Easy running best choice for long life

While running is a great way to keep healthy, a new look at the Copenhagen City Heart Study has found that too much of it at high intensities may may actually be detrimental to your health.

The new study, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, found that the best route to a long, healthy life seems to be a moderate amount of easy running. High intensity runners were those who ran regularly at a pace quicker than 5:20 per kilometre pace and had a notably higher rate or mortality than those who ran slower. They even had a higher mortality rate than those who didn’t run but were otherwise healthy.

“If your goal is to decrease risk of death and improve life expectancy, jogging a few times a week at a moderate pace is a good strategy,” lead author Peter Schnohr said in a press release. “Anything more is not just unnecessary, it may be harmful.”

Still, not all researchers are convinced. Some are slow to jump on the data and believe more research is needed.

“I’m far from convinced based on data from this paper and other papers that there’s an actual increase in cardiovascular risk with higher levels of physical activity,” cardiologist and professor of medicine at the University of Michigan David Bach told Bloomberg, talking about the study. “If this paper showed what it pretends to show – that running four hours a week is potentially detrimental – that is putting a very low lid on what is acceptable.”

The Copenhagen City Heart Study is a sample of 5,048 people from the city done regularly to help researchers understand the health of the city. This specific study looked at 1,098 runners and 413 healthy non-runners.