People who can run a mile in less than 4 minutes generally live almost five years longer than would otherwise be expected, challenging the idea that too much strenuous exercise is bad for the heart
By Chen Ly
9 May 2024
Running is generally associated with good health outcomes
Ian Forsyth/Getty Images
It has been suggested that too much extreme exercise can be damaging to our health, but researchers have now found that people who can run a mile in less than 4 minutes generally live several years longer than would otherwise be expected.
Regular exercise is important for heart health, but too much strenuous activity has been linked to harmful cardiac outcomes.
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“During really intensive or prolonged bouts of endurance exercise like running or cycling, some proteins are released that suggest injury may have happened to the heart,” says Stephen Foulkes at the University of Alberta in Canada.
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To learn more about the effects of exercise, Foulkes and his colleagues looked at the lifespans of the first 200 athletes who were recorded running a mile (1.6 kilometres) in less than 4 minutes.
The athletes were all men born between 1928 and 1955. They included British neurologist and athlete Roger Bannister, the first person in the world to be recorded running a sub-4-minute mile, 70 years ago this week.
Sixty of the runners had died by December 2023, with an average lifespan of 73. The surviving runners were 77 years old, on average.