Welcome to the Get Fit Guys quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

So this week, a Copenhagen City heart study was released that showed regular jogging

will increase the life expectancy of men by 6.2 years and women by 5.6

years. Suddenly, fitness blogs, TV shows, and magazines all over the place trumpeted the news that

running will make you live longer. But does running really make you live longer, or is it bad for you? On this

episode, you'll learn whether or not it's actually healthy to take up the sport of running.

Back in the 1970s, after a few men died while out on a run, various news outlets suggested that

jogging might be too strenuous for ordinary middle-aged people.

Just a few years later in 1976, the Copenhagen City Heart Study, which I'll link to in the show

notes, began as a cardiovascular study of about 20,000 men and women between 20 to 93 years old.

This study explored incidents of heart failure, pulmonary disease, allergies, epilepsy, dementia,

and other diseases in relation to different forms of exercise and other lifestyle factors.

For the running part of the study, the mortality of 1,116 male joggers and 762 female joggers was compared to the non-joggers.

Results showed that over 35 years, 10,158 deaths were registered among the non-joggers and 122 deaths among the joggers.

That's pretty significant, and that's not all. Further analysis

revealed a U-shaped curve for the relationship between time spent exercising and mortality.

So this revealed that the optimum amount of time to run for increasing your lifespan was between

one hour and two and a half hours per week over two to three

sessions. So that comes out to about 30 to 60 minutes per running session for two to three sessions

a week. In addition, a self-reported slow or average pace delivered more benefits than a hard

and fast pace. But wait a minute, what about famous runners and marathoners you've

...