A good friend of mine once said that people can only hear the information that supports their own belief systems. We see this all the time. It’s why there’s polarizing opinions when it comes to topics like politics, or the existence of a God. Regardless of the information, people will only hear what justifies the continuation of their own beliefs, even when the actual facts beg to differ.
I thought about this as I read the results of a recent study published by the British medical journal, “Heart”. This study was recently featured in articles within the Wall Street Journal and the Globe and Mail. The study suggests that people that run too fast, for too far, for too many decades, may find themselves running to their early and ultimate “finish line”.
My 87 year old father running in Greece
In the shadow of a national health crisis, where overweight and obese people represent the majority of the population, and citizens with chronic illnesses such as Diabetes, CODP, Cardiac Disease and various forms of Cancer are reaching epidemic proportions, I’m concerned that a health illiterate public will interpret the results of this study as an excuse NOT to exercise. They will read the headline in the paper that says, “One Running Shoe in the Grave”. As a result, this will fuel the belief system of many that if daily exercise isn’t good for runners, so why bother exercising at all.
In actual fact, the study involved 52,600 subjects that were followed for three (3) decades, but what was glossed over was the fact that the runners in this group had an overall 19% lower death rate than the non-runners, and within the running group only the runners that ran longer than 40kms/week and faster than 13km/hour lost their mortality advantage.
We’ve seen the impact of this kind of reporting from the past. A study from a few decades ago suggested drinking a glass of red wine a day is good for your heart health. Now we have a culture of social alcoholics who justify two to three drinks a day because it’s good for their heart health, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Let's be clear, alcohol should not be part of a person's health habbits.
We live in a world where people have limited attention spans and are bombarded with catchy buy lines and punchy sound bites; the headline of this running report should have read, “Long term study suggests that life-long runners enjoy a lower death rate than non-runners”. Just like the headline of the wine report should have said, “Study finds that consuming more than one drink a day for women and two for men, leads to negative health consequences”.
We now have a population that takes little to no interest in their personal health until they’re told by their doctor that they have a serious, possibly life threatening chronic disease and that's the moment they decide it's time to practice positive health practices. And the sad part is many of these situations are entirely preventable.
How are we supposed to motivate our children to be active and make healthy life choices when they watch their parents make poor choices? Media that report the findings of studies like this recent running study have a responsibility to be mindful of the role they play in the health of the public. Our hospitals and long term care facilities are full of people that got there because they were inactive and made poor lifelong health choices.
This study contains valuable information for a very small number of aging runners that push the performance envelope in their training and racing. These runners should consider the consequences of these findings and adjust their running programs accordingly.
Finally, I’d like to report that my father who is pictured above turns 88 next year and has been walk/joggng 8kms to 10kms every day, (or about 56+km a week) for years and only stopped racing marathons when he turned 79. While he stills enjoys excellent health, most of his friends and family that lived a sedentary life, are either ill, immobile, or dead. I guess he and the many seniors like him are the exceptions to this study.
Enjoy the Ride....Rob
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