The BMJ recently published a study called https: ‘Is running associated with a lower risk of all cause, cardiovascular and cancer mortality, and is the more the better?‘
It was an impressive systematic review involving 232,149 subjects and it found that if people ran, even if only a little bit and once a week, they lived longer – they were less likely to die prematurely of anything at all, of heart disease or of cancer. I don’t know why studies have to involve such gobbledegook language! And it found that more running did not necessarily equate to better long term health, and neither did running faster. So merely going for a once the week jog around the block was enough.
To me this makes perfect sense. If you can jog or run regularly, even if only once a week, and you do this for years it means that physically you’re in pretty good shape. There is the frequently repeated myth that running is bad for your knees. What a load of old cobblers. The most natural way for a human to move about is walking and running. How do primitive people hunt? By chasing down their prey: over a short distance, the human is laughably slow, but over distance, we are seriously impressive. If running hurts your knees you are not in good shape – something is out of whack in your brain/body signalling and the pain is there to stop you from running. Also when you go out for a run, you have the energy and will to do this. Of all the endurance exercises, running is the most demanding.
I would go a step further and say if you cannot run comfortably, this is a red flag. We get many red flags and don’t recognise them until something dramatic happens, and then the recovery is long and taxing, or you end up in the hands of the medics who do their best to stick you back together.
Why did they find that longer is not necessarily better? Well, I think we can blame our lifestyles on this. Whilst we are built for ultra-marathon running, the hunter-gatherers that do this to hunt have an unbelievably different lifestyle to ours. Apart from anything else, it involves long periods of doing nothing. And it most certainly does not involve eating Chorley Wood method bread, turkey twizzlers, cheese strings or crisps – or agrochemicals. Running long distance places a heavy burden on the recovery systems and demands excellent nutrition. Very few want to achieve this – and only professional runners have the time for proper recovery, and even they tend to neglect this.
The bottom line? Well, certainly a slimmer bottom, but apart from that, if you can’t run, do something about it so you can. And don’t get sucked into the runner’s thing of running further and further. Run for joy, run because it makes you feel good, run the distance that suits you. Jog on.
And if you can’t run, see me or another Z-Health practitioner. You have an overwhelming choice of three of us in UK….but many more in US, Germany and Denmark.