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

Post of the month

Actually, those two volumes are still on my shelf and I do enjoy the occasional rereads. When you mention "warning signs," did I once read that it was your father who Cooper wanted to to get on a lab treadmill? …I know he got Dr. Sheehan for tests from A-Z, and I thought I recalled Dr. Cooper challenging your father to do the same in his lab in Dallas.

I have never associated long distance training w/ longevity; as a 63 year old, it's strictly a mental health thing, although, I do find it hard to let go of knowing I can crank out miles if I need to.

So why isn't Ed Whitlock dead? Why did Johnny "the elder" Kelley live so long? How come George Sheehan ran his fastest marathon at 61? I don't get it. This thing can go both ways. I'm confused.

dirtpoor wrote:

So why isn't Ed Whitlock dead? Why did Johnny "the elder" Kelley live so long? How come George Sheehan ran his fastest marathon at 61? I don't get it. This thing can go both ways. I'm confused.

Is there a particular reason you're asking me?

Arguing about whether running shortened or lengthened Jim Fixx's life makes

about as much sense and deducing that high mileage is bad for you because 2/40 high mileage runners died over the course of a decade. The sample size is so small as to be meaningless and there is no evidence that any of the 3 deaths were CAUSED by runner.

As this article points out, the 2/40 high mileage runners who died during the study could both have died for reasons completely unrelated to running-

http://www.runnersworld.com/health/the-supposed-dangers-of-running-too-much

100% of runners and 100% of sedentary people will die. To prove that there is a connection between the life span of high mileage runners and running takes more than 3 examples in which there is no evidence of causation of death.

The willingness of major news sources to publish clickbait based on a study that proves nothing is disappointing.

Several points to make.

Not to beat a dead horse (a sedentary one of course, not a racehorse!), but...

1) as others have linked to, this gentleman did do a really good job in exposing the lack of evidence that these studies really demonstrate a meaningful link between "high" mileage and/or "high intensity" mileage and shorter lifespan

http://www.runnersworld.com/health/will-running-too-much-kill-you

HIs main points:

a) some of the big pieces on the connection between "too much running" and early death were only editorials by the infamous Dr O'Keefe, which were based on little if any data. And one of the pieces of research used by O'Keefe to 'back up' his viewpoint actually strongly contradicted this viewpoint (because it in fact showed benefits of much higher mileage than 20 mpw, and benefits of increased intensity)

b) another piece was an unpublished abstract that controlled for things that running positively influences.

c) the last piece was this Copenhagen study that had so few deaths that the statistics could have easily swayed in big directions either way with one or two accidental deaths.

d) there are many other pieces of evidence that demonstrate positive health benefits/ lower mortality for "high mileage" and high intensity beyond what one accrues at lower mileage and lower intensities

2) there are very strong correlations between lower resting heart rate, higher VO2 max, and higher cardiorespiratory fitness (demonstrated with treadmill test) and decreased mortality (for age). All 3 of these things are demonstrably improved, dose dependent, with increased endurance training.

3) studies in mice actually showed increased longevity over controls both when mice reduced calories quite significantly (the well known calorie restriction effect on mortality) AND when mice only reduced calories a bit but also added regular endurance training (which of course resulted in a further reduction of body weight similar to calorie restriction) .

4) a comparison of ALL french participants in the TdF and the general population showed a 40% reduction in mortality (per age group) in the TdF cyclists.

All of this research seems to demonstrate little risk for high amounts of endurance training (for the average person), and likely a benefit over moderate exercise, and certainly over a sedentary lifestyle.

Can someone explain this to me....

If you look at the main figure in the paper the number of sedentary people in the study was 413 of which 128 died... that is a 1 in 3 chance of dying during the study. BUT if you look at the strenuous joggers (LMFAO) of which there were 40 only 2 died. That is a 1 in 20 chance of dying during the study. So what gives?

parade rainer wrote:

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.

http://content.onlinejacc.org/mobile/article.aspx?articleID=2108913

Anyone who looks at this study and defends it instantly loses credibility. It is massively under-powered, the confidence intervals overlap, and the "strenuous jogger" error bars stretch from 0.5 (half the risk of sedendary) to 8.0.

Only two strenuous joggers died. One event either way would have had massive, massive effect on the results -- too underpowered to conclude anything from this.

Not to mention, they biased the study by throwing out all the bad actors with pre-existing conditions typically caused by lack of physical activity.

Thanks for this post, Tyrannosaurus Rexing.

I am no physician or physiologist, but as a social scientist I do understand the concepts of statistical significance, power, and control, all of which are coming under scrutiny in this study.

In my field (sociology), a study that made such broad claims with such weak statistical evidence would be very quickly rejected during the peer review process. Any reviewer with any training in quantitative data analysis would be able to identify the problems, and the paper would be sent back to the authors to be reworked. If they couldn't produce the same results while resolving the issues that Tyrannosaurus Rexing pointed out, the paper would never be published.

Can anyone with experience in cardiology or related fields explain how likely it would be that peer reviewers would be this kind to a paper whose claims are built on such shaky evidence? Why were these issues not identified prior to publication?

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

4) a comparison of ALL french participants in the TdF and the general population showed a 40% reduction in mortality (per age group) in the TdF cyclists.

Remarkable when one considers the health risks of doping.

800 dude wrote:

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

4) a comparison of ALL french participants in the TdF and the general population showed a 40% reduction in mortality (per age group) in the TdF cyclists.

Remarkable when one considers the health risks of doping.

yes, and it was one reason they did the study (and if I wasn't clear, this study looked at all french TdF riders in the race history).

And also remarkable considering the risk of crashing and dying on a bike.

Nice point. The proof is in the pudding.

I aint no sciencer wrote:

Can someone explain this to me....

If you look at the main figure in the paper the number of sedentary people in the study was 413 of which 128 died... that is a 1 in 3 chance of dying during the study. BUT if you look at the strenuous joggers (LMFAO) of which there were 40 only 2 died. That is a 1 in 20 chance of dying during the study. So what gives?

the question is .. as always .. are you recovering well? that is the barometer, not mileage, though of course as you age, your recovery time is greater and you have to back off on the intensity or mileage volumes.

if not you're digging into reserves, old or young, you'll pay the price.

it's a no brainer for the no brained people to learn.

Tyrannosaurus Rexing wrote:

800 dude wrote:

Remarkable when one considers the health risks of doping.

yes, and it was one reason they did the study (and if I wasn't clear, this study looked at all french TdF riders in the race history).

And also remarkable considering the risk of crashing and dying on a bike.

I'm not sure the risk is all that high, especially for pro team guys who always are riding with a massive group and sag cars around them, even during large portions of training.

Crashes are very common in races. Death quite rare.

This article highlights some of the problems with the study:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/fitness/why-again-study-that-says-too-much-running-is-bad-is-too-good-to-be-true/article22782320/

dirtpoor wrote:

So why isn't Ed Whitlock dead? Why did Johnny "the elder" Kelley live so long? How come George Sheehan ran his fastest marathon at 61? I don't get it. This thing can go both ways. I'm confused.

You can find people who've smoked 40 cigarettes a day and lived to 100.

Nevertheless, in general smoking lowers life expectancy.

That's why you need big populations to get a handle on this sort of thing. And even then people confuse correlation with causation.

I'd guess that high consumption of vintage champagne correlates well with high life expectancy. But that doesn't mean the champagne has life-prolonging effects - people who can afford lots of vintage champagne can pay for good medical care.

Tabloid pish.

Don't credit it with a discussion.

This study was done in copenhagen. Their idea of sedentary is probably a little different from the average american.

The real question (whether this is true or not) is would this study affect how you run and train?

I guessing for most of us competitive runners the answer is NO. And since that is my answer, I could care less if the study is valid or not.