Running won't kill ya...

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MrBond
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Running won't kill ya...

Postby MrBond » Fri Feb 06, 2015 11:43 am

"You're in over your head Donny..."

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Dstew » Fri Feb 06, 2015 2:28 pm

If one thinks about it, a runners and vehicles are not that different. A light sports car such as Ian may can easily handle and may even need to go out and do 100 mph on a regular basis. A older, heavier diesel truck tries the same thing, the engine is going to burn out. And even then, there is always the exception and always the "lemon".

For me, I ran too hard, too long and did that too often because at the time I was willing to sacrifice long term goals for short term success. Eventually it caught up to me and I was forced to take a year off but if I had to do it all over again, I would not have changed a thing. In five years I have a stroke and a doctor says that I damaged my heart in some way during that period that contributed or lead to that event but my guess is one will never know. And I consider myself very fortunate that for lack of a better word, my central governor will shut me down before I start to do real and lasting damage to myself or at least I hope it is.


Or it put this another way, the studies are merely confirming the obvious that for some, push too hard for too long and bad things will happen whether it be a heart attack or stroke or some orthopedic issue. On the other hand, how much is too much for a specific individual and not only does not seem to be any objective measure of that, so few people probably fall into that category that does it really even matter? And related to my own experience and from what I had heard or read for others, my guess is at least 95% if not higher will have their body break down in less then a catastrophic way when they have done too much. Such as my right hip is likely going to flare up and hurt enough that I am going to slow down and run less then before it totally collapses and I need a new hip.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Jwolf » Fri Feb 06, 2015 4:00 pm

The point is that the "study" that was reported in the popular media last week doesn't show anything because the sample sizes were way too low to draw any meaningful conclusions. But of course what made headlines is "Running too much is bad for you."

Make whatever decisions about your own life and running that you want, but you cannot extrapolate from your own personal small sample size or a study like this that running "too much" is as bad for you as being sedentary.

Here's Alex Hutchinson's take:

http://www.runnersworld.com/health/the- ... g-too-much
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Dstew » Fri Feb 06, 2015 4:19 pm

Jwolf wrote:
Make whatever decisions about your own life and running that you want, but you cannot extrapolate from your own personal small sample size or a study like this that running "too much" is as bad for you as being sedentary.




A study, personal experience is not required to understand and appreciate that too much of anything is going to be bad. Tiger Woods right now has played too much golf. There is tennis elbow, Tommy John Surgery and so too much is too much. So I do not understand the reluctance for runner's to accept that. There is the Canadian study that found running a marathon may mean the transitory heart "damage" following a marathon may not be so transitory if one is under trained. That running a large number of marathons over time can and does change the cardiovascular and in ultras, the immune system in ways that are both good and bad. I agree it is too bad the way newspapers report these sort of studies and do not add, running is better then being completely sedentary and our best guess as to the safe guidelines are this but you may be able to do more or you maybe you should do less but that in turn does not make for a good headline. There should also be some perspective in that in Canada, there are millions of people who should be doing something, anything and the number who are over doing it are likely in the hundreds and even then, most of them have nothing to worry about.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Jwolf » Fri Feb 06, 2015 4:31 pm

Dstew wrote:
Jwolf wrote:
Make whatever decisions about your own life and running that you want, but you cannot extrapolate from your own personal small sample size or a study like this that running "too much" is as bad for you as being sedentary.




A study, personal experience is not required to understand and appreciate that too much of anything is going to be bad. Tiger Woods right now has played too much golf. There is tennis elbow, Tommy John Surgery and so too much is too much. So I do not understand the reluctance for runner's to accept that.


I'm not comparing to professional athletes, but regular people who know that daily exercise is good for their mental and physical health.

Sure there are people that overdo it, but I won't read an study like this and come to the conclusion that running more than 3 times per week or for more than 4 hours per week is overdoing it. Which is what the data is supposedly showing (not).

The only thing these articles (the original ones - like this one http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science ... -find.html) will do will DISCOURAGE people from healthy activity. "See-- I knew too much running was bad for you. I might as well just sit and watch TV."
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby jonovision_man » Sat Feb 07, 2015 11:07 am

I know we love to write-off things that don't jive with our personal habits and notions, but it's hardly the only study with this finding.

There was this study which looked at 52,000 people and found the same thing:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/765209

I'm inclined to believe that there is a point where "too much of a good thing" kicks in.

Also I agree the media is irresponsible in how they report these studies. The real headline should be "moderate running associated with 19% decrease in mortality".

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Jwolf » Wed Apr 08, 2015 8:59 pm

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby ian » Wed Apr 08, 2015 9:48 pm

Jwolf wrote:And here's this...

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32160231

Good thing the lead author recanted because it turns out that their threshold for "strenuous" jogging is 7 mph, or about 5:20/K, which would have meant that I was doomed to an early death due to an unknown cause.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Dstew » Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:30 pm

ian wrote:
Jwolf wrote:And here's this...

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32160231

Good thing the lead author recanted because it turns out that their threshold for "strenuous" jogging is 7 mph, or about 5:20/K, which would have meant that I was doomed to an early death due to an unknown cause.


For the vast majority of people, the current weekly recommended amounts of activity is overwhelming and so this study actually shows that doing as little as 2 days of activity per week can reap benefits and may even set some up on the path to even better and healthier activity choices. Instead, you and the running intelligentsia seem to be focused on justifying a life style choice that no study would ever discourage anyone who made that choice. Roughly 500,000 run a marathon every year. Roughly 20% of them run at a 5:20 or faster pace. As the study was over a 10 year period reduce that number by 90 - 95% for how many people can do that on a consistent basis over 10 years? And of that number, at worst case, sky is falling assumption, 5% of them may "die" prematurely. Reduce that down for other mortality causes and over a ten year period in the United States, maybe 1,000 people may die for doing too much running. This is as many people who will be killed by icicles in Russia over the same amount of time and less then one sixth of the number of people who die from Autoerotic asphyxiation over the same amount of time. So I am befuddled and perplexed by the passion in attempting to discredit this study that running world intelligentsia has engaged in whereas would it not make infinitely more sense to tout and promote the good findings that a healthy lifestyle can literally start with just a few steps.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby ian » Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:00 am

Dstew wrote:… Instead, you and the running intelligentsia seem to be focused on justifying a life style choice that no study would ever discourage anyone who made that choice... So I am befuddled and perplexed by the passion in attempting to discredit this study that running world intelligentsia

I have a low tolerance for sloppy thinking by those who should know better. This study, as well as the similar ones by O'Keefe, was making claims that the data did not support.

… would it not make infinitely more sense to tout and promote the good findings that a healthy lifestyle can literally start with just a few steps.

I agree, but unfortunately, that's the opposite of the "running will kill you" message that the media has repeatedly been using as their lede when reporting studies like this.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Mark.AU » Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:13 am

ian wrote:
Dstew wrote:… Instead, you and the running intelligentsia seem to be focused on justifying a life style choice that no study would ever discourage anyone who made that choice... So I am befuddled and perplexed by the passion in attempting to discredit this study that running world intelligentsia

I have a low tolerance for sloppy thinking by those who should know better. This study, as well as the similar ones by O'Keefe, was making claims that the data did not support.

I rather think it's worse than that; less sloppy thinking than deliberate sensationalizing to gain attention and therefore notoriety (and further funding opportunities). This then snapped up by a media machine hungry for buzzworthy stories to sell to a low-information public.
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Running won't kill ya...

Postby Jwolf » Thu Apr 09, 2015 9:11 am

Dstew wrote:So I am befuddled and perplexed by the passion in attempting to discredit this study that running world intelligentsia has engaged in whereas would it not make infinitely more sense to tout and promote the good findings that a healthy lifestyle can literally start with just a few steps.


This is exactly why these studies and headlines bothered me. Instead of promoting exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle, they lead people to worry that they would be doing "too much". And if "too much" is just as bad as nothing, then why take the risk? It's easier to just do nothing.

Yes, the sensational headlines are click-bait , but most people still don't get too much past them. So the bottom line message they get is "running can kill you" and that it's better to just do nothing. But headlines that say "a little exercise goes a long way" or "a small amount of exercise is better than no exercise" don't get enough eyes or clicks.
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby jonovision_man » Thu Apr 09, 2015 1:46 pm

Jwolf wrote:
Dstew wrote:So I am befuddled and perplexed by the passion in attempting to discredit this study that running world intelligentsia has engaged in whereas would it not make infinitely more sense to tout and promote the good findings that a healthy lifestyle can literally start with just a few steps.


This is exactly why these studies and headlines bothered me. Instead of promoting exercise as part of a healthy lifestyle, they lead people to worry that they would be doing "too much". And if "too much" is just as bad as nothing, then why take the risk? It's easier to just do nothing.

Yes, the sensational headlines are click-bait , but most people still don't get too much past them. So the bottom line message they get is "running can kill you" and that it's better to just do nothing. But headlines that say "a little exercise goes a long way" or "a small amount of exercise is better than no exercise" don't get enough eyes or clicks.


It's really not the fault of studies - they present information, conclusions, and all of the relevant data. If you look at the actual study, the title was "Dose of Jogging and Long-Term Mortality" - not sensational at all. And the conclusion was:
Conclusions The findings suggest a U-shaped association between all-cause mortality and dose of jogging as calibrated by pace, quantity, and frequency of jogging. Light and moderate joggers have lower mortality than sedentary nonjoggers, whereas strenuous joggers have a mortality rate not statistically different from that of the sedentary group.


The media is the one that ran with the negative aspect of the story (strenuous joggers are just like us lazy people!) rather than the positive (light/moderate jogging linked to lower mortality). They do this all the time - whether it's a study about how good alcohol is for your heart (screw your liver or the increased cancer risk!) or your cup of morning coffee... they go too far with the conclusions in their headlines, either because they're ignorant of science or because they just want the eyeballs and clicks.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby La » Thu Apr 09, 2015 2:10 pm

People generally just want confirmation that what they're doing is "right" and considering the fact that the masses aren't high-intensity/volume runners, they all just got what they wanted, which was validation.
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby jonovision_man » Thu Apr 09, 2015 3:18 pm

La wrote:People generally just want confirmation that what they're doing is "right" and considering the fact that the masses aren't high-intensity/volume runners, they all just got what they wanted, which was validation.


Sure, and runners do the same, which is dismiss anything that goes against what we're doing. Confirmation bias - people tend to buy into studies that conform to what they already think, and scrutinize/dismiss those that don't.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby ultraslacker » Thu Apr 09, 2015 11:45 pm

that's why I ignore all the studies and do what feels good! :)
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby RobW » Fri Apr 10, 2015 12:59 am

ultraslacker wrote:that's why I ignore all the studies and do what feels good! :)

+1

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby Double Bellybuster » Mon Apr 13, 2015 10:50 am

This whole discussion makes me want to put on my track pants and jog strenuously. Living on the edge!
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby La » Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:20 am

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/well/20 ... &referrer=
But if someone engaged in even occasional vigorous exercise, he or she gained a small but not unimportant additional reduction in mortality. Those who spent up to 30 percent of their weekly exercise time in vigorous activities were 9 percent less likely to die prematurely than people who exercised for the same amount of time but always moderately, while those who spent more than 30 percent of their exercise time in strenuous activities gained an extra 13 percent reduction in early mortality, compared with people who never broke much of a sweat. The researchers did not note any increase in mortality, even among those few people completing the largest amounts of intense exercise.
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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby ian » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:43 am

This is a very well-written article: the introduction frames the issue and describes the range of possible hypotheses. Then the studies are lucidly summarized, with additional attention given to their limitations. I'd like to see all reporting on science and medicine done at this level.

As for the studies themselves, they both have huge numbers of participants which will preserve statistical significance within the subdivided classes. Also, no attempt has been made to isolate the specific benefits of exercise (by trying to account for other factors which are known to reduce mortality), thereby removing the contentious "U-curve" and replacing it with a plateau of diminishing returns. This allows all sorts of conjectures about possible chains of causation (e.g., being in good health may make an individual more likely to want to exercise, rather than the other way around) as well as the relative importance of various lifestyle choices (e.g., quitting smoking vs. losing weight vs. exercise). That's a "healthy debate" to have.

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Re: Running won't kill ya...

Postby La » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:49 am

ian wrote:This is a very well-written article: the introduction frames the issue and describes the range of possible hypotheses. Then the studies are lucidly summarized, with additional attention given to their limitations. I'd like to see all reporting on science and medicine done at this level.

I thought so, too. I got the link from a tweet by Andre Picard, who writes on health topics for the Globe.
ian wrote:This allows all sorts of conjectures about possible chains of causation (e.g., being in good health may make an individual more likely to want to exercise, rather than the other way around) as well as the relative importance of various lifestyle choices (e.g., quitting smoking vs. losing weight vs. exercise).

In some obesity research, they already look at that question: Does lack of exercise cause obesity, or does obesity cause lack of exercise?
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