New Study: High Mileage may be unhealthy as being Sedentary in Older Adults

They lost all credibility with this line:

"The most notorious example of a jogger coming to grief was Jim Fixx, the author of the 1977 bestseller The Complete Book Of Running.

His book is credited with starting the revolution that made running and jogging a daily routine for many. But in July 1987 Mr Fixx died at 52 from a heart attack after his daily run."

Haji wrote:

They lost all credibility with this line:

"The most notorious example of a jogger coming to grief was Jim Fixx, the author of the 1977 bestseller The Complete Book Of Running.

His book is credited with starting the revolution that made running and jogging a daily routine for many. But in July 1987 Mr Fixx died at 52 from a heart attack after his daily run."

I agree with you because Jim Fixx seems to be an outlier or an anomaly but what do you think about the rest of the study?

Fixx's situation was that he did too much too late.

He was very unhealthy and started to exercise too much.

His already clogged arteries cause it.

Maybe the solution is to start running when you're young (12) and never stop.

Maybe little kids should go back to playing tag and other games like that instead of sitting around playing video games and watching TV.

We need sandlot sports instead of organized leagues where they stand around waiting for the coach to tell them what to do.

The Jim Fixx example is completely ridiculous.

I think you CAN make a good case that high mileage in older runners who have previously been competitive runners increases the risk of A-Fib.

Regardless, nearly every older runner on this board would rather run and die a few years younger.

It's really a quality of life issue.

Fixx's father didn't jog and died of heart problems in his 40's

This article does not specify any actual health problems from running more often

In fact it mentions heavy joggers do not benefit, well jogging more frequently would make themn lighter joggers

Can you believe some of the comments 'well I guess its true but my daughter competes so has to train more to be competitive'!

Makes me feel better about my slacker running these days, with no legitimate long run or speed work.

In the 47 years that I've been involved with the sport one constant has been the recurring release of studies showing that running is bad for your health. Another constant has been the release of studies showing that running is great for your health. Usually someone who thinks that running is good for your health critiques the negative studies and then the cycle will start over.

Running "too much" or "too hard" for too long obviously is not a good thing but these studies simply take some numbers and draw conclusions. They don't factor in the actual person. Running seven minute miles for someone who can run a mile in under five minutes and a marathon in three hours or better is not the same thing as running seven minute miles for someone whose best mile is 6:40 and best marathon is over four hours. Running for an hour a day for someone who ran for two hours a day a decade or two earlier is not going to be as stressful as it is for people who were sedentary until they were forty and then started jogging a couple miles to ward of the Big One. There are TONS of variation in the backgrounds older runs bring to the sport and you can't simply ignore those variations and make blanket comments about the effect running will have on all of them.

People either seem to love running or hate it and that seems to be the starting point for most of these studies. No one ever seems to study whether you can lift weights or cross country ski or bicycle "too much."

runn wrote:

Fixx's situation was that he did too much too late.

He was very unhealthy and started to exercise too much.

His already clogged arteries cause it.

Maybe the solution is to start running when you're young (12) and never stop.

Maybe little kids should go back to playing tag and other games like that instead of sitting around playing video games and watching TV.

We need sandlot sports instead of organized leagues where they stand around waiting for the coach to tell them what to do.

Not to mention Fixx's genetic predisposition for heart disease. His father, and a brother I believe, both died at a young age from heart disease.

I thought the rest of the study was not well stated or clear at all.

Here is a line I didn't understand:

"In general, the joggers were younger, had lower blood pressure and body mass index, and had a lower prevalence of smoking and diabetes."

If the joggers were younger, then I would expect them to have lower blood pressure etc.... Stuff happens as you age.

What 'runners', as opposed to joggers, do you know that smoke? Makes me wonder about the quality of their test subjects.

This again? There is a group of cardiology researchers, led by James O'Keefe, who make this claim again and again and again.

But every time, every single time, they include all the mechanisms by which we would expect running to benefit people, such as blood pressure, heart rate, BMI, etc., in their list of statistical controls.

They say that if we control for all the benefits of running, then running has no additional benefits.

There's no link to this particular study contained in that article, and I don't have time to hunt it down right now, but if they too controlled away all the mechanisms of the relationship between exercise and health, then it would be no surprise that they found no benefits.

I found an article on the same study that, surprisingly, offers an opposing view by a scientist that conducted a separate study.

http://news.health.com/2015/02/02/when-it-comes-to-jogging-easy-does-it-study-suggests/

ish wrote:

There's no link to this particular study contained in that article, and I don't have time to hunt it down right now, but if they too controlled away all the mechanisms of the relationship between exercise and health, then it would be no surprise that they found no benefits.

This is the study referenced by the article:

Citizen Runner wrote:

ish wrote:

There's no link to this particular study contained in that article, and I don't have time to hunt it down right now, but if they too controlled away all the mechanisms of the relationship between exercise and health, then it would be no surprise that they found no benefits.

This is the study referenced by the article:

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2108914

The study used more than 10x as many joggers going 3 times per wk as the joggers going most regularly. 40 is nowhere near enough to be statistically meaningful.

Too many older people (and older runners) neglect the upper body.

Additionally, you have these old geezer marathon maniacs who are virtual cripples from all the mileage they have done and their obligatory 6 or 7 'thons per year for the past 30 years.

All the pundits say - Do moderate exercise moderately as you get older.

ukathleticscoach wrote:

The study used more than 10x as many joggers going 3 times per wk as the joggers going most regularly. 40 is nowhere near enough to be statistically meaningful.

How many would be enough to make the result statistically meaningful?

messi wrote:

Additionally, you have these old geezer marathon maniacs who are virtual cripples from all the mileage they have done and their obligatory 6 or 7 'thons per year for the past 30 years.

All the pundits say - Do moderate exercise moderately as you get older.

What I generally see are older guys and that can still manage to cover 26 miles at a time at an age a lot of their peers are riding scooters around Wal Mart while hooked to an oxygen tank.

Im 60 years old and averaged around 60 mpw for about 35 years or so...

Ive noticed that the body naturally reduces your mileage...

There are some great older runners out there but many of them and Ill say most of them in the 60 year old range still have only been running for 15 or 20 years....

I read that trying to train hard at an older range actually hardens the arteries....

I know that nowadays, 30mpw for me is the effort of 60 mpw from 1977 to 2009.

An 8 mile run nowadays is like a 15 mile run back then.

Your body puts on the breaks sooner or later on its own.

Sorry for going off track.

When it's time to go,it's time to go !! Hahaha.

High mileage keeps me in check.

ish wrote:

This again? There is a group of cardiology researchers, led by James O'Keefe, who make this claim again and again and again.

Sorry, different author this time. Hand-wave away the mounting evidence for a u-shaped all you want though.

I used to work in a biomedical research lab. Do you know what we used to do to harden pig arteries? Continually put them through high and low pressure cycles.

You guys continue to suffer from the delusion that you're banking good health by exercising intensely over long periods. That's no longer true, in theory or practice.