Too Much Exercise May Not Be Better Than a Sedentary Lifestyle

jones_supa writes: The importance of exercise has been arriving in spades for geek culture. However, when approaching extremes, a point is reached where vigorous jogging erodes some of the benefits light jogging has over a sedentary lifestyle. "Long-term excessive exercise may be associated with coronary artery calcification, diastolic dysfunction and large artery wall stiffening," wrote lead author Peter Schnohr of Copenhagen's Frederiksberg Hospital in a Danish study (abstract). Although previous research has found that physically active people have at least a 30% lower risk of death compared with inactive people, the ideal amount of exercise remains somewhat uncertain. In this study, strenuous joggers — people who ran faster than 11 km/h for more than 4 hours a week; or who ran faster than 11 km/h for more than 2.5 hours a week with a frequency of more than three times a week — had a mortality rate that is not statistically different from that of the sedentary group. Medical journalist Larry Husten notes that this study, while interesting, should not be taken as the final word on the subject.

Comments

The biggest failure of science:

[netsavior]

Everything ever about diet and exercise.

I guess we need to rehash this?

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[blue9steel]

Being obese is really bad for you, previously they showed that exercising was better than being fat. The new study just shows that lots of jogging in particular isn't necessarily better than being sedentary but normal sized. When you dig into the latest research this is obvious because steady state cardio with durations over 30 minutes and greater than 50% VO2 Max produces an unfavorable free testosterone to cortisol ratio. Exercise is still better than no exercise, just now we have yet another confirmation that some types are better than others. In this case, either do HIIT, keep your jogging under 30 minutes per session or substitute long walks instead. (assuming you want to stick with the same basic modality)

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[Lumpy]

Runners High... It's like Heroin. They are no different than junkies.

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[envelope]

You'd probably like it better if you didn't do it on a treadmill. Get outside! It's much more enjoyable than a treadmill.

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[Jeremi]

Runners High... It's like Heroin. They are no different than junkies.

They don't steal your television to fund their habit, so that's one difference.

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[YrWrstNtmr]

Have you seen the price of running shoes?

Re:The biggest failure of science:

[jgtg32a]

It's February

Jogging sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Lift weights

Re:Jogging sucks

[Jeremi]

Lift weights

Lifting weights is incredibly boring. Ride your bike :)

Re:Jogging sucks

[Dogtanian]

Lifting weights is incredibly boring. Ride your bike :)

Jaws was never your scene, and you don't like Star Wars then?

Ummm .... duh?

[gstoddart]

Who hasn't seen some of these joggers who do it obsessively?

I've seen a bunch of people who look skinny and emaciated from being jogging freaks. At a certain point you look like you're ill -- and quite disturbingly so.

Hell, back when I used to go to the gym there used to be one lady on the treadmill ... she stayed on it for hours, and essentially looked terrible to the point it looked like she could probably use some therapy ... she looked anorexic.

That's not healthy, that's obsessive.

Holy shit

[OrangeTide]

You mean there is nothing I can do to live forever?!

Re:Holy shit

[Lumpy]

Yes, drink massive amounts of coffee.

Coffee makes you live forever.

Too much

[Anonymous Coward]

Too Much Exercise May Not Be Better Than a Sedentary Lifestyle

Too Much

Well, that seems true by definition.

Obviously

[Kohlrabi82]

To quote Stephen Fry:

"Of course 'too much' bad for you. 'Too much' of anything is bad for you, you blithering twat. That's what 'too much' means. 'Too much' water would be bad for you. Obviously 'too much' is precisely that quantity which is excessive. That's what it means. Jesus!"

Re:Moderation

[Tyler Durden]

"Is it true that you smoke eight to ten cigars a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you drink five martinis a day?"
"That's true."
"Is it true that you still surround yourself with beautiful young women?"
"That's true."
"What does your doctor say about all of this?"
"My doctor is dead."

- An interview with George Burns

Re:I'll save science billions of dollars in resear

[boristdog]

Exactly. My father was a big jogger in the 1970's and 1980's. He ran 5 to 10 miles almost every day.

Around age 68 he had to get a knee replaced. At 73 he had the other knee replaced. The doctors told him that pretty much anyone who jogged that much has to get new knees. Now he still has trouble walking long distances, which sucks for him since he lives in the mountains and loves to hike.

My father has advised me against jogging more than a couple miles twice a week.

Re:I'll save science billions of dollars in resear

[Anonymous Coward]

The doctors told him that pretty much anyone who jogged that much has to get new knees.

Running is a complex biomechanical activity. Most people I see running are not running with biomechanically-correct form. This probably stems from lack of knowledge of how to run correctly, lack of core strength to run correctly, shoes that do not fit their physiology and personal running form, etc., etc.

Since most people run with poor form, it's not a surprise that most people that jog require knee replacements.

Running, when done correctly, produces minimal stress on knee joints, even at 10+ mph.

Internet hyperbolic echo chamber strikes again...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

2) Measure things until one of the outcomes reaches "statistical significance".

Look at the small number of participants shown in the original data here, and the conclusion that is being echoed all over the Internet seems dramatically overstated. The original authors acknowledged this and called for further research, as did the editorial accompanying publication, but of course that hardly gets mentioned in all the Internet echo chamber "don't do too much exercise, you might just as well slob around on the sofa" rhetoric.

I can't find a publicly available primary source to cite, but it looks like only a little over a hundred "strenuous" joggers were included in the study, and of those only two actually died. The remaining ones could go jog their normal route and still not travel the length of the error bars here.

Running = too much stress

[DogDude]

I've always thought that running and jogging was too jarring to joints and such. I stay in great shape by *walking* ~5-6 miles a day, but I wouldn't run. Walking (fast) provides the same benefit as running, but without the joint wear and tear, and of course, it takes about twice as long.

Re:Internet hyperbolic echo chamber strikes again.

[Albanach]

The Forbes article linked in the summary is telling:

They point out several very important weaknesses in the study. First there is the general issue that this is just an observational study. There are a multitude of differences between the different groups in the study, and it is impossible to know with any certainty whether the jogging dose had any important causal relationship with the deaths that occurred in the study. Of course the researchers attempted to correct for many of the known differences but this is a highly imperfect science at best. And this was not a best case scenario. The mean age of the non-joggers in the study was 61.3 years while the mean age of all the joggers in the study ranged from the late 30s to the mid 40s. So this isn’t just comparing apples and oranges, it’s comparing a young juicy apple with a shriveled old lemon.

But even if it were possible to compare the groups and adjust for the differences there would still be another insuperable problem. The study simply had no statistical power to detect differences between the jogging groups. Although there were 128 deaths among the 413 non-joggers there were only 17 deaths in all the 1,098 joggers, including only 2 deaths among the 36 strenuous joggers. The authors calculated that those 2 deaths represented a two-fold increase in risk for the strenuous joggers compared to the non-joggers, but the enormous confidence interval, ranging from less than half the risk to an 8-fold increase, illustrates the futility of obtaining any sort of reasonable estimate of risk based on so few data points.

So...

[sootman]

So... "everything in moderation"? Just like... everything else? Got it.

It's all about the shoes.

[dfenstrate]

The doctors told him that pretty much anyone who jogged that much has to get new knees.

Running is a complex biomechanical activity. Most people I see running are not running with biomechanically-correct form. This probably stems from lack of knowledge of how to run correctly, lack of core strength to run correctly, shoes that do not fit their physiology and personal running form, etc., etc.

Since most people run with poor form, it's not a surprise that most people that jog require knee replacements.

Running, when done correctly, produces minimal stress on knee joints, even at 10+ mph.

Modern padded running shoes promote bad form, causing knee and other injuries, and prevent your feet from strengthening, causing planar fascitis and a few other maladies. Your foot is actually well constructed to run, but it can't do it's job wrapped in a ton of leather and foam.

I've had some success with minimalist running shoes (abrasion protection only, no padding, sole is about 1/8" thick)- it's important to enable your feet to strengthen. After a few weeks of walking around in thin shoes, I started running again and it felt like I had new feet- it was awesome.
Wearing thin shoes forces you to land on your forefoot, allowing your very complicated foot to absorb shock like it's supposed to. Wearing thick-soled shoes allows you to land on your heel, and that force is transmitted straight up to your knee. The padding prevents immediate pain but the shock goes through nonetheless.

There's a great book on running, called "Born to Run", that discusses this and many other aspects of running. I highly recommend the book.