The research suggests that high-intensity exercise could offer longevity benefits.
A study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine indicates that elite runners, particularly those who have run a mile in less than four minutes, tend to live much longer than the general population. The teams of researchers from Canada and Australia conducted this study using public health data on the first 200 athletes to have achieved this feat in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s.
These findings mean that, on average, professional runners in the study lived nearly five years longer. This defies a long-held belief that excessive exercise can have negative impacts on long-term health. Rather, the study suggests that really putting a human body through its paces might actually yield longevity advantages.
Traditional theory claims that high-intensity athletes, marathoners, endurance cyclists, and triathletes are habitually putting their bodies through strenuous athletic exercise routines that may be stressful to the heart, thereby predisposing them to an early death. Such may not be the case when considering veteran athletes opposed to the couch potato, as revealed in this research.
It is backed by a 2022 Harvard study, which confirms this thinking by showing that people who exercise more than the guideline enshrines can cut the risk of death by 30%. This is 10% longer than people who simply exercised based on ordinary guidelines. Other research into Tour de France cyclists, Olympic athletes, and rowers reveals that they all have longer lifespans.
One interesting finding of the new study was that the athletes who ran a mile in under four minutes in the 1960s had a better life expectancy compared to those runners who did so in more recent decades, and this may be due to the general improvement in life expectancy and the management of diseases over all those years. Favourable genetics may also be one of the factors since it was found that there were several sets of siblings and father-son pairs among the athletes.
While the specific causes of death were not determined for most of the runners, prior studies in similar cohorts suggest longevity benefits were due principally to lower rates of cardiovascular and cancer-related mortality. The researchers conclude that these findings reiterate the significant benefits of exercise on lifespan, even at the extreme levels required for elite athletic performance.