Why Jogging May Be Better For Your Health Than Running

If you’re a runner who secretly hates running, here’s some good news: Taking it down a notch or two, settling into a leisurely jog rather than an all-out run, may actually be better for your health in the long term. A small new study shows what others have hinted at in the past: That jogging may be just as good, and perhaps even better, than running when it comes to how long we live.

The team from Denmark followed over 5000 people taking part in the Copenhagen City Heart Study, and tracked whether they were non-joggers, or joggers who kept a slow, moderate, or strenuous pace. The participants’ health was tracked over the next 12 years, and so was their mortality: 28 of the joggers and 128 of the non-joggers died.

So the connection was this: Joggers of mild and moderate intensity had a lower risk of death than the strenuous joggers. In fact, the lowest mortality risk was that of the mild intensity joggers. The fast-paced joggers had about the same rate of mortality as sedentary people. This suggests that there may be an upper limit to in vigorous exercise, after which the benefits fall off.

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“The U-shaped association between jogging and mortality suggests there may be an upper limit for exercise dosing that is optimal for health benefits,” said study author Peter Schnohr. “If your goal is to decrease risk of death and improve life expectancy, jogging a few times a week at a moderate pace is a good strategy. Anything more is not just unnecessary, it may be harmful.”

The other thing that’s important to point is out the terminology, adds Schnohr, since definitions can vary greatly, depending on who or what organization is doing the defining. In his study, for example, slow jogging was the equivalent of “vigorous exercise” by other standards. “It is important to emphasize that the pace of the slow joggers corresponds to vigorous exercise and strenuous jogging corresponds to very vigorous exercise,” said study author Peter Schnohr. “When performed for decades, this activity level could pose health risks, especially to the cardiovascular system.”

Strenuous exercise is thought to put additional stress on the cardiovascular system. Marathon running has of course been associated with sudden death in several instances. But more research has shown that mild to moderate exercise, like brisk walking, is quite beneficial and may even be preferable to more intense exercise. From the current study, jogging just three times per week, for less than 2.5 hours/week was associated with the lowest overall mortality risk.

As the authors of the study write, “if the goal is to decrease the risk of death and improve life expectancy, going for a leisurely jog a few times per week at a moderate pace is a good strategy. Higher doses of running are not only unnecessary but may also erode some of the remarkable longevity benefits conferred by lower doses of running.”

There’s been a lot of mixed messages about the “right” amount of exercise and what intensity is best. The World Health Organization has suggested that the current 150 minute/week recommendations are too intense for most people to tackle, and that expectations should be lowered, since, after all, anything is better than nothing. A recent study showed that very short bursts of intense activity interspersed with recovery periods is particularly good for the body. Still others have suggested that just 5-10 minutes of slow running a day is linked to reduced risk of heart disease and of death from any cause. And the new study, though quite small in size, adds good evidence that less is sometimes more.

Everyone probably has a level of activity that feels best to him or her. But at least the growing consensus seems to be that more – if you’re pushing yourself very hard – is not necessarily better. And it may even be worse.