1. Running will give you a heart attack or other heart problems. It is true that exercise temporarily raises the odds of a heart attack while you’re mid-workout, but doing it consistently reduces that risk over the long haul, leading to a net benefit. Some researchers have questioned whether marathon running, especially in people who haven’t trained a lot, might cause heart damage, at least temporarily. But there’s no evidence that it causes long-term harm or actually leads to heart attacks. Even athletes with enlarged hearts—if they’re healthy hearts—aren’t, as once feared, at risk of early death. The bottom line: Simply going for a run most days of the week is doing far more good than bad for your heart.
2. Running will ruin your bones and joints. A study in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found no evidence of accelerated rates of osteoarthritis among long-distance runners when compared with healthy nonrunners. “We used to say that osteoarthritis came from wear and tear. That’s now revised to say that is can result from tear but not wear,” says James Fries, emeritus professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and senior author of the study. Moreover, weight-bearing exercise like running helps stave off osteoporosis by maintaining bone mineral density.
3. Running will kill you before your time. According to a study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, running and other vigorous exercise in middle age is associated with a longer life. Not only that, it will make your later years more pleasant by reducing disability. After tracking runners and healthy nonrunners for 21 years, starting when they were at least 50 years old, a research team led by Stanford’s Fries found that the ability to perform activities of daily life like getting out of a chair and walking was better among runners than nonrunners. And 19 years into the study, 15 percent of the runners had died, compared with 34 percent of the nonrunners.
USNews.com
