Illinois long-term study says young white men who do significant amounts of aerobic exercise long-term are accelerating death

Hey Reversal of Misfortune---really appreciate the reply---can you go over for me in detail, what are the healthy fats you eat? I have attempted this type of diet but I doubt that I'm getting right---in my attempts to eat LCHF, I have felt generally better, my weight has stayed low (never was overweight anyway) and had lower blood sugar numbers---but I have eaten a lot of nuts and peanuts and now am hearing that those are not healthy fats---and that peanut oil is actually a really bad fat---almost all my carbs now come from vegetables---no sugar, no grain, no fruit---all the foods I loved and was always taught were good for us are now out of my life which is extremely limiting---

if you have any links or advice, I'm very open to the LCHF, just want to do it right. What you said made me feel a lot better. Thanks

My stats: A1C = 6.2

Triglyceride = 79

HDL = 64

LDL = 100

C Reactive Protein = 0.6

Shoe---thanks for the reply---I don't know anything about Dean Ornish, but I'm open to suggestions---thanks for what you wrote---it really scared me, first when I had the chest pains, and again when they said I had the 40% (they called it mild) blockage---I will read up on Ornish---any other links or advice, I'm very interested.

The singular of data is not anecdote.

Good for him.

LCHF wrote:

joeshmoe wrote:

I can see the cause being related to a higher calorie (or generally worse) diet in distance runners. The more you run, the more you eat, the more you ingest "insert the cause of high CAC". The more I focus on running the more likely I am to eat cheeseburgers. Probably a mistake.

Cheesesburgers are fine, especially when grass-fed. Just throw out the bun, which is just fuel for systemic inflammation.

Oh please...

From the paper's discussion section

However, we cannot exclude

the possibility of a chance finding given the

low prevalence of metabolic risk factors in

the highest-activity trajectory group. Nonetheless,

further evidence examining the cardiac

benefits vs risk of prodigious amounts of exercise

to the level of excessive is warranted.

However, it may also be possible that higher

PA engagement confers atherosclerotic benefit

by promoting plaque stabilization and preventing

its rupture, leading to thrombosis.

Along these lines, recent studies in healthy,

middle-aged, highly active adults have reported

that higher doses of exercise were associated

with higher levels of CAC and that the

atherosclerotic plaques were, in fact, likely to

be more calcified plaques, suggesting that the

stable nature of coronary plaques in highly

active individuals may mitigate plaque

rupture.4

Also, from the paper

In summary, these results showed that white

individuals who participated in 3 times the

recommended guidelines for PA over 25 years

had higher odds of developing coronary subclinical

atherosclerosis by middle age. Collectively,

these data suggest that the biological

mechanisms associated with increased CAC

and high levels of PA deserve further evaluation.

Likewise, the impact of modestly higher

levels of CAC in aging, highly active individuals

on CV outcomes also deserves further

attention.

A key to me is that the authors point to risk factors not the actual mortality

Luv2Run wrote:

LCHF wrote:

Cheesesburgers are fine, especially when grass-fed. Just throw out the bun, which is just fuel for systemic inflammation.

Oh please...

The chronic stress increases the cortisol/dehydroepiandrosterone ratio.

It can be from chronic physical stress or chronic mental stress.

The mental pathology is passed down from father to son.

For example:

ha ha ha

Also, check out Table 1:

The average BMI of the most active group was 23.7 at the beginning of the study, and 28.0 at its end (least active: 24.9 - 31.4) I would not draw too many conclusions from such a group for competitive runners.

I'm very hesitant of these studies for the simple fact that ironically the most unhealthy eaters i've ever met are runners/ endurance athletes. I'm part of a running club, most of that clubs gorges down on straight up TRASH food and drinks alcohol every weekend. I think most endurance athletes think "I can eat anything, i'm healthy!" fact is that they are still calcifying their hearts. Diet is like 70% of the equation.

Hardloper wrote:

They did not find higher rates of heart disease, they found higher rates of calcification, which is not itself a problem but assumed to be correlated with heart disease, all else being equal. However, correlation does not imply causation and they did not find out whether high exercisers actually had higher rates of heart disease.

I am a runner that developed heart disease in my late 40s after 35 years of running so I'm obviously personally interested in this study. My wife works with one of the experts in this area of research. I'll get his take and post it. Appreciate the OP sharing and several other thoughtful takes in this thread .

doo doo study wrote:

I'm very hesitant of these studies for the simple fact that ironically the most unhealthy eaters i've ever met are runners/ endurance athletes. I'm part of a running club, most of that clubs gorges down on straight up TRASH food and drinks alcohol every weekend. I think most endurance athletes think "I can eat anything, i'm healthy!" fact is that they are still calcifying their hearts. Diet is like 70% of the equation.

That's "food for thought"! Correlating dietary habits to the study group and results would have been interesting, given the known correlation of diet and coronary artery disease.

Wisco_n_trouble wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

They did not find higher rates of heart disease, they found higher rates of calcification, which is not itself a problem but assumed to be correlated with heart disease, all else being equal. However, correlation does not imply causation and they did not find out whether high exercisers actually had higher rates of heart disease.

I am a runner that developed heart disease in my late 40s after 35 years of running so I'm obviously personally interested in this study. My wife works with one of the experts in this area of research. I'll get his take and post it. Appreciate the OP sharing and several other thoughtful takes in this thread .

Sorry to hear about your condition. Were you eating healthy foods? I know that I ate a lot of crap growing up, in college, and beyond. I've been better and better about healthy food choices in the past 15 years or so, but am really trying to step it up lately, as I'm 51 now. I've not developed any cardiac disease as far as I have been told based on physical checkups, although I did have an Echocardiogram done last winter when being worked up for some weird symptoms I was having (turned out to be non-cardiac), and I was told my ejection fraction was slightly low.

I echo your sentiments regarding the great posts this thread has generated.

I've been running since 1979 and I was pretty competitive in my 20s and 30s with prs ranging from 3.43 1500m to 49.20 for 10M. I''m almost 50 now, and for a few months out of the year I train just hard enough to run a mid 16 to 17 min 5k. I have never been a high-mileage type of runner and never ran marathons. And yet, I think I've run enough miles over the years to probably circumvent Planet Earth several times over. Where do I go from here? These studies are disheartening, to say the least. I feel like I'm getting calcified arteries just from reading or hearing about them.

doo doo study wrote:

I'm very hesitant of these studies for the simple fact that ironically the most unhealthy eaters i've ever met are runners/ endurance athletes. I'm part of a running club, most of that clubs gorges down on straight up TRASH food and drinks alcohol every weekend. I think most endurance athletes think "I can eat anything, i'm healthy!" fact is that they are still calcifying their hearts. Diet is like 70% of the equation.

Agree. I am actually surprised the most active don't have a much higher mortality given the s*** most runners eat and drink.

25-50 miles a week and a whole foods (not the store, actual foods) diet and you are golden.

Yep its way healthier to be obese like half our population. I know they had 3100ish participants but I bet this was another small sample size experiment where only a tiny number of participants did the high amount of exercise leading to one or two people skewing the results.

The fact that whites suffered higher risk at higher risk while blacks had no difference raises some questions for me. The New York post has a thing for publishing BS studies showing exercise is bad for you.

goats and bunnies wrote:

I've also studied particulate pollution and coronary artery disease; so these people exercising or working in manual labor jobs in a big city are going to have a risk of CVD strictly from the environment. So there is that variable too...

Some neighborhoods in our city are like living around a campfire. What's your take on wood stove, backyard firepit pollution and CVD? I go for a run and it's super smoky in places. Any thoughts on that?

runlongtime wrote:

I've been running since 1979 and I was pretty competitive in my 20s and 30s with prs ranging from 3.43 1500m to 49.20 for 10M. I''m almost 50 now, and for a few months out of the year I train just hard enough to run a mid 16 to 17 min 5k. I have never been a high-mileage type of runner and never ran marathons. And yet, I think I've run enough miles over the years to probably circumvent Planet Earth several times over. Where do I go from here? These studies are disheartening, to say the least. I feel like I'm getting calcified arteries just from reading or hearing about them.

I think youl be ok. These guys ran a little bit themselves and seemed to have led healthy lives

Roger Bannister -88 alive, healthy

John Landy-87 alive, healthy

Derek Ibbotson- deceased at 84 , cancer

Herb Elliot-79 alive, healthy

Michel Jazy- 81, healthy

Peter Snell- 79, healthy

Jim Ryun- 70, healthy

Filbert Bayi- 64, healthy

John Walker- 65, healthy

Steve Overr- 62, healthy

Sebastian Coe- 61, healthy

Steve Cram- 57, healthy

Noureddine Morceli- 47, healthy

Hicham El Guerroj- 43, healthy

Your numbers actually look quite good, except that A1C. The beauty of LCHF is it addresses diabetic issues even better than CHD. You should be able to dive under 6.0 pretty quickly with a well-formulated diet. I will leave you with some names to google for more info, they are all solid an in complete agreement.

Mark Sisson (Marksdailyapple.com)

Ted Naiman MD

Phil Maffetone (low-stress aerobic training)

Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek- wrote the "the" book on LCHF and athletics

Basically you need to learn to embrace animal-based fats (grass-fed preferably). Olive oil, coconut oil and avocado are the only healthy plant-derived sources, nuts are OK as a supplement, but industrial oils from seeds and grains are toxic, period. Very pro-inflammatory.

Also consider upping your salt intake to 6g or more of sodium/day, especially as you transition to LCHF. Low-sodium negatively triggers insulin, among a raft of other problems.

Basically all of the status quo on sodium, saturated fats, cholesterol, etc., has been proven wrong or at least misguided, but for most Americans, the Titanic is too cumbersome to steer away from the iceberg of diabetes, fatty liver, CHD, stroke, cancer and other metabolic diseases.

Ornish is a never-reproduced "study" which involved complete lifestyle control, didn't control for diet intervention. No one who is serious about long-term anti-inflammatory diet gives it any creedence whatsoever, other than it might be better than standard American diet (which is garbage).

Good luck on your journey and be prepared to have your life completely changed for the better if you put in the work up front.

Do yourselves a favor and watch the YouTube video at the bottom of page one of this post. It is from the former president of the American College of Sports Medicine, a cardiologist, and Amby Burfoot’s cardiologist (his case study starts at 22:46). A very informative presentation and probably better than trying to figure out the NYPost story or U of Illinois study.