Danish study shows most of you will die the same time as a couch potato

Exaaaaactly. Well uh you know? Exaaaaaactly.

Here is the word. Physical activity lowers body fat which in turn lowers serum fats and cholesterols. As a result, heart and vascular disease is profoundly diminished. In addition, physical activity lowers blood pressure which profoundly reduces risk for kidney disease, stroke, and other end organ sclerosis. Now, the study, which I didn't read because it wasn't even linked in the article, notes that 7 mph is considered strenuous. To a lot of people here, no 7 mph is not strenuous, and I would say that these people can continue to run for the rest of their long long long lives! However, overdoing it I believe can be detrimental if it releases too many catecholamines, cortisol, and other stress hormones. If you slowly work into a high level of fitness that is manageable for you, you will see the longer longetivity, but if you routinely put your head through the ringer, you might be undoing the work you put in.

I forget where it was, but there was a recent article about how researchers cooked the numbers to show that learning a second language had a positive effect on a person's ability to concentrate and focus on tasks. The researchers had run several studies. One study showed a correlation. But several of the studies did not. The researchers have no obligation to report the studies that did not support their theory. This is largely because journals are only interested in publishing studies that show something and never want to publish studies that show nothing. So, they let researches throw the unsupportive data in the trash even if it cast extreme doubt on the study that is published.

I think that is what we have with the studies on mortality and distance running to the extent researchers keep making the same mistake of not having a statistically significant sample of those who run a lot. In the cited study in the article, they had @5,000 participants. Of those, only 128 were "strenuous" runners. You just cannot make any conclusions based on that kind of sample size.

Precious Roy wrote:

You just cannot make any conclusions based on that kind of sample size.

Sure you can, you just have larger uncertainty intervals as they show in their analysis.

To be fair, any such study has it's limitations, which is fine if they are documented. The problem is that most of this information is distributed through the popular press to an audience that has no appetite for nuance.

Citizen Runner wrote:

Precious Roy wrote:

You just cannot make any conclusions based on that kind of sample size.

Sure you can, you just have larger uncertainty intervals as they show in their analysis.

To be fair, any such study has it's limitations, which is fine if they are documented. The problem is that most of this information is distributed through the popular press to an audience that has no appetite for nuance.

A responsible scientist would not publish findings with a huge uncertainty interval generated by comparing @100 subjects with @4900. This stuff gets into journals because it is interesting. Just imagine if a left wing environmental group had a study of 5000 people showing that a group of 100 diabetics out of the 5000 had higher mortality rates when eating GMOs. Everyone would cry foul if they concluded that GMOs were harmful to diabetics. That is precisely what is happening here.

I never understand why people bring up these studies to runners, I don't run to add years to my life - I run because it is what I like to do.

strenuous joggers - people who ran faster than 7 mph for more than four hours a week; or who ran faster than 7 mph for more than 2.5 hours a week with a frequency of more than three times a week -

Since when is this the definition of "strenuous"?

Cubism Cubed wrote:

I never understand why people bring up these studies to runners, I don't run to add years to my life - I run because it is what I like to do.

+10

malmo wrote:

strenuous joggers - people who ran faster than 7 mph for more than four hours a week; or who ran faster than 7 mph for more than 2.5 hours a week with a frequency of more than three times a week -

Since when is this the definition of "strenuous"?

Malmo, 7mph for an out of shape couch potato is strenuous. You probably do not go to many 'races' (fun runs really) these days but most of the participants fit this description.

4zloveofRunning wrote:

Cubism Cubed wrote:

I never understand why people bring up these studies to runners, I don't run to add years to my life - I run because it is what I like to do.

+10

+20

Living long is over-rated

I want to move on before I become a decrepit old man with dementia or alzheimers or other conditions associated with old age.

Precious Roy wrote:

A responsible scientist would not publish findings with a huge uncertainty interval generated by comparing @100 subjects with @4900.

What they did was take a population of about 5000 people. About 20% of those were at least occasional joggers. Of the joggers about 10% (2% of the total population) were "more than occasional" by their criteria. They compared sub-populations from this plausibly unbiased sample and generated statistics including uncertainty intervals consistent with the size of the sub-populations. Per those calculations they have drawn conclusions with specific confidence levels. One of their conclusions is that strenuous jogging by their criteria is correlated with a much higher hazard ratio than light jogging by their criteria and the difference is statistically significant at the 95% confidence level.

They may have done something unreasonable in this process, but comparing different sized sub-populations isn't it.

Haji wrote:

malmo wrote:

strenuous joggers - people who ran faster than 7 mph for more than four hours a week; or who ran faster than 7 mph for more than 2.5 hours a week with a frequency of more than three times a week -

Since when is this the definition of "strenuous"?

Malmo, 7mph for an out of shape couch potato is strenuous. You probably do not go to many 'races' (fun runs really) these days but most of the participants fit this description.

I assume Malmo's point is that "strenuous" would naturally be a function of the age, gender, and fitness level of the individual. I've only seen the abstract of the subject paper which doesn't define the criteria they used for "strenuous", but an arbitrary pace seems like a poor choice.

BBC have now picked up the story too

How about we look at quality of life and mobility...

Just because you live to be the same doesn't mean you get to live the same life. A person running a few days a week at 9 min pace is going to have other life opportunities that a sedentary person doesn't. For a quick example... A runner in their 60's can run around the yard with their grandchildren. The list can go on from there, but there is no doubt that just because everyone on average may still live to be 76 it doesn't mean they all actually "Live."

Eh. Some studies find more is better, others find more is worse. I'll wait for the meta-analyses to make sense of things.

Co-authored by James O’Keefe, the same anti-running doctor who's behind all the other studies.

adsfasfds wrote:

Co-authored by James O’Keefe, the same anti-running doctor who's behind all the other studies.

LOL

This is old news.

Much has been studied about CHRONIC CARDIO. Google it. Even Mark Sisson, former world class triathlete/runner has written about it.

Running long distances raises cortisol/inflammation and all the carbs you'll have to eat will lead to early diabetes/CVD.

Much better off doing terabit/CrossFit Style Sprint Repeats, weightlifting and adhering to a diet high in animal fat/protein.

Xfit_guy_the_real_1 wrote:

This is old news.

Much has been studied about CHRONIC CARDIO. Google it. Even Mark Sisson, former world class triathlete/runner has written about it.

Running long distances raises cortisol/inflammation and all the carbs you'll have to eat will lead to early diabetes/CVD.

Much better off doing terabit/CrossFit Style Sprint Repeats, weightlifting and adhering to a diet high in animal fat/protein.

Case in point: