Excessive Cardio May Do More Harm Than Good

Joseph Mercola reveals the health dangers of too much cardio exercise. More is definitely not better.

... In the TED talk above, Dr. James O'Keefe, a research cardiologist and a former elite athlete, discusses an important point that can be difficult for some to accept, namely the fact that extreme cardio can actually do more harm than good...

I am about two years older than Dr. O'Keefe and had a similar running history. Dr. O'Keefe actually won the largest sprint distance triathlon in Kansas City five years in a row, from 1999 to 20041 . Although I was never an elite athlete like Dr. O'Keefe, I had run a 2:50 marathon previously. It is satisfying to hear Dr. O'Keefe validate what I have been writing about for years now. I suspect we both wised up and stopped running at about the same age, after many decades of intense endurance training.

The myth that extreme endurance cardio is good for your heart took off at full speed when, in 1977, Dr. Thomas Bassler boldly proclaimed that "completing a marathon confers immunity against heart attack." Many die-hard runners still believe this to be true. Read more