Scientists discover the secret to living longer than your life expectancy, but it’s not for the faint of heart

When it comes to longevity, it’s a sprint, not a marathon.

And yes, you read that correctly.

A new study found that people who ran a mile in under four minutes lived five years longer than their peers.

This goes against what many scientists currently think about extreme exercise, Steve Foulkes, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Alberta, told DailyMail.com.

Sir Bannister, pictured here at the age of 75, poses with the stopwatch measuring his record-breaking mile.

Their theory is that the enormous stress that extreme athletes put on their bodies can cause heart problems and lead to earlier death, Dr. Foulkes to DailyMail.com.

Their results were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Only a few thousand people in the world have ever recorded such a fast time, but the researchers say it’s proof that whatever form of exercise you choose to do can be beneficial for your body.

Much emphasis has been placed on slow and steady exercise, as evidenced by the 10,000 steps per day camp. But Foulke’s research shows that extreme exercise can actually be more beneficial for our bodies.

“The great thing about exercise is that it is stress, but it’s a stress that our bodies are really designed to deal with, adapt to and get stronger from,” he said.

We can see that when we look back in history. Sir Roger Bannister became the first known person to run a mile in under four minutes in May 1954.

Since then, 1,754 other men have crossed that same line, according to the Sub-4 Chronicle, the database used in the study. Most runners come from the US, Great Britain and Kenya.

The researchers looked at 200 of the sub-four-minute mile runners who achieved their record between 1954 and 1974 so they could see how these prodigious athletes fared as they got older. By the time the study began, 30 percent of the men had died.

But overall, the researchers found that the runners lived an average of four years and eight months longer than people their age who ran less than four miles.

This is likely because extreme athletes get some of the same benefits from exercise as normal people, Dr. Foulkes said.

Running can help lubricate the bloodstream, keep your heart strong, support your immune system in the fight against cancer and help you dodge lifestyle diseases like diabetes and obesity.

People who walked less than four miles lived an average of four years and eight months longer than the average population.

To run a sub-four, the athletes likely had to train between nine and 12 hours per week, the authors wrote.

Although exercise recommendations vary widely, the CDC recommends about an hour and 15 minutes of vigorous cardio every week.

So it’s safe to say that these men trained more than the average man.

In these extreme exercise conditions, some science points to side effects.

First, research has shown that people’s hearts release signs of oxygen deprivation and damage immediately after a period of extreme exercise, Dr. Foulkes said.

‘If we look very closely at someone after exercise, we can see scary, frightening things. But that’s because exercise is an intense thing,” he explained, saying exercise is an intense thing that our bodies can adapt to.

For another example, Dr. Foulkes a very influential one Study from 2013 which looked at how 17,000 Danes grew older. The Danish researchers found that people who jogged quietly and regularly lived about five years longer than others in the cohort.

But the small group of people who followed intense running routines had about the same life expectancy as people who didn’t exercise at all.

This, Dr Foulkes said, suggested there might be a Goldilocks exercise zone. This is called the U-shaped hypothesis of exercise: if you do too little or too much, you are more likely to die than if you do a moderate amount.

Later research explained these differences by showing that too much exercise can put a strain on your heart and circulatory system, according to Dr. Carl Lavie, a cardiologist at the University of Queensland School of Medicine, and his colleagues wrote in a 2020 judgement.

Dr. However, Foulkes said the u-shaped hypothesis of exercise is unproven. Articles like his add to the growing doubt that people who devote their lives to extreme sports are harmed by them.

One large-scale study from 2022 published in the magazine Circulation found that people who exercised more than recommended had a 38 percent lower risk of developing heart disease.

One thing that all articles, regardless of where they fall within the U-shaped hypothesis, agree on is that everyone can benefit from some practice. And you don’t have to be able to run a mile in under four minutes to experience the benefits of exercise, Dr. Foulkes said.

Regular, moderate exercise is enough, he said.

Dr. Foulkes said exercise is “really like a multi-pill drug, so to speak. You know, they always say that if you could make exercise into a pill, it would be the best-selling drug or drug on the market.”