Tom Chivers

Bad news for the lazy – jogging isn’t actually bad for you

There’s nothing the health editors of the nation love more than a counter-intuitive story. We’ve been over the red-wine-is-good-for-you, chocolate-is-good-for-you ones before (which tend to fall at various points on the spectrum between ‘sort of true but misleading’ and ‘downright false’). But there is the reverse kind of stories, too: the ‘exercise is actually bad for you’ ones.

The one that did the rounds this week was the news that ‘too much’ jogging is as bad for you as not doing any exercise at all. ‘The study, which examined hours of jogging, frequency, and the individual’s perception of pace, found that strenuous joggers were as likely to die as sedentary non-joggers, while light joggers had the lowest rates of death,’ reports the Daily Mail.  The BBC and Telegraph both run the story too.

You can see, as always, why this appeals.

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