Good news for runners

I saw a news story on older runners on tv yesterday and I found a link to similar research online today .

Briefly, the point of the research is that it's OK to keep running no matter how old you get as long as you are healthy. Running, in other words, isn't bad for your joints.

The main problem for older runners is need to watch out for is overtraining.

So listen to your body and enjoy the run.

Of course, as I'm trying to get back in shape, I find that overtraining is a danger.

Here are excerpts from the article:

But a study out of Stanford University that looked at healthy aging runners found that running did not damage joints or leave runners less able to exercise. Researchers discovered that if you're healthy and generally free of injury, there are few reasons to put away your running shoes, even into your 70s and 80s.

"Moderate [running], three to five miles at a time, three times a week will actually help your joints to be more resilient and function a little bit better," says Dr. Amadeus Mason at Emory Sports Medicine Center in Atlanta, Georgia. But he stresses that keeping the joints healthy in the first place may be the key to running longevity.That includes not running through pain, and resting if you have an injury...


Beyond the good news about aging joints, the Stanford researchers also discovered some surprising overall health benefits for senior runners when they compared them with non-runners of the same age: Those in the running group were less likely to die from heart trouble, stroke, cancer, neurological diseases or infection.

"The survival rate of the runners was again twice that of the controls," study author Dr. Eliza Chakravarty says. She says the findings were a surprise to the researchers.
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Additionally, runners enjoyed a better day-to-day quality of life in old age than their more sedentary peers. "Members of the running group, it took them 16 years longer to reach certain levels of disability," says Chakravarty.