I caught the headline this morning, and promptly ignored it. To me, this falls right in line with the "studies" that proclaim wine and coffee are bad for you, then a few years later no, they're actually good for you, then a couple years later... whatever.

Edit: There's also one large hole in the logic, at least according to the article (I didn't go find the Mayo Clinic study). It's entirely possible that these middle-aged men worked out more than others because they knew they had a family history of heart disease, so it may not be the exercise that's causing the heart disease at all. Just because two datasets are correlated doesn't mean there's causation.

Here's the link to the original paper: http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/...-6196(17)30577-3/pdf

Seem like an okay observational study, but nothing really new there, other than the result about white men which I wouldn't put a whole lot of faith in until we see it show up in other data sets too. Overall, I don't see much there to be concerned about.

"Health" is a spiritual or moral quality.

"Health" has almost nothing to do with anything physical.

When people or "experts" talk about "health" they are merely expressing wishes, desires and fears.

When "experts" talk about something physical (that has something to do with health) they are really talking about "health. You can thus ignore whatever they are saying as semi- religious nonsense.

It is idiotic to try to quantify "health." A spiritual or moral quality cannot be studied scientifically. (All "health science" is thus like the scientific study of ghosts and ESP).

Let's use this knowledge to translate things people say:
1) "It is healthy to exercise a little bit"----We should feel bad about being fat. Let's go to the gym and pretend to exercise a bit.
2) "It is unhealthy to exercise too much"---You should feel guilty that you aren't fat.
Stop it.
3) "Too much exercise causes heart problems, knee problems etc."---
I don't want to exercise and I don't want to pretend to.
4) "This diet or food is good for you"---
I like that food.
The lobby for that food industry pays me a lot.
That food or diet is the morally correct one.
5) "Studies show"---
Someone did a ridiculous, unscientific bunch of random crap, which supports what I hope, fear or wish .

Here’s recent thread too.

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/.../?page=unread#unread

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Train safe & smart
Bob

I wouldn't call said news-sewer the 'popular press", as they couldn't be further behind the moon.....

If you'd read Slowtwitch, you would be up to date on that topic and what is true.....or not.

Article says the risk is higher but doesn't actually say what the risk is. E.g. if exercising 8+ hours/week doubles my of dying early from coronary disease, but that likelihood goes from 1 in 100,000 to 2 in 100,000, then I'm not really bothered.

Also seems to be specific to early onset coronary artery disease. They studied subjects aged 18 to 30 over 25 years - that implies nobody was studied over the age of 55. Be interesting to know what the longer term results are. E.g. it could be that the strain of high training volumes weeds out a few people in their 40s and 50s who have underlying heart weaknesses, but those who get through that period have better chances in their 60s and 70s.

It also doesn't do the comparison to doing no exercise at all. E.g. if I'm twice as likely to die early as somebody working out 2.5 hours/week, but somebody who does no exercise is 10 times more likely to die early, then that's going to inform my view!

Overall, I think excessive exercise may well not be as healthy as moderate exercise. I also think that those who train large volumes probably also have other lifestyle factors apart from the exercise itself which play in here. E.g. many people I know who train a lot also have relatively poor diet, because the calories they're burning off allow them to eat what they want (in some cases people use exercise to compensate for poor diet. Still better than having poor diet and not exercising though...). A lot of them are also cutting back on sleep to do early morning training sessions. They may also be type A personalities who do everything at full throttle and as a result are more likely to be in high stress jobs, etc.

As soon as you're born you're dyin' (Iron Maiden)

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29 years and counting

Well done sir. Well done.

This was my beef with that article. They didn't really group the athletes out socio-economically or provide any other demographic information other than black and white. Its all click bait preying on the current idiocy going on in the world.

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Your title is bit misleading as it's not exercise in general that may lead to CAD but too much aerobic exercise. In physiology, medicine there are any number of situations where a "J" shaped relationship occurs, meaning a little of something is beneficial but a lot is harmful (or something similar). There's no reason this couldn't exist for exercise and coronary artery disease. Not read the article yet, will do so today.

Just wanted to say I love this graph and plan on stealing it.

Yours is a smart take.

I think all of us would agree that there is an upper limit on the benefits of aerobic exercise, for example, like every waking hour with no rest or sleep. So a study that seeks to define that upper limit shouldn't be met with a whole lot of skepticism, although we should accept that there will be a good bit of uncertainty - and individual variation - with regard to where that limit is exactly.

I would be interested in hearing from a statistician. When I see the breakouts by increasingly smaller sub-populations (and logistic regression) I worry about overfitting.

A lot of these studies with people with issues end up revolving around people with pre existing conditions OR the absolute ELITE levels of athletes in a discipline.

Also, pretty much elite level "masters" age athletes.

I don't think your average quasi competitive runner, cyclist, or tri participant need and worry.

The Carmichael training books usually dedicate about 2 to 3 pages discussing this.

We do know what happens to you for sure sitting on the couch chugging Mtn Dew and eating bacon fat and cheetohs all the time. You are highly predisposed to die early of a plethora of terrible things while feeling miserable and being incapable of anything.

I bet that most retired elite athletes that don't have this issue still workout and train harder than 90% of recreational folks.