August 13, 2014 – A Little Run

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Anchor lead:  Just five minutes of running most days provides big health benefits, Elizabeth Tracey reports

Are you willing to spend five minutes most days of the week in exercise to substantially reduce your risk of mortality?  A recently published study of tens of thousands of people showed that just five to ten minutes of running most days of the week substantially reduced mortality risk compared with no running.  Michael Blaha, a preventive cardiology expert at Johns Hopkins, applauds the study.

Blaha: I think this study reinforces a very important public health message, which is that we don’t need to be long distance runners to get a little health benefit. In fact, just small bouts of running, five to fifteen minutes a day several times a week can give you 30-45% risk reduction.  I would say optimum is running most days of the week.  We don’t need to be marathon runners though, in fact there’s data that suggest that marathon runners don’t necessarily get any more health benefits than regular, routine running several days per week.  :29

Blaha suggests that such a goal is quite doable and tolerable.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.