Adam’s journal
I recently read an article that made me think about hanging up my running shoes. According to the story, new studies have found that long-term competitive running may damage the heart.
As someone who’s spent the better part of the last quarter-century training and racing competitively, this story made my heart skip a beat. Is it time for me to reconsider my exercise regimen?
Dr. Prescott prescribes
In situations like this, it’s tempting to invoke the ghost of Phidippides, the messenger of legend who supposedly ran from Marathon to Athens to proclaim the Greeks’ victory over the Persians, then keeled over. The idea that endurance exercise is dangerous is, it seems, as old as exercise itself.
Fast forward to modern exercise physiology. Yes, it is true that a pair of new studies found links between prolonged intense exercise and heart damage. But please don’t hang up your running shoes just yet.
In the first study, from The Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers compared groups of men who had trained and competed as runners or rowers throughout their lives with a group of healthy men over 50 who were not endurance athletes. In younger athletes and older nonathletes, they found nothing amiss in subjects’ hearts. But in the older athletes (either British national team members, Olympians or veterans of more than 100 marathons), half showed some heart muscle scarring.
Over time, this condition can worsen, potentially leading to irregular heart function and heart failure.
Scientists in a second project looked at the effects of intense daily exercise on lab rats. For three months, the equivalent of a decade for humans, they had young, healthy animals rats run hard workouts each day. At the conclusion of the regimen, which was supposed to approximate marathon training in humans, the scientists found scarring and structural changes in the rodents’ hearts.
In evaluating these studies, it’s important to remember that endurance exercise has a host of benefits that far outweigh its dangers. So for recreational athletes — which, here, are defined as those of us who don’t intend to run 100 marathons — the new findings present little to worry about.
Nevertheless, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. These studies suggest that this also holds true for exercise. So where to draw the line?
If your current exercise routine is serving you well, I see no reason to alter it. But the studies present one more reminder to remain vigilant. If you experience any problems that could be related to your heart — erratic heart rhythms, chest pain or tightness — visit a doctor.
But barring such issues, don’t let these studies deter you from exercising. We already have too many excuses to keep us on the couch.
