Is Extreme Endurance Exercise Dangerous to Your Health?

Researchers aimed to discover if running a mile in under 4 minutes impacts longevity. (Foukes S., et.al., 2024). They hypothesized that these runners would live longer than the average person.

Using historical data, they analyzed the first 200 athletes to achieve this feat. The study compared their ages at death (or current age if alive) with their country's life expectancy.

Results showed that out of 200 runners, 60 had died while 140 were still alive. On average, these runners lived 4.7 years longer than expected.

Interestingly, runners from the 1950s had a longevity increase of 9.2 years, those from the 1960s had 5.5 years, and those from the 1970s had 2.9 years.

The study concluded that running a sub-4 minute mile appears to be associated with increased longevity, contradicting the belief that extreme endurance exercise might reduce lifespan.

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Reference: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38729629/

Foulkes S, Hewitt D, Skow R, Dover D, Kaul P, La Gerche A, Haykowsky M. Outrunning the grim reaper: longevity of the first 200 sub-4 min mile male runners. Br J Sports Med. 2024 May 10:bjsports-2024-108386.