does anybody fear the health consequences of running?

There is indeed a lot to be concerned about. Do the research and draw your own conclusions. The aforementioned book, The Haywire Heart, has just been published and represents the latest science on heart problems in endurance athletes. Here is the link:

https://www.amazon.com/Haywire-Heart-exercise-protect-heart-ebook/dp/B01MZ6S2LP/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493926525&sr=8-1&keywords=the+haywire+heart

Also, take a look at this TED Talk by Dr. O'Keefe. Trust the latest science. Its not perfect but its the best we have at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U728AZnV0

Competing in any sport at a competitive level is going to be risky for your health. I am sure that I could improve my health by reducing my intensity/mileage and by only doing easy runs which would be rewarding in its own right, but my true passion is racing. Sure, the social aspects and beautiful views are great, but what I truly enjoy is that last kick in to the line. I can think of no feeling more pure than having a straight up footrace in the last 100m. On top of that, I love the workouts where I am really challenging myself, pushing my body to the absolute limits and seeing what I can throw down. There's something awesome about sucking wind and tasting lactic acid, calves burning, trying to hold on to that 1 inch piece of fabric because the knees are too sweaty to grip and you're ready to fall over because of that last 400.

Running hard comes with it's own risks, sure, but nothing compared to most other athletic sports like basketball, football, or American football. Hell, I know guys that have ruined their knees playing baseball, which to me only appears to have negative impacts on your health and I find pretty damn boring. Lots of people run for their health and that's great, but to me that's a lucky side effect and nothing more.

In the theoretical situation that you had to be 100 pounds overweight to be fast, I would absolutely be willing to sacrifice my health in the short term to see what I could get out of it. That's really not so different from taking shots to the head to see how far you go in boxing or tackled at the knees 10 times a day by 300+ pound linemen. Most sports end up screwing up your joints - we just have better odds than contact athletes.

So no, no I don't fear it. I enjoy it while I can and lean when I get to the line.

I was a serious distance runner and starting getting a-fib in my late 20s. Had a university classmate who got it in university. I gather the evidence isn't quite definitive, but there are a number of studies arguing that endurance athletes are far more prone to this than others.

As others say, the good news is that you can treat it via drugs/ablation/modified exercise. As a fellow reasonably young person (late 30s), my fear is that the a-fib will progress to the point that it is happening constantly in a few decades time.

The danger, to be clear, isn't that your heart is at risk of suddenly stopping. The danger is that your heart beats inefficiently, blood pools in the heart and thus clots, and then you have a stroke when the clot goes somewhere undesirable. The risk is still quite low if your a-fib only lasts a few minutes or hours at a time, but the risk gets much higher if it is a multi-day type of thing.

The surgery seems to get better all the time, but "success" is often weirdly measured, such as whether the frequency decreases slightly after multiple ablations. This is not a great success in my books. Total cure after one ablation is.

I have treated mine by reducing my exercise. This wasn't an awful thing for me as I was already drifting away from serious running and just had my first kid. No Olympic medals were left on the table. For a number of years I still ran casually, a few times a week. But then the a-fib started happening even on that reduced schedule. Eventually I got down to one run a week but was having the same problem. I am now at a point where -- when I am out of shape -- I can do whatever I like. Play baseball with kids, sprint for the bus, go on a bike ride, etc. Even go on a single run. But if I am "fit", then something as trivial as going up the stairs might trigger it. I have concluded that being out of shape by runner standards is the best solution for me. Don't get me wrong, I still walk 10km a day, do pushups and situps and am lean (that's a function of diet for all but the most serious athletes, not the # of miles you run). But I would get crushed in a road race. My youngest is now starting to win races and I can keep up for now, but he will probably outpace my limited schedule shortly.

On the subject of other running ailments that creep up, I've also got a couple of arthritic big toes from too many miles. Incidentally, I also totally fried my system with too much interval work when young and was a shadow of myself by the time I hit my mid 20s despite ratcheting the training intensity ever higher.

It is interesting that some of the most successful master's athletes were not serious runners earlier on. Ed Whitlock was a classic example. In fairness, most elites have better things to do by the time they age out of top competition, but there may be something to this. I'd rather save some health (or even sports performance) for my old age. It is a fine line to walk. My conclusion is that a reasonable amount of exercise is good and life extending but extreme exercise of any kind isn't great for the body. Might still be worth it for the competition or the fun, of course.

Fesooo wrote:

So please take it easy on the Google machine and have a Xanax.

Hey Brojos, how about a black intro splash page with these words on it EVERY DAY FOREVER on LR?!?!? Truer words have never been written here.

Interesting to read these comments. Of course there are fatties with heart issues. But on the flip side, there are/were healthy endurance athletes with current heart issues as well. I will not be a bit surprised if the Rupp/Centro types have major heart issues later in life, given their extreme year round training. Doesn't Salazar have a pace maker?

I just ordered the Haywired Heart. It should be an interesting read for sure.

I'm a competitive masters runner about to turn 60.

Since a very early age - maybe as young as 8 or 10, I've had superventricular tachycardia from time to time.

For me it seems to relate to a certain pulse range. In 40+ years of racing it's only happened in a couple of races (and I've run literally hundreds, as well as run something like a a couple of thousand rep sessions), but if I'm not very fit, it will start when I slow down to jog at the end of a rep. I've even had to stop and get it back under control when warming up for a race, on one occasion three or four times while warming up, yet it never happened in the race, in which I broke the age state record for a 10k.

I've competed every year since I was around 14, and although I've never been a high mileage runner (I did do a couple of marathons), I always have included very intensive rep sessions (I did 32x100m sprinting with 100m jog just last week).

I had an ECG about two years ago prior to a knee op, which didn't find anything wrong (comment was a high capacity for exercise) - although the EKG had them very confused.

My heart rate was around 48 when I was a kid before I started training seriously (I remember they thought I was fooling around when we did pulses in biology), and off a Fitbit, my daily average resting pulse is in the 44-47 range, sometimes dropping below 40 at night.

My weight is below what it was when I ran my fastest 800m, about 33 years ago; blood-pressure was good when I was tested for life insurance a couple of years ago.

I haven't raced on the track for a couple of years, but the last time I did, was quick enough to scrape inside the top 25 on the world age group rankings (with a much better age graded time than my real best).

Obviously this is only anecdotal, but as an experiment of one, apart from a meniscus tear that was fixed with an op, I don't seem to have suffered any ill-effects from the years of intensive rep training either, either from object measures (relative times; medical exams) or subjective.

I was told by a doctor that I have a Hearth Arythimia, however mine is genetic and not caused by running while it can be caused by running (I've had my whole life) that being said, a little less than half the population has a heart arrhythmia.

Quit worrying so much.

After 30 years of serious running and racing, I developed a-fib and have had two ablations. The jury is out (I have researched this extensively) about whether racing and training hard can cause a-fib. I have had nationally renowned cardiologists tell me it does and many others tell me they just don't know. My father had heart problems but he smoked like a chimney for years. I never smoked, ate healthy and didn't drink alcohol for 30 years. I had the ablations because the a-fib was not responding to all the various medications I tried (and which had horrible side effects) and I was not able to run more than a mile slowly. The first ablation did not work and the a-fib returned in 3 months. The second ablation has been better. I still have minor a-fib episodes but I am not taking any medication. However, my running has really gone downhill. My endurance and stamina are much weaker and my speed is gone. I have to be content to run at a speed I would never have called running before. Had I known this was going to happen, would I have not trained so hard or raced so much? No. I loved and still love to run and from what I can tell, not everyone who runs seriously is prone to the problem. You just don't know until it happens to you. You take a risk but there are a lot of risks in life if you want to live it to the fullest. I can no longer train hard or race fast, but I now coach those who can.

Thank you for your contribution .

At what address shall we retrieve your corpse ?

I am another sample of one (i.e. anecdotal): I had two episodes of afib, one in 1981 at age 44 and the second in 1991 at 54. (Yes I'm still around at 79 - 80 in Sept. - and still looking at letsrun). I had competed in high school and college, eased off a lot until about age 27, then was very competitive through my mid-40s. And still consistent until stopped by arthritis in late '50s. I went to the ER with both afib incidents. Smoothed out in a few hours in '81; required an over night stay and meds in '91. Was throughly checked out by cardiologists after both. In '81 the cardiologist cleared me to run New York five weeks later and I had my best marathon ever, given my age: 2:32:30. Also ran with no problems after '91 episode. No episodes since then.

Both of my afib episodes were in mid-September in Miami when it is still very hot and humid. In both cases I had done a long run in the morning and later in the day had done some yard work in the sun. Rehydrated especially with a lot of sugary iced coffee. Always wondered/suspected that the caffeine and sugar, after dehydration, caused the afib.

My "retirement" from running due to the arthritis - and hip replacements some years later - really disappointed me. But perhaps it saved me from overdoing in my later years.

yes

My mom is 87, and has had Atrial Fibrillation for 35 years. She still walks and swims for exercise. Never a competitive athlete, she has successfully treated it with both blood thinners to prevent strokes and other meds to address the fibrillation. It has worsened over time, and degenerated from a few times a month to 50 percent of the time. As her cardialogist says, Afib is not an emergency, but a treatable condition. Life's short. Do what you love. Every day is a gift.

You're going to die someday. Might as well live your life doing something that gives it meaning and makes you happy.

Have you ever feared the consequences of getting into a car? Or cycling on a street? These things should cause more fear than running too much.

Going on a job interview is pretty scary too. The consequences of that could change your life and dramatically alter your happiness and lifespan (for better or worse).

Running helps me NOT to worry so much about those other things.

To answer the OP's question, no I don't fear the consequences of running just life stressors that I can't control.

I had Afib develop at 26. Got worse until 29 when I had an ablation done which cured it (at least it stopped all symptoms). Certainly had to do with high intensity endurance training over many years.

Proud Mijo wrote:

As her cardialogist says, Afib is not an emergency, but a treatable condition.

Lots of old people have afib that isn't very symptomatic. There are not lots of people in their mid-20s with afib that feels like their hearts are jumping out of their chests. The latter is what we're talking about in a apparently significant number of endurance athletes including myself.

I took part in a study of endurance runners vs untrained people last year, one of the things they mentioned is the hard-core of researchers in the field who are determined to make a name for themselves with the finding that hard exercise is dangerous.

As such they have already determined the end-point of their "research" so they simply cherry-pick anything that suits their narrative.

The media of course lap it up as they love a "suppressed truth that contradicts the orthodoxy" story and of course there is never a shortage of N=1 anecdata as this thread shows.

afibber wrote:

I had Afib develop at 26. Got worse until 29 when I had an ablation done which cured it (at least it stopped all symptoms). Certainly had to do with high intensity endurance training over many years.

Explain? I've done both running & cycling high intensity endurance training for 30 yrs now (late 50s). I had a workup with a cardiologist a few years ago and everything was fine (it turned out to be severe acid-reflux).

So, what's up with some of these young bucks having Afib so young? A genetic predisposition likely? 🤔

Cycling Old Fart wrote:

So, what's up with some of these young bucks having Afib so young? A genetic predisposition likely? 🤔

This is the big problem with attributing something as the cause of something else because "it must have".

Running and arthritis is the classic one, my nan was crippled with arthritis but she never ran, therefore not running causes arthritis nobody ever said but in the interests of consistency they should say this.