Sunday, May 26, 2013

Inflammatory Headline

The Wall St. Journal strikes fear into the hearts of runners with its headlines:

The Exercise Equivalent of a Cheeseburger?
New Research Says Endurance Running May Damage Health
Please note the question mark and the "may". They're both important.

What the actual research "suggests" is that endurance exercise is good for you, but maybe only up to a point.

That benefit may disappear beyond 30 miles of running a week, suggest recent research.

As for me, I don't average anything near that mileage. So I'm not going to sweat this.

Besides, are cheeseburgers really so bad for you?

As the cynical saying has it: Eat right. Exercise religiously. Die anyway.

If a newspaper's health advice seems strange,
wait till next week - it will probably change.

3 comments:

Charlie McDanger said...

I can be accused of a certain level of cynicism, but that sort of diet/exercise defeatism confounds me. It's about quality of life, not duration.

Charlie McDanger said...

p.s. When I was a kid, the WSJ had no color, no photographs, and no outsized or sensationalist headlines. Good ol' days.

John Enright said...

I remember that version of WSJ too. They would have line drawings at times.

And, I agree it's crazy to ignore quality of life. It's not like most people choose their exercise regimens by running equations to optimize medical impact, either.