Strenuous running is bad for you?
The claims were made in a Danish study into the effects of running on health and mortality rates.
The study looked at 1,098 healthy joggers and 3,950 healthy non-joggers. It concluded: “Light and moderate joggers have lower mortality than sedentary non-joggers, whereas strenuous joggers have a mortality rate not statistically different from that of the sedentary group.”
This led to a series of headlines, including one by the BBC, which read: ‘Too much jogging “as bad as no exercise at all’”.
However, the NHS has suggested something quite different. “The results of the new Danish study, on which this headline is based, are not as clear cut as the media has made out.
“A major limitation to this study was that once the joggers were split into groups by duration, frequency, and pace, some individual groups – particularly the most active groups – were much smaller. These small numbers mean the analyses are less able to detect differences between these small groups and the sedentary group, even if they do exist.”
The NHS added: “Too much of anything is bad for you. That is what ‘too much’ means; a quantity that is so excessive it poses a threat to wellbeing.
“A more useful statement would be explaining how much is too much, but unfortunately this study cannot conclusively provide this information.”
I’m sure the likes of Ron Hill would strongly disagree as he has been running everyday for the last 50 years.
To see the NHS’s article in full, see here.
