When it comes to longevity, it’s a sprint, not a marathon.
And yes, you read that correctly.
A new study found that people who ran a mile in less than four minutes lived five years longer than their peers.
This goes against what many scientists currently think about extreme exercise, Steve Foulkes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta, told DailyMail.com.
Sir Roger Bannister was the first person to run a mile in under four minutes in 1954. He died in 2018, aged 88.
Sir Bannister, pictured here aged 75, posing with the stopwatch that measured his mile record.
Their theory is that the tremendous stress that extreme athletes put on their bodies can cause heart problems and lead to earlier death, Dr Foulkes told DailyMail.com.
Your results were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
Only a few thousand people in the world have recorded a time that fast, but researchers said this is evidence that any form of exercise you want to do can be beneficial for your body.
A lot of emphasis has been placed on slow and steady exercise, as evidenced by the 10,000 steps a day camp. But Foulke’s research shows that extreme exercise can be even more beneficial for our bodies.
“The beauty of exercise is that it’s stressful, but it’s stress that our body is really designed to cope with, adapt to, and get stronger,” he said.
We can see this by looking back in history. Sir Roger Bannister became the first known person to run a mile in under four minutes in May 1954.
Since then, another 1,754 men have crossed that same border, according to the Sub-4 Chronicle, which was the database used in the study. Most of the runners come from the United States, Great Britain and Kenya.
Researchers looked at 200 of the record-breaking sub-four-minute runners between 1954 and 1974 so they could see how these miracle athletes fared as they aged. 30 percent of the men had died when the study began.
But overall, the researchers found that the runners lived on average four years and eight months longer than people their age who did not complete less than four miles.
This is probably because extreme athletes get some of the same benefits from exercise as normal people, Dr. Foulkes said.
Running can help lubricate blood flow, keep your heart strong, support your immune system in the fight against cancer, and help you avoid lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity.
People who ran less than four miles lived on average 4 years and eight months longer than the average population.
To be able to run below four, athletes probably had to train between nine and 12 hours per week, the authors wrote.
Although exercise recommendations vary widely, the CDC prescribes about one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous cardiovascular exercise per week.
Therefore, it is safe to say that these men exercised more than the average citizen.
In these extreme exercise conditions, some science points to side effects.
For one thing, research has shown that right after an extreme exercise session, people’s hearts release signs of oxygen deprivation and damage, Dr. Foulkes said.
‘When we look very closely at someone after exercise, we can see some things that look scary. But that’s because exercise is something intense,” she explained, saying that exercise is something intense that our body can adapt to.
On the other hand, Dr. Foulkes cited a very influential 2013 study which analyzed how 17,000 Danes aged. Danish researchers found that people who did regular, gentle jogging lived about five years longer than other members of the cohort.
But the small group of people who had intense running routines had about the same life expectancy as people who didn’t exercise at all.
This, Dr. Foulkes said, suggests there might be an ideal exercise zone. This is called the U-shaped exercise hypothesis: if you do too much or too little, you will die sooner than if you do a moderate amount.
Later research explained these differences by showing that exercising too much could stress the heart and circulatory system, according to Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist at the University of Queensland School of Medicine, and his colleagues. wrote in 2020 review.
However, Dr. Foulkes said, the U-shaped exercise hypothesis is unproven. Articles like yours add to the growing doubt that people who dedicate their lives to extreme sports are harmed by them.
A massive 2022 study published in Circulation magazine found that people who exercised more than recommended had a 38 percent lower risk of developing heart disease.
One thing that all articles, no matter where they fall on the U-shaped hypothesis, agree with is that everyone can benefit from some exercise. And you don’t have to be able to run a mile in less than four minutes to get the benefits of exercise, Dr. Foulkes said.
Regular, moderate movement is enough, he said.
Dr. Foulkes said exercise is “really, you know, a type of medication that consists of several pills, so to speak.” You know, they always say that if you could turn exercise into a pill, it would be the best-selling medicine or drug on the market.