Exercising is clearly beneficial for all of us to stay in shape. But did you know that too much of it could be quite harmful to your health? That is according to heart expert Dr. Barry Franklin, PhD; director of preventive cardiology and cardiac rehabilitation at Beaumont Health in Royal Oak, Mich. I came across this article, “Heart expert says too much exercise may be harmful,” in the Chicago Sun-times pull-out Well section. In the article, Franklin lists five interesting things we need to know about heart health and exercise. Here are just some of those things.
The first thing he mentions is that high-intense training is risky for anyone over 40 years of age. “If you’re 20, 25 years of age and you’ve got no risk factors, that’s fine,” Franklin says. “If you’re 40, 50, 60, 70, I don’t think there is evidence that shows that the benefits outweigh the potential risk, especially if they’re doing it in a non-medical setting like the YMCA.” He also goes on to say that it’s not the duration or the frequency of exercise, but that it is the intensity that gets people in trouble.
Another interesting risk of too much exercise is frequent heart attacks. “On average, the relative risk of a heart attack or sudden death for the general population increases four-to-five-fold during vigorous exercise,” he says. However, he does go on to add this: “The relative risk increases more than a hundred-fold in sedentary people who go out and do unaccustomed high-intensity exercise. So if you’re sitting at a computer or on your couch all year and do nothing, and then all of a sudden, you get a winter snowstorm and you go out and start shoveling heavy wet snow, that’s the person who’s at the greatest risk.” The solution to avoiding this situation: Exercise in moderation.
This last piece of information he gives may make you want to pick up the pace on your next walk. Several studies show that if middle age and older adults walk less than 2 miles an hour in their day-to-day activities, those people could be heading toward a poor prognosis or a harbinger of death. “We now realize that even somebody’s walking speed is a good index of their overall health,” Franklin says. “Whereas numerous studies now show that middle age and older adults who walk briskly-3 miles an hour or faster- generally have very good health profiles.”
