Monday morning I had an appointment with my DR. She knows that I’m a big runner and she mentioned something that I found very odd.
She said she read an article in Redbook entitled What Cardiologists Tell Their Friends. One of the things was that repeated excessive effort can overstretch the heart muscle causing micro-size tears – damage that is often seen in marathon runners.
She said that the heart is a muscle like any other muscle and shouldn’t be worked every day.
In my mind, this goes against everything I’ve ever heard!!!
I’m not sure how I feel about the article and my DR’s thoughts on this subject – I like to workout at an intense level every day and can’t wrap my head around the fact that this could be damaging the very muscle I’m trying to make stronger.
Have you ever heard anything like this?
What do you think – is running doing more damage than good?
I have no plans to quit running and pushing myself – it makes me feel good to workout hard almost every day!!
Happy Wednesday!
Kim
Running is, of course, great for the heart but overdoing it, beyond your stamina and strength sometimes could harm more than do good to your heart. I have heard of cases when very healthy individuals in their effort to run at top speeds actually died on the treadmill due to heart attack.
What I suggest is build your stamina and strength in an organic way and gradually increase the speed and the distance that you cover.
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