Cardio kills? WTF??

Melinda1987

I saw someone on another thread slamming cardio, with a signature about cardio killing. I laughed. But it made me wonder where such a crazy idea came from, so I Googled it. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/p-nu/201103/cardio-may-cause-heart-disease-part-i?page=2 It's a TON of medical jargon and I admit I barely skimmed it, but it does claim to have a correlation. Any doctors or people with medical knowledge out there that can tell me if this makes sense? I do NOT want to hear strictly from weight lifters - ya'll are biased. I want someone who knows the science. 'cause I just recently started exercising and I feel GREAT! I have 100 lbs to lose, and my Inner Critic would just LOVE a reason to stop working out.

ppiinnkkmmoonn

well when i wasn't doing cardio i was 20 years old with high blood pressure, knee problems and 323 pounds ummm with cardio im healthy my blood pressure normal 106/67 my depression is lessen, on top of that im thin.....................i feel more alive myself . and truth people are always finding something one time eggs were bad now they ok list goes on.........

LovelySpirit

Wow, well I guess I'll be Cardio-conscious but I WONT QUIT.. CARDIO is my lifesaver !!!

laceylovespink

i'm not gonna read it bahahaha cardio is the reason I am healthy and happy and the reason i do not have to take b/p pills...there's always someone who will say something bad...gotta do what's right for YOU...for me, I'd rather die healthy on an elliptical than dead on the couch

laceylovespink

i'm not gonna read it bahahaha cardio is the reason I am healthy and happy and the reason i do not have to take b/p pills...there's always someone who will say something bad...gotta do what's right for YOU...for me, I'd rather die healthy on an elliptical than dead on the couch

bwalters82

A professor of mine once said that research can show whatever you want it to. Increasing your heart rate trains your heart to work more effectively, so I don't believe this specific research very much.

hpsnickers1

I'm not a doctor but have done a heck of a lot of research and reading in the last 7 months. Moderate amounts of cardio can be very, very good for the heart and body. But too much cardio - especially intense cardio - can be detrimental. (can cause inflammation, eat away at muscle mass, make your body pump out a lot of cortisol...)., So it depends on how much you and how often you do it intensely.

I can give you this:

http://www.marksdailyapple.com/search-results/?cx=004987908667488763946:kd-fp2c7jek&cof=FORID:11&ie=UTF-8&q=chronic+cardio&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search&siteurl=www.marksdailyapple.com/#1381

He's not a doctor. And you don't have to pay attention to the Primal Eating part. But he has drawn his conclusion from research and his own experiences.

Myself? My week consists of a few hours of moderate cardio - sometimes all on one day or spread out through the week; I do a sprint interval (for about 20-30 minutes) once a week. And I do a bit of strength training a couple of times a week. I usually just use my own body weight.

beckajw

It's not that cardio kills, it's that cardio won't save you from a poor diet. Weight lifting won't save you from a poor diet either.

bethrs

Too much of anything is dangerous- running a marathon without proper training is very dangerous even though moderate exercise is very healthy- just ask Philippides- he died after his first marathon.



** Running nerd joke decoded: myth of Philippides is he's the guy to ran to the city of marathon to warn of invaders and fell dead, starting the 26.2 mile race.

hpsnickers1

A professor of mine once said that research can show whatever you want it to. Increasing your heart rate trains your heart to work more effectively, so I don't believe this specific research very much.

That's why you have to dig, dig, dig, through all the crap to find the valid stuff. And it's true what he - the professer - said. It's that exact reason why we all believe that fat/sat. fat causes heart disease and raises cholesterol and carbs are so very healthy for us. (okay. Sorry for that very short rant - I still think everyone here is doing a great job!!)

Hannah_Banana

This just proves that with big, sciency words, you can make even the most absurd claims sound like solid facts. :laugh:

laurasnyder411

I just read this link and all I can say, coming from someone who studied how to perform experiments, is that this study isn't large enough or repeated enough times to be considered valuable information...perhaps and interesting outcome from what seems like one study (that has quite a few holes in it) but hardly conclusive "evidence". Like stated by many other posts, you can twist statistics in your favor (which if you spent a lot of grant money and time and want that money to keep coming in is a good motive for doing), and even if the study has value there are too many unaddressed factors. How much cardio were these subjects doing and how often? What are there age, race, lifestyles, previous lifestyles? What were the subjects eating, when, how often, how much? What about the sedentary subjects? How sedentary? What kind of lifestyle and diet? I mean what if all the sedentary subjects were vegetarians and all the cardio subjects ate nothing but red meat and hardees for example? Too many holes in my opinion.

rgoodearl

I prefer Cardio over strength training...I still do strength training 3 days a week because my body needs it...I believe doing both brings a good balance to my lifestyle.

CaptainMFP

I'm a biology professor who's main area of teaching is human anatomy and physiology and whose research background includes muscle structure and function (admittedly in crabs, not humans). I would ignore a poorly written report like this for the following reasons:

(1) I don't see clear references to primary source literature that I can track down. That make's this blog post speculative, regardless of the author's degree or credentials.
(2) If the original paper found no significant difference between the highly and non-highly active individuals, this means there is NO DIFFERENCE. In order to be published the original research had to go through an anonymous peer review process that would scrutinize their statistics. This cannot be dismissed out of hand.
(3) In the limited bio posted for the blogger of this article I see nothing to indicate he has any expertise in cardiology or inflammatory vascular disease. (An M.D. or Ph.D. does not make someone an expert in everything...when my primary care doctor wanted me to get a full cardiac workup he sent me to a cardiologist, not an ENT, OB, or neurologist!)
(4) Even if the blogger has a thread of a point, it sounds to me like it applies to people who engage in extreme cardio training (i.e. people who run multiple marathons each year) and not to people doing cardio to maintain physical health. Some of his core concepts are reasonable, but only apply meaningfully in the extremes.

Finally, this guy has an axe to grind. If he were presenting honest science he would not dismiss statistical testing and he would include complete data sets with sample sizes. In this blog, he cherry picks data that support his points. When you see a blogger throwing around claims without full data sets or clear references, you shouldn't give it any attention.

aamb

lets face it... EVERYTHING is bad for us!!!

korgscrew

If this was in a book, i would probably believe it 100 times more than i do reading it on some bizzare psychology website.

I hate all these conflicting theories!!!!!!!!

Do weights, not cardio!!

Do Cardio, no weights!!!!

Eat more!! Eat less!!

Shut up!! F**k off!!

:bigsmile:

knittnponder

I'm not a doctor and haven't done much research into this but just yesterday I was reading about how long endurance cardio (ie. long periods of steady state cardio like running or cycling at the same pace) can be detrimental. One blog I was reading the woman had been training for a race that required her to run long distances and bike long distances. She spent hours and hours doing those two things and was surprised that her ab and arm definition disappeared. She didn't lose any weight and was so embarrassed by her soft middle that she didn't wear her usual crop top during race day.

After her race was finished she went back to weights, less training and did high interval training in place of the endurance runs. Her abs were beautiful! After reading that I started looking into interval training and stumbled across a guy on YouTube who is a trainer and he was saying that steady state cardio can cause cardiac issues because the body evolved doing "fight or flight" responses steady running or steady state cardio just wasn't part of the "normal" routine for our ancestors. He said that the steady state cardio actually causes your heart to shrink a bit and sets you up for a heart attack. He wasn't against cardio, he just was pushing the high intensity intervals (HIT or HIIT).

I don't know where he got his information (made it up, heard it from someone else, science journal - it didn't say) and I'm not sure what I think yet but I do know that I had already been leaning toward trying some HIT anyway. The idea of working harder for shorter periods of time appeals to me.

So all my information is anecdotal and I didn't really help since I can't site anything but I will be looking further into this stuff. I do know that it won't effect the fact that I got a new bike for my birthday and intend to go on long bike rides! I also know that for many people beginning to take long walks and then transitioning into long runs has lowered blood pressure, had wonderful effects on their blood work numbers and there are many people who've been runners for most of their lives and they're still going strong so I'm not convinced that "cardio kills" is true. I was also reading the other day about a 74 year old marathon runner who has been running since his late teens. If cardio killed wouldn't he have died long before now?

Mad_Dog_Muscle

i'm not gonna read it bahahaha cardio is the reason I am healthy and happy and the reason i do not have to take b/p pills...there's always someone who will say something bad...gotta do what's right for YOU...for me, I'd rather die healthy on an elliptical than dead on the couch

Well said!!! :drinker:

fteale

Cardio in general is very good for you. If you do it right it builds your heart muscle so it is stronger and more efficient.

The problem is with Olympic athletes who are training for a specific sport at a level far beyond what humans are biologically designed to endure. Some time in the mid 20th century there was a Japanese Olympic rowing crew who trained to race at 40 strokes per minute. Normal rowing race pace is about 18-20 strokes per minute, up to about 28-30 for a sprint. These men were being pushed far beyond that. They won every race, but they all died in their 40s. They had massively increased their heart size, enabling them to push vast amounts of blood round their bodies, but as a result the heart muscle had got thinner, not thicker, and they all eventually had heart attacks.

There is sometimes also signs of scarring on the heart tissue of elite marathon and ultra marathon runners. Not people who do it casually, they are likely to be healthier and live longer than average, but people who have run 100+ marathons, at what most people would consider a sprint pace (like the man who won the London marathon this year, in just over 2 hours. He averaged 30 minutes per 10km, which is just phenomenal).

Cardio, or indeed any exercise, becomes dangerous if you are pushing yourself beyond human endurance, because at some point, something has got to give.

Normal people, even normal very very fit people, are not at any risk from cardio and likely to benefit greatly from a healthier, stronger heart.

fteale

If this was in a book, i would probably believe it 100 times more than i do reading it on some bizzare psychology website.

I hate all these conflicting theories!!!!!!!!

Do weights, not cardio!!

Do Cardio, no weights!!!!

Eat more!! Eat less!!

Shut up!! F**k off!!

:bigsmile:

I think I love you just a little bit.

Kat0310

lets face it... EVERYTHING is bad for us!!!

Agreed! Next week research will say that breathing oxygen will be bad for us................

ilsie99

argh, technology

hpsnickers1

There will always be conflicting information about everything out there. All you can do is read and research what you can and then YOU can decide what is best for YOU. Listen to your body and it will let you know what it likes and doesn't like.

chellekoren

A professor of mine once said that research can show whatever you want it to. Increasing your heart rate trains your heart to work more effectively, so I don't believe this specific research very much.

EXACTLY

Does anyone remember how coffee and eggs were claimed as killers. Now they are healthy healthy healthy.

chellekoren

You know I'm just gonna add. I was feeling bummed and sad earlier today and I made myself do my cardio and I am no longer feeling bummed, sad or whatever was going on. I'm also still feeling energized 2 hours later!! It's good for you. I'm not running marathons, but I worked myself out a good sweat.

freerange

bump

Azdak

Like a lot of articles, this one starts off with some useful information and some good hard research data, but ultimately runs off the rails due to the blatant bias and just general a-holeness of the author.

First, like always, you have to determine exactly what is being looked at in these studies. They are looking at long-term MARATHON runners older than 50. So, trying to generalize the results beyond this rather small niche group is problematic at best. Going from "there may be evidence that running a lot of marathons results in some adverse tissue adaptations as you get older" to "cardo kills" is a leap of logic as absurd as it is huge.

First, the facts: The evidence cited provides some indication that individuals with a long history of endurance running showed an increased amount of damage to their heart tissue (likely caused by silent tiny "heart attacks") when compared to matched controls. The results were not statistically significant (P=.08, where P=.05 is usually the minimum standard) but certainly close enough to not dismiss the results. The author also explores some of the risk-factor background of the subjects to explain away the speculation that the runners who had evidence of damage where somehow unhealthier to begin with.

I'm satisfied based on my understanding of the research cited that there is some "there" there. It is not the first time I have come across research that suggests that the extreme physiological demands of marathon running and other extended competitive endurance events might have negative effects -- both acute and chronic. Even some of the early Framingham data strongly suggested that whatever protective effects aerobic exercise might have stop after 1500-2500 calories per week --anything beyond that is for performance reasons, not necessarily health. We have known for a long time that, contrary to the early optimism of the 1970s, endurance running does not confer any absolute protection against heart attacks. And it has also been well-known for at least 20 years that one is at higher risk for an acute cardiac incident during the exercise session itself. (It's a bit of a paradox -- one incurs higher risk during workout, but the chronic effect of regular workouts results in lower overall risk during the hours you are NOT exercising).

So, in some ways, this information fits with what knowledgeable fitness scientists have known for years. As the "fitness boom" population ages, we are seeing--and will continue to see--more acute incidents and deaths occur during road races, triathlons, etc.

But, like any research, this has to be placed in an overall context. It is wrong to be in denial and dismiss it, but it is equally wrong to overgeneralize it. The strong points of this research are: the sensitivity of the methodology (LGE) to detect areas of damaged tissues and the research and statistical techniques employed to try to isolate the independent effects of marathon running as opposed to other risk factors.

Weak points: while a good number of subjects for this type of research, it is still a relatively small sample size. It is also what I would consider a "niche" group--multiple marathon runners who are still engaged in marathon training between the ages of 50-72. IMO, you have to exercise caution when determining the "significance" of these types of static, cross-sectional observations. In other words, the fact that older, multiple marathon runners might have some increased myocardial scarring might be "true", but may or may not be significant. Does this mean that this group will experience more cardiac events in the future or experience higher mortality rates? As a comparison, autopsy studies done on Vietnam War casualties (avg age 19, which is disgusting enough by itself) showed that 40% of these young men had significant coronary artery disease. Now you can look at this fact different ways. Some used it to criticize our "typical American diet" (see, it causes heart disease at an early age). However, you could also look at the general population and realize that, while based on this research it could be that 40% of young men had heart disease, 40% of 19 year olds do not go on to have heart attacks. So, the other conclusion could be that heart disease is a "normal" occurrence and other factors might also have to be involved to precipitate a heart attack.

There is exhaustive research that suggests that regular physical activity, regardless of the mechanism, decreases all-cause mortality in almost every group studied, whatever other risk factors are present. To suggest that this research implies that conventional aerobic exercise is somehow harmful represents not science, but ideology--and a fairly extreme one at that.

The author betrays his own bias in the later part of the article, both in his disparaging and inaccurate comments about aerobic exercise. He continues down that path with additional rantings about "noxious athletic diets" and the obligatory obeisance to resistance training as the only "really good exercise".

So, while starting off with the illusion of being a careful scientist, the author ends up being just another meathead with an opinion.

But don't throw that baby out with the bathwater--if you are 70, you might want to rethink those marathons.

kingkong123

Cardio is great for burning calories and getting "healthy". It does a lot of good things for the workings of your body.

As far as losing weight and looking good, I'd put weight lifting over cardio. Added muscle will cause you to burn more calories each day and after workouts. Personally, I do a little cardio each week, but focus on weight lifting. I've lost a good amount of weight and definitely see the changes.

I think proof is last week I ate and drank whatever I wanted (mucho alcohol) on vacation. 8 days actually. Before I left I was 195 (lowest in years). I came back and worked out at the gym. Next morning I was 195. Little bit of cardio and a lot of weight lifting has worked for me, but everyone has their preference.

kingkong123

As far as cardio killing you, I didn't read the article, but it sounds ridiculous. I just think it's overrated for losing weight/transforming yourself.

hroush

I used cardio to lose a total of 90 lbs, but I'm not doing it any more, why? For a pictorial description, check the link in my signature, but my explanation is that I know I have lost muscle and am now "skinny fat". I am now strength training to finish losing the weight and gain that muscle back and hopefully then some.

and about the study, I don't know if they could prove that these people would have had these problems without the cardio unless they did a much bigger study.

Azdak

I just read this link and all I can say, coming from someone who studied how to perform experiments, is that this study isn't large enough or repeated enough times to be considered valuable information...perhaps and interesting outcome from what seems like one study (that has quite a few holes in it) but hardly conclusive "evidence". Like stated by many other posts, you can twist statistics in your favor (which if you spent a lot of grant money and time and want that money to keep coming in is a good motive for doing), and even if the study has value there are too many unaddressed factors. How much cardio were these subjects doing and how often? What are there age, race, lifestyles, previous lifestyles? What were the subjects eating, when, how often, how much? What about the sedentary subjects? How sedentary? What kind of lifestyle and diet? I mean what if all the sedentary subjects were vegetarians and all the cardio subjects ate nothing but red meat and hardees for example? Too many holes in my opinion.

The issue, as always, is not with the study--it's how one chooses to interpret the results. To me, both sides of the extreme are poor choices. I think, as is often the case--the author overgeneralizes the results. However, many people will choose the opposite extreme--reject or deride the study because they don't like what it says. Both extremes are two sides of the same coin--filtering the "facts" through one's preconceived beliefs.

Any good study will have a lot of "unaddressed factors". That's because there are so many variables in human behavior and it takes time to isolate them all and even more effort to then reconstruct the "whole" from the "parts".