I need help with a rebuttal (Read 1149 times)

I would respond with these direct quotes from the Mayo Clinic Proceedings article your family member referred you to:

 

From the abstract:

long-term excessive sustained exercise may be associated with coronary artery calcification, diastolic dysfunction, and large-artery wall stiffening. However, this concept is still hypothetical and there is some inconsistency in the reported findings. Furthermore, lifelong vigorous exercisers generally have low mortality rates and excellent functional capacity.

 

Also, from the abstract:

the hypothesis that long-term excessive endurance exercise may induce adverse CV remodeling warrants further investigation to identify at-risk individuals and formulate physical fitness regimens for conferring optimal CV health and longevity.

 

And, one of the article highlights:

 

People who exercise regularly have markedly lower rates of disability and a mean life expectancy that is 7 years longer than that of their physically inactive contemporaries. However, a safe upper-dose limit potentially exists, beyond which the adverse effects of exercise may outweigh its benefits.

 

 

 

All of the "badness" is hypothetical. The epidemiology that is solid is still in favor of exercise.

So the author of the CNN.com article distorted the hell out of the research in order to score a more attention-grabbing headline. Pretty typical for mainstream media science and medical reporting.

I basically agree with the CNN article. It's just crap journalism that makes a pretty common sense point, but does so with a heading and subject matter that lends itself to being sensationalized.

Workouts involve a balance of risk/reward and benefit you through recovery/adaptation. Runs over two hours become much more risky and provide very little additional reward for each additional minute. Hard workouts, whether because of duration or intensity, put a lot of stress on the body and that stress can become cumulatively negative if enough recovery is not allowed. Running can cause negative performance or health adaptations if done to excess.

Veteran runners tend to have a good understanding of where they cross the line of what's healthy in their own training. That is why articles like this annoy me, because these articles invite non-runners or uninformed runners to make a generalization. Coming up with an example for why this is fairly absurd, I should think about another field of which I am fairly ignorant and imagine myself reading about its inner workings. I am not an artist. It's like reading an article asserting that acrylic paint yields better art than oil paint. I can then call up my brother, an oil painter, and tell him he should switch to acrylic. Perhaps he and his years of expertise would be offended by this.

Wing --- I get that CRAP all the time, from my family of non runners.........when I'm running like I want to (and not recovering from surgery like right now) then 40 MPW is kind of my sweet spot....for what ever reason if I run 40 week in and week out, I feel really good and get a lot of good benefit from my running.....if I run more than 40MPW I usually get injured or get lethargic and bored and tired.....and cant run very well.....

 

When I say the above to my family you would think I was talking about running 400 MPW.........they all think running 40 MPW week is like some super human feat that only crazy obsessed people could even consider................

 

I usually just smile at them and agree that I'm crazy and obsessed and don't much think or worry about it....

 

Trying to work my way back up to 40 after having had surgery a little over a month ago-----and now they all think I'm gonna push it and kill myself --- GOOD GRIEF>>...

 

IGNORE THEM and keep running.........it'll keep you sane and keep them wondering about you.....

 I agree.

You are trying to fight a losing battle.  No matter what facts you give to them, they will still continue to believe what they believe.

Eventually they will stop. 

I bet if you were overweight and didn't run, they wouldn't say anything to you at all.