During the past few years exercise and being healthy has been a big thing. Some people go to the gym on top of their daily sports because as the saying goes “no pain, no gain”. As we all know the way to be healthy is the exercise and eat healthy. However, did you know there’s a point where working out too much can become detrimental to your health instead of benefit it?

When you exercise your muscles are said to release lactic acid which builds up and is what causes the soreness in your muscles. However, a study was conducted by scientists at the University of Utah showing that lactate, certain acids and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) are actually the three factors at fault. They injected these 3 substances into mouse nerves. When done one at a time there was no effect but when injected all at the same time the nerve cells responded. Similar effects happened with human subjects. The accumulation of these substances is what causes your muscles to hit a wall which would be exercising too much.

Another study was done in Britain based on the amount of running the people did and their age. The only collected all men who were fit and heart healthy from either a British national or Olympic team. This group ranged from the age of 26-67. Then they compiled another group who were healthy but not endurance athletes. These groups both got imaging done that tested for fibrosis which can lead to stiffening of the heart and cause heart failure. The results were interesting. None of the young athletes or old non athletes had fibrosis. However, half of the middle aged men, who have trained longest and hardest, showed some heart scarring.

However, it has been hard for scientists to find a clear relationship between excessive exercise and heart complications. For example, fibrosis was found in less active older men. But some of these racers took up running later in life so who’s to say the heart damage wasn’t cause from smoking or what not previous to their marathon training.

The new study avoids that though. None of the athletes were new to exercise and only one of them had smoked. However, that still can’t prove the weight and endurance training caused the heart damage, just that the two are associated with each other. As we learned in class, correlation does not equal causation.

So, it was decided to start a new experiment using rats. They had healthy rats run at an intense pace every day for three months which is equivalent to 10 human years. This was meant to mimic serious marathon training. At the beginning the rats hearts were normal but at the end their hearts showed signs of scarring and structural changing just like the hearts in humans hearts. The unexercised control group showed no sign in a change in their hearts. Interestingly however, after the stopped running for 8 weeks, the hearts returned back to their healthy state.

Now combining these too experiments it is hard to say at what point too much exercise is a bad thing. This is because yes, over a prolonged period of time you will do harm to your body but that means consistently working out to your fullest potential for years on end. Therefore, Dr. Volder’s says to exercise regularly like you would because the chances of permanent damage happening are unlikely but if you notice any changes in your body to consult your doctor.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/when-exercise-is-too-much-of-a-good-thing/?_r=0

http://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-too-much-exercise-can-be-bad-042514

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/too-much-exercise-may-be-bad-for-the-heart/