Intense workout regimens could potentially increase longevity while promoting heart health

Although it has been suggested that excessive exercise can damage our health, researchers have found that people who can run a mile in less than 4 minutes generally live several years longer than would otherwise be expected. I discovered that I live longer.

Regular exercise is important for heart health, but However, excessive strenuous activity is associated with adverse cardiac outcomes.

“During highly intensive or long-term endurance exercise, such as running or cycling, several proteins are released that may indicate damage to the heart,” he says. stephen fawkes at the University of Alberta, Canada.

To learn more about the effects of exercise, Foulkes and his colleagues looked at the lifespans of the first 200 athletes recorded to run a mile in less than four minutes.

All players were male, born between 1928 and 1955. Among them was British neurologist and athlete Roger Bannister, who became the first person in the world to run a sub-4 minute mile 70 years ago this week.

Sixty of the runners had died by December 2023, with an average life expectancy of 73 years. The surviving runners were on average 77 years old.

Considering when and where each athlete was born, the researchers calculated that sub-4 minute milers lived an average of 4.7 years longer than the general population.

Specifically, people who first ran a mile in less than 4 minutes in the 1950s lived more than 9 years longer than the general population, and people who achieved this feat in the 1960s and 1970s lived 5.5 years and 3 years longer, respectively. did.

That may be because the general population has become healthier over time, team members say. mark hajkowskialso at the University of Alberta.

The findings suggest that extreme exercise may not be as harmful as previously thought. “These athletes have built very high capacity systems in their hearts, lungs, blood vessels, muscles, and immune systems, so they may be able to recover very well from the normal stresses of daily life,” Foulkes said. says.

but Theis Eisfogels Researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands say these results alone do not refute the “extreme exercise hypothesis,” or the idea that long-term, high-intensity exercise can have negative effects on the heart. ing.

“They tested whether the risk of death in very healthy people was different compared to the general population,” he says, but found that people with less extreme exercise habits had different or even better results. there is a possibility.