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

My name is Ben Greenfield. I'm the Get Fit Guy, and in this special two-part series, you're going to learn about whether or not cardio is going to kill you.

Because recently, the Wall Street Journal released a controversial article

called The Potential Cardiac Dangers of Extreme Exercise, and it actually revisited a question

I've explored before, that question being how much exercise is too much, but we need to delve

into the newest findings unveiled by this article.

Now, if you want access to that article, previous podcast episodes I've done on how much exercise

is too much, and anything else I mention in this two-part series, you can check out

quick and dirty tips.com. For this part, part one, look for episode 265.

So this newest article revealed the disturbing news that exercise that's extreme in volume

and intensity is associated with high levels of atherosclerotic plaque in your coronary arteries.

The study that the article reports on

looked at 169 veteran competitive endurance athletes and compared them to a control group of

171 relatively sedentary subjects. The study revealed lower levels of coronary artery calcium, which is a significant risk factor for heart disease,

in athletes who ran fewer than 35 miles a week or cycled fewer than 100 miles a week.

But the group who ran or cycled beyond that volume were found to have higher levels of coronary artery calcium than the control sedentary

group. In addition to excess volume creating coronary artery issues, the study discovered an

association between coronary calcium and exercise intensity. Compared with the control group again,

the study found significantly lower levels of coronary calcium in men and women who

exercised at lower intensities. In both men and women, coronary calcium levels rose as speed and

intensity increased, and the fastest men had especially higher levels of coronary calcium.

Now, granted, the type of plaque found within these heavy exercisers was called dense plaque,

...