 good years or 90 crappy years. I will take the 70 good years.

I am over 50 now and can run, bike, hike, rock climb, etc... It seems like 90+ percent of guys my age can hardly walk straight. I am enjoying myself. I hope I go out quickly when I do. Don't get me wrong, I love living but the way most elderly people are hanging on is not living.

I think that the cardiologist that you referred to was Dr Kenneth Cooper, who’s book “Aerobics” was credited as being one of the main things responsible for the running boom.

Since then Dr Cooper ( in his 90’s I believe, and still exercising…moderately… and has done so for decades) has revised his views after observations he made on hard training athletes and the various maladies that they were coming down with.
He has been quoted as saying ( and I paraphrase here) that if you are running for more than FIFTEEN miles per week, then you are doing so for reasons other than your health. This is after the decades of observations taken by his Cooper clinical testing / health centre in Texas. A rather sobering, yet contradictory point of view for all those people on here who try to justify 80+ mile weeks for health reasons. It’s not, and never has been. It’s purely vanity and ego and a chance to beat your rival at the local 5K.

Many people who exercise at high aerobic intensity develop calcium plaque in their arteries. This is not speculation, it's a clinically established pattern, as this article in Circulation explains. The good news is that cardiologists agree that the calcium plaques tend to be the hard, stable type that are less likely to enter the bloodstream and cause a stroke then the fatty ones that sedentary people usually develop. But it's not great to learn that their are, in fact, some negative outcomes that arise from the aerobic exercise that we were all told is the best thing for heart health.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.116.026964

Uumm yeah the heart is a muscle. When you strength train you create micro tears in the muscle which then repairs and grows back stronger. Exactly the same for the heart.

Any data or even anecdotal evidence that marathoners die early or have poorer health outcomes later in life than the general public?

Doubtful.

Tell it to the insurance companies. I can't get long-term healthcare insurance because of my high calcium scan reading. But I have a high VO2 Max, a low resting heart rate, and scored in the highest category on Bruce protocol treadmill stress test. Nonetheless the healthcare companies say, "Nope, cardiac risk is too high."

hey i'm really sorry to hear that. If you don't mind my asking, how old are you? I've never heard of rejection for calcium scans in particular sans preexisting conditions. and if it's any consolation, longterm healthcare insurance is a poor financial decision for many.

I'm 58, and a lifelong endurance athlete. Not elite, but I've been reasonably competitive in national-level running, triathlon, and paddling events. Still racing and training 4-5X a week. Long-term healthcare used to be a good buy for many people -- my parents would have been ruined without it due to my father's Parkinson's diagnosis. But the policies available now are much more suspect.

The main thing I want people to realize is that there can be negatives associated with long-term high-output endurance training. On the whole I agree that the pros outweigh the cons for most of us, but there is substantial clinical evidence that there are risks as well as benefits for cardiovascular health.

Sounds like you have a chip on your shoulder about not being a competitive runner. 🤔

You get some idiots who do 5-10 marathons every year. Of course they're going to wreck themselves one way or another. Doing 1 marathon a year is no big deal.

You’re intentionally trolling, right? I agree that exercise beyond that moderate level is for reasons other than health and fitness.

“Purely vanity and ego”? It’s all one or the other? There are no other steps along the way from one to the other? We can find nary a soul who runs 50 miles a week because it’s their favorite activity? Nobody who finds running to be a great way to relieve stress and clear their head? Nobody who enjoys seeing progress in their own fitness as a key part of the activity/hobby? Nobody who enjoys reading about how athletes train and seeing how those things might affect them?

Nope: Every last one of them is the caricature of an insecure, overly driven, hyper-competitive fool. I look forward to the publishing of your findings and the celebration of your work by the APA.

Absolutely and there are many Americans looking for an excuse to not live a healthy lifestyle.

I once had a tell me that running in the cold and snow was bad for my lungs while he was smoking a cigarette.

Keep running. When you're old you still going to be moving and fit and much happier than the overweight out of shape people.

Hey. Run the way you want. But I’m often perplexed by this kind of exchange:

1. someone states something like “moderate resistance exercise 4 times /week, paired with a mix of moderate running and walking each day for a total 3-4 hours/week, is more healthful than hard endurance training in excess of 4 hours/week.

2. someone replies, “yeah but my hard endurance training is more healthful than being the average couch potato.”

the point raised in 1 is specifically not and either-or of hard endurance training versus doing nothing. Why bring up a comparison to a lifestyle that is never really an option for a fitness enthusiast?

I’m not saying stance 1 is necessarily correct; I just get baffled by people thinking stance 2 is an adequate reply to it.

👆Great point.

Like most other things it all comes down to the individual. If you're built for it and other complimentary metrics align then marathons might not be bad for you. For most the opposite argument is stronger. I knew of a few local runners who, at my age, trained for and ran marathons and died from the effort. I began running at an early age to rebuild a disease damaged heart, but due to the overall effect of the condition made long running undesireable. But I can still jog a couple miles and enjoy it. A friend once stated that "moderation is the best policy" and I think it applies to the majority of us.