Extreme exercise does not appear to shorten life expectancy as is believed, suggests findings from a study on the longevity of the first 200 athletes to run a mile in under 4 minutes, published online in the British Journal of Sports. Medicine’.
Although regular moderate exercise is considered a pillar of healthy aging, it has long been thought that exposing the body to extreme resistance exercise sessions can push it too far and shorten life expectancy, researchers say. Despite this, the study shows that they live several years longer than the general population.
According to the authors, the repeated bouts of maximal exercise that milers perform make them a unique group to test the possible impact of extreme intense exercise on longevity.
For this reason, they analyzed the compendium of 1,759 athletes who had run a mile in less than 4 minutes in June 2022 and extracted the data of the first 200 to do so, arguing that they would have an age that would equal or exceed life expectancy. typical of his generation.
The runners’ longevity was tracked, using publicly available information, from the exact date of their first successful attempt at the 4-minute mile to age 100, the end of 2023, or death, to find out the average difference in life expectancy between them and the general population, matched by age, sex and nationality.
This difference was calculated as a runner’s observed life years minus his or her life expectancy in the general population. This figure was averaged across the 200 runners.
LONGER LIFE EXPECTANCY
The first 200 runners to break the 4-minute mile spanned a 20-year period, from 1954 to 1974. They came from 28 different countries in Europe, North America, Oceania and Africa.
They were born between 1928 and 1955, and were an average of 23 years old when they ran the mile in less than 4 minutes, with times between 3:52.86 and 3:59.9 minutes.
Of the total, 60 (30%) had died and 140 were alive at the time of analysis. The average age at death was 73 years, but ranged from 24 to 91 years, while the average age of the surviving runners was 77 years, ranging from 68 to 93 years.
The cause of death was unknown for most of the athletes, but of the seven who died before the age of 55, six were due to trauma or suicide and one was due to pancreatic cancer.
The analysis revealed that sub-4-minute runners lived almost 5 years longer than the expected life expectancy, on average, based on sex, age, year of birth, age of attainment, and nationality.
Taking into account the decade of completion, those whose first successful attempt occurred in the 1950s lived an average of 9 years longer than the general population over a mean follow-up period of 67 years.
And those whose first successful attempt occurred in the 1960s and 1970s lived 5.5 years and almost 3 years longer over a mean follow-up period of 58 and 51 years, respectively.
The general improvement in life expectancy, secondary to advances in the diagnosis and treatment of several important diseases, could explain this particular trend, the researchers suggest.
The researchers acknowledge that they did not have information on the lifetime exercise habits (or other healthy behaviors) of the 200 athletes included in the study, so they could not determine the precise relationship between exercise dose over time. throughout life and longevity.
And the comparison with the general population prevented us from evaluating how other lifestyle factors, such as diet and smoking, cardiometabolic risk factors, and other potentially influential medical factors, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol, might affect longevity. Finally, the study only included men, since no woman has yet run a mile in less than 4 minutes.
However, the researchers say: “This finding challenges the upper extremes of the U-shaped exercise hypothesis (as it relates to longevity) and once again reiterates the benefits of exercise on life expectancy. even at the training levels required for elite performance.”
Although the effort required in this group may seem lower than that of endurance athletes, the high aerobic and anaerobic requirements of medium-distance events, such as the mile, require relatively high training volumes, about 9-12 hours or 120 -170 km a week, they explain.
Although all this raises the possibility of pushing the body beyond its limits, especially from the point of view of intensity, it does not seem to affect life expectancy and, if anything, seems to prolong it, they add.
The researchers say that the physiological explanations for the prolonged lifespan have not yet been fully identified, but suggest that they likely reflect the positive adaptations of resistance exercise on cardiovascular, metabolic and immune health and functions.
A healthy lifestyle and genes may also play a role, they note, as 20 sets of siblings, including six sets of twins and father-son combinations, were among the top 200 runners to break the 4-minute mile.
