Researchers Find Heart Disease in a Marathon Runner -- Is Too Much Exercise a Bad Thing?

I have watched numerous athletic people that just must go out and run or exercise, till they push through the pain barrier, at least once a day. They do this no matter how they feel or how hot or cold the weather is.

When you push yourself, through the so called pain barrier, the body decides that you are in a life threatening situation and dumps adrenalin and endorphins into the blood stream. The adrenalin allows you to consume muscle tissue to supply energy rather than the normal fat reserves and gives you increasable strength. But there is a price to pay, if you do this on a regular basis you will do irreparable damage to you body. This is a last ditch effort by the body to save itself and is a no holes bard system, that you should only ever use if you life is in imminent danger.

The other part of the equation is the release of the endorphins. Endorphins are naturally occurring narcotic agents that block pain in the same way that morphine and other narcotics do. Again, this is normally only used by the body when it is in a life threatening situation and you can unknowingly, seriously injure yourself while these are present in the bloodstream. Like manufactured narcotic agents thy produce a euphoric effect and are similarly addictive.

These last ditch systems, that the body uses, should only be invoked as a last resort and definitely not on a regular basis. This is one way that you see so called super fit athletic people, wrecking their health and doing irreparable damage to their bodies. Pain is there for a very good reason, its there to tell you that it is time to stop doing what your are doing because you are damaging yourself. To continually ignore the warning is akin to driving your car with all the warning lights on. If you continue something is going to break.

Pain is a warning that you are damaging you body, ignore it at your peril.

So the couch potatoes can feel relieved then!

From the actual article:

"So, is too much exercise a bad thing? The physicians answer to the contrary. "We are not publishing this report to suggest in any way that people should not be exercising. Exercise has stood the test of time as being one of the best ways to modify cardiovascular risk," says Dr. Miller. "But what we're looking at are improved detection methods for predicting those at risk. Exercise-induced high blood pressure may be a part of that."

What you say is very true and the majority of people in western nations do not gat anywhere near enough exercise, myself included. What I was however trying to point out was, like most things, an excess can be just as bad as a deficit.

Go out every day and exercise till you are in pain and you will ultimately benefit. Go out every day and exercise till you are in pain then push on further and you will ultimately do irreparable damage to your body.

Pain is a warning that you are doing something that is damaging your body. It should have a reflex response that stops you form carrying on and doing further damage. You can, with training, push past the pain, but, this is doing something that is unnatural and should be avoided whenever possible. As I pointed out you body has a fall back mechanism, that it uses if you body is in imminent life threatening danger and you can, when this is triggered, push through the pain and continue. But you do damage your body by doing this, it's a case of which is worse, some minor damage by continuing or life threatening damage if you don't. The thing is though if you invoke this mechanism when it isn't needed it will damage your body and won't be there when you do need it.

Regular exercise within your body's limits is a very beneficial thing. The occasional push through the pain barrier and beyond these limits while not desirable is tolerable and will no be detrimental to your health. On the other hand, pushing your body beyond its limits and through the pain barrier on a regular basis is not. it will undo much of the good achieved through the exercise and damage your body.

Put simply everything in moderation and nothing too excess, is nearly always the best policy.

Apart from in 'fun- runs' , I have never seen a happy jogger.

In contrast people of extreme age smile a lot.

Draw your own conclusions ! (No I don't think Jogging would have figured in their leisure pursuits in youth).

I suspect that joggers are the 'worried well' who ignore basic health issues with their neurotic life styles .

Sorry to all you joggers out there , you can castigate me in the hereafter.

I know some happy joggers, I work with them ... however, they are also competitive bunch and their serious face may show their concern for the top price ... now, seriously, I think that there might be a few reasons why competitive runners die unexpectedly ... I attended Dr. Joel Wallach's presentations three times and three times he pointed out that heavy exercise induces sweating ... through sweat we loose numerous minerals important for our health ... selenium is just one of them and that one is essential for a healthy heart ... people with a low level of copper turn prematurely grey and have a higher incidence of aneurysm .... back to the runners; runners cannot replenish the minerals through the diet because our produce contains a low amount of them ... why is that? ... farmers no longer add minerals to the soil and therefore not only the runners but we too experience some health complications due to the low level of the minerals in the food ... ... I heard other doctors on the national radio discussing the importance of the minerals and two said that our government should mandate farmers to enrich the soil with the minerals ... we need about sixty of them for good health ... therefore if you know anybody exercising vigorously let them know about Dr. Joel Wallach ... I am certain that they will enjoy reading his books ... he is funny and informative as he has three degrees and was a Nobel Peace Price Nominee ... I started taking his formula two years ago and people noticed that my natural hair colour is coming back ... I guess that my body starts to show that I am no longer missing them ... Jaan

G'day Jaan,

Until about a decade ago I was heavily involved in flying gliders. Flying about the sky is something that humans were not really built for and you can have some serious problems with dehydration and loss of trace elements not to mention both hypoxia and hyperoxia which strangely have similar symptoms. When you go above about 10,000 feet (3,000 m) the partial pressure of O2 is no longer sufficient to keep the blood saturated so you need to use supplemental O2. However, give yourself too much O2 and you end up getting intoxicated. It's a double edged sword as either way you end up with a loss of the reflexes and intellectual capacity to fly an aircraft.

As for the problem of low nutritional content of modern food, I blame a lot of it on so called organic farming and products. The leeching of minerals from the souls is a serious problem and unless they are replaced you end up with food that is about a nutritious as distilled water. We are now starting to see the emergence of diseases like iodine deficiency disorder, rickets and scurvy that had for the most part been eliminated in the developed world.