Jessica Hickey Elliff sent me this link to an article by Edward M. Eveld in the Kansas City Star suggesting that extreme exercise might predispose ourselves to dangerous heart problems. “Have you heard this?” asks Elliff. “Im wondering if there are other predisposing factors that the study neglected to research.” In the Star Eveld quotes James O’Keefe, preventive cardiologist at St. Luke’s Hospital: “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.” The same? Okay, it’s a wash, but what is “extreme exercise?” Is extreme exercise running the length of Indiana (350 miles) in 10 days? Is extreme exercise running 6 marathons in 6 weeks to celebrate your 60th birthday, or running 7 marathons in 7 months to celebrate your 70th birthday? I am guilty of all three offenses to Common Sanity, yet I have outlived my father and mother, whose health habits were not as good as mine. Extreme behavior in my mind might be running ultramarathons without a proper base, or following a diet in a best-selling book that makes no sense other than to generate royalties for the author. Two friends of mine who were accomplished runners (one of them an Olympian) died of heart attacks while training for ultras, but both apparently were on low-fat diets that strayed away from the parameters of good nutrition. I have no proof that the cause was diet or too many miles, since there may have been pre-existing conditions that never got measured. Ultramarathoners represent a tiny percentage of the running population and those measured in the study quoted by Eveld are a tinier percentage still. We need to be cautious in our training habits, but also in our eating habits along with everything else we do. My training habits today are much, much different they were during the years when I was churning out 100-mile weeks trying to win marathons. We need to be aware of studies like this and learn from them, but not be trapped by them.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:30:28 +0000
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