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Excessive Endurance Exercise and Heart Damage
As reported in the Kansas City Star, If running 15 miles a week is heart healthy, running 45 miles a week gives you a cardiovascular system three times as clean and strong, right?
A new study sounds a serious alarm about such thinking, adding to a growing body of research on the topic of excessive endurance exercise.
You've heard of the runner's high. Researchers now want you to hear about runner's plaque - coronary artery plaque.
In short: Running super-long distances for many years might backfire on you.
Years of extreme exercise efforts appear to erase some benefits you get from moderate exercise, so that your risk of heart disease, of dying of coronary disease, is the same as a sedentary person, said James O'Keefe, preventive cardiologist at St. Luke‘s Hospital.
O‘Keefe said the study found that men who were marathon runners for 25 years had 62 percent more plaque buildup in their coronary arteries than men who were sedentary but were similar to the runners in other respects, including age.
And the increased quantity of plaque in the marathoners‘ arteries included both hard, or calcified, plaque and the more dangerous soft, fatty plaque. The latter is the kind that can be predisposed to rupture and cause a heart attack.‘
Click to read the full article.
The original scientific article from The Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association, which forms the basis of the KC Star report can be found at this link.
The Missouri Medicine journal makes this important point:
Intense exercise generates large quantities of free radicals that outstrip the buffering capacity of the system after approximately one hour of vigorous continuous exercise, leaving these individuals susceptible to oxidative stress, atherogenic modification of cholesterol particles, and endothelial dysfunction.
As such, one hour should be considered the upper limit for an intense exercise session. Going over one hour could be compared somewhat to gunning your car engine into the red zone.
The study lists this caveat: This was a single-center observational study, based on recruitment from known runners who chose to participate. However, a study that randomly assigned individuals to either run marathons for 25 years or be sedentary for 25 years is practically impossible, and will never be done. Thus, a cause and effect relationship between marathon running and accelerated coronary plaque development cannot be established. Nonetheless, multicenter studies comparing coronary plaque volume in larger numbers of marathoners and matched sedentary control subjects would be of great interest.
The study's stated conclusion: Long-term training for and competing in marathons may in men be paradoxically associated with accelerated coronary artery plaque formation.
The study agrees with the basic philosophy of LiftforHealth.com. Exercise should be short, reasonably intense, and performed frequently throughout the week. Exercise that is too intense such as extreme long-distance running does more harm than good. As the study shows, it likely causes damage to the heart and arteries. Even brief exercise that is too intense, such as extreme power lifting, can damage tendons, ligaments, and, in some cases, internal organs. Exercise should be hard and challenging, but not to the point of being destructive.
The whole point of exercise is to make you healthier. Exercise done right (which includes strength training) can increase both your lifespan and healthspan. The right dosage of exercise prevents premature aging, protects the heart and the brain, and preserves the integrity of the musculoskeletal system.
A new study sounds a serious alarm about such thinking, adding to a growing body of research on the topic of excessive endurance exercise.
You've heard of the runner's high. Researchers now want you to hear about runner's plaque - coronary artery plaque.
In short: Running super-long distances for many years might backfire on you.
Years of extreme exercise efforts appear to erase some benefits you get from moderate exercise, so that your risk of heart disease, of dying of coronary disease, is the same as a sedentary person, said James O'Keefe, preventive cardiologist at St. Luke‘s Hospital.
O‘Keefe said the study found that men who were marathon runners for 25 years had 62 percent more plaque buildup in their coronary arteries than men who were sedentary but were similar to the runners in other respects, including age.
And the increased quantity of plaque in the marathoners‘ arteries included both hard, or calcified, plaque and the more dangerous soft, fatty plaque. The latter is the kind that can be predisposed to rupture and cause a heart attack.‘
Click to read the full article.
The original scientific article from The Journal of the Missouri State Medical Association, which forms the basis of the KC Star report can be found at this link.
The Missouri Medicine journal makes this important point:
Intense exercise generates large quantities of free radicals that outstrip the buffering capacity of the system after approximately one hour of vigorous continuous exercise, leaving these individuals susceptible to oxidative stress, atherogenic modification of cholesterol particles, and endothelial dysfunction.
As such, one hour should be considered the upper limit for an intense exercise session. Going over one hour could be compared somewhat to gunning your car engine into the red zone.
The study lists this caveat: This was a single-center observational study, based on recruitment from known runners who chose to participate. However, a study that randomly assigned individuals to either run marathons for 25 years or be sedentary for 25 years is practically impossible, and will never be done. Thus, a cause and effect relationship between marathon running and accelerated coronary plaque development cannot be established. Nonetheless, multicenter studies comparing coronary plaque volume in larger numbers of marathoners and matched sedentary control subjects would be of great interest.
The study's stated conclusion: Long-term training for and competing in marathons may in men be paradoxically associated with accelerated coronary artery plaque formation.
The study agrees with the basic philosophy of LiftforHealth.com. Exercise should be short, reasonably intense, and performed frequently throughout the week. Exercise that is too intense such as extreme long-distance running does more harm than good. As the study shows, it likely causes damage to the heart and arteries. Even brief exercise that is too intense, such as extreme power lifting, can damage tendons, ligaments, and, in some cases, internal organs. Exercise should be hard and challenging, but not to the point of being destructive.
The whole point of exercise is to make you healthier. Exercise done right (which includes strength training) can increase both your lifespan and healthspan. The right dosage of exercise prevents premature aging, protects the heart and the brain, and preserves the integrity of the musculoskeletal system.
* posted by Robert on Tue, Apr 08, 2014
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Aulus Cornelius Celsus
Exercise, because the body is weakened by inactivity while it is strengthened by activity, the first produces premature old age, the latter prolongs youth.