9 years ago
2
When it comes to jogging, less is more, study argues
Hey, fitness junkies, here's something to ponder the next time you lace up your athletic shoes for that long, heart-pounding run: A Danish study recently concluded that high-intensity, high-mileage joggers die at the same rate as channel-surfing couch potatoes. The study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, is the latest to confront the controversial topic of what constitutes too much exercise.
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http://www.latimes.com
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Okay, running tribe-rs, you can call me out on this - in fact, please do! - but I get extremely skeptical of articles like this one that trash distance running without going into detail about what the study was actually measuring. It reminds me of this article: http://www.thinkingnutrition.com.au/broccoli-is-bad-for-you/ I've got no doubt that there are certain health and injury risks associated with being an endurance athlete, but equating a hardcore adventure race to a couch potato seems like a bit much.
Having said that, I obviously have a strong bias toward running hard and long distances, so I'm hardly an expert. Does anybody have an anecdotal stories or other studies that support this?
Here's an article describing a different study, published in the same journal as the one linked, indicating that higher-volume running (more than 3 hours per week) provides the same benefits as low-volume jogging: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/acoc-rrr072414.php
The two studies used different data sets, so there may be some population differences.
After some digging, here are the actual papers on the Journal of the American College of Cardiology's website:
Copenhagen study
Study behind the article I linked
Both considered all-cause mortality.