
Danish study: moderate jogging, higher benefits - mkempe
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-running-health-20150202-story.html
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mattybrennan
The error bars for strenuous exercise in the publication are laughable. Out of
a population of ~1000, only 36 were strenuous joggers and only 2 of them died.

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area51org
This is not the first time I've come across badly executed studies on running
and long-term health. It's unsettling, and misleading.

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cgrubb
7mph is a speed a lot of people can't run. Those are 8 1/2 minute miles. It
corresponds to a speed of 26min for a 5k.

This article

    
    
      http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=4612823
    

has some stats for a 5k race. The average time for men was 28min, and only 10%
of the women were faster than 26min.

Slower speeds might skew towards women, who naturally live longer.

Another thought is that people who run fast do so over shorter distances, and
their volume isn't sufficient to see a health bump.

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nl
If someone wants to work out these stats properly, Parkrun[1] has an excellent
dataset ready for scraping.

Eyeballing [2] 26:00 will get you 93rd out of 300, ie top 1/3rd. That's
probably achievable by someone who runs regularly (3 times a week). On [3] it
gets you 362/844.

[1] [http://www.parkrun.com/](http://www.parkrun.com/)

[2]
[http://www.parkrun.org.uk/aberdeen/results/latestresults/](http://www.parkrun.org.uk/aberdeen/results/latestresults/)

[3]
[http://www.parkrun.org.uk/bushy/results/latestresults/](http://www.parkrun.org.uk/bushy/results/latestresults/)

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runamok
Anecdotal opinion of someone that ran 6:50ish per mile pace yesterday in the
SF Kaiser Half-Marathon and thus am apparently shortening my life... Those of
us trying to run faster and be competitive (whether with ourselves or others)
really don't care if we lose a few years of life. Quality over quantity! These
articles come up every so often and seem to just serve as reasons for
sedentary people to feel smug about their life choices.

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wodenokoto
I highly disagree with the last part. There are 2 reason to run as you
mention: for health and for competition. Those running for health should be
careful about emulating the routines of those running for competition.

~~~
runamok
A fair point. You're _probably_ not running _on average_ sub 8:30 miles unless
you are training for performance in some form or fashion. Because it generally
hurts quite a bit. :-)

With the "speed cutoff" You are also probably getting a higher percentage of
males who of course have shorter life expectancy rates than women.

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mkempe
Since the study did not report nor account for other physical activities, it
should be noted that a vast number of people in Copenhagen ride bikes around
town. [1] 36% commute by bicycle; municipal ambition is 50% by 2015.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Copenhagen#Cycling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Copenhagen#Cycling)

~~~
parennoob
Yeah, "couch potatoes" in Copenhagen likely rank in the 90th percentile in
terms of overall physical activity for most American cities.

What this study says is, "Running _really fast_ (> 7mph for four hours a week
is not exactly a cakewalk) for long periods of time _might_ reduce your
mortality.

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anon4
> might reduce your mortality

might _increase_ your mortality, actually. That is reduce your _life
expectancy_.

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parennoob
Argh, you're right, reduce your life expectancy.

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runamok
Strenuous jogging is called running. </pedantic runner>

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mcbailey
Here are the charts with the confidence intervals:
[http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2108914](http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleID=2108914)

It is crazy they would present a subgroup analysis with 40 people, the effect
would have to be enormous to find anything.

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swatow
And yet the difference between the strenuous and light joggers are significant
(the light jogger mean is outside the strenuous jogger 95% confidence interval
and vice versa).

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Irene
Actually, life expectancy of world class aerobic athletes (unlike power
(anaerobic) ones) is a little higher than average according to studies in US,
Spain, Germany, Poland... Could be a little lower than life expectancy of
those involved in moderate aerobic activities though, I guess.

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bjwbell
TL;DR; strenuous jogging doesn't have health benefits. There isn't enough data
from the study to support any stronger conclusions.

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mkempe
The study indicates that strenuous jogging has the same benefits as no
jogging, while moderate jogging improves life expectancy.

