Getting too serious about jogging could actually do more harm to your health than good, a small study suggested.
The recent study suggests light jogging is optimal for longevity, but the study did have a number of significant weaknesses, the American College of Cardiology reported.
Researchers looked at 5,048 healthy participants in the Copenhagen City Heart Study and pinpointed 1,098 healthy joggers and 413 healthy but sedentary non-joggers who were then tracked over the course of 12 years. The team found strenuous joggers were just as likely to die as sedentary non-joggers; and surprisingly, light joggers had the lowest rate of death.
Jogging for between one and 2.4 hours per week was associated with the lowest rates of mortality, with the healthiest recommended frequency of jogging being no more than three times per week. Significantly lower mortality were observed in those with slow or moderate jogging paces when compared with fast-paced joggers, who had almost the same rate of death as sedentary non-joggers.
"It is important to emphasize that the pace of the slow joggers corresponds to vigorous exercise and strenuous jogging corresponds to very vigorous exercise," said Peter Schnohr, a researcher from the Copenhagen City Heart Study, Frederiksberg Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. "When performed for decades, this activity level could pose health risks, especially to the cardiovascular system."
The findings back up past studies suggesting strenuous exercise could be harmful to one's health.
"The U-shaped association between jogging and mortality suggests there may be an upper limit for exercise dosing that is optimal for health benefits," Schnohr said. "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. Anything more is not just unnecessary, it may be harmful."
Despite the findings, more research is required in order to find a solid link between too much jogging and health risks.
"We still need more data to truly determine 'is more actually worse?' regarding exercise dose and prognosis," the researchers wrote in an accompanying editorial, Forbes reported.
They pointed out the research is only an observational study and there are many differences between the two groups. The mean ago of the non-joggers was 61.3 years while that of the joggers ranged from late 30s to mid-40s.
So what do you think? Does the study reveal health consequences associated with vigorous jogging?
The findings were published in a recent edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
