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So Now Running Doesn't Help Heart Health?
A new study of Minnesota-based marathon runners calls into question how heart-healthy endurance running is.

The second most popular TED Talk of all time, “Your body language may shape who you are,” features social psychologist Ann Cuddy presenting the idea that “power posing” boosts self-confidence and may even increase your chance of success. There’s a reason such a message resonates with so many people—Youtube alone has 13.3 million views. Problem is, the study Cuddy references has not been reproduced.
This is an emerging problem in science—at least our general awareness of the problem is becoming more prevalent, making our faith in many studies cautionary at best. The latest Radiolab episode, Stereothreat, looks into this phenomenon, in this case predominantly in the social sciences. Results are not being replicated. Yet once an idea is released into the public sphere the likelihood it becomes common wisdom is strong. We only use 10 percent of brain power, anybody?
There is little difference in exercise science, a branch of research even more prone to trends, hype, and terrible ideas. Science is always changing as new studies are conducted. If a previously held assumption is rendered implausible, the science should change. Convincing people to change previously held ideas is not a scientific endeavor, however. It requires emotional appeal. Even then the task is daunting.
What else can we say of a study implying running might not be good for heart health? It’s the type of information that, if you’re a runner, is akin to being religious and learning the Bible is a work of satire. Still, “Fifty Men, 3510 Marathons, Cardiac Risk Factors, and Coronary Artery Calcium Scores,” published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, discovered that among fifty endurance runners, more running did not equate to less arterial plaque.
It should be noted these are supermen in the running world. Each has run at least one marathon for twenty-five consecutive years. Their mean age is fifty-nine, with a mean BMI of 22.44; combined they’ve logged 3,510 marathons. While this study cannot answer questions about your 5k jogs, it does shed insight into the efficacy of extreme mileage on overall heart functioning and, specifically, coronary artery calcium (CAC) scores.
The notion that running lessens heart disease was initiated forty years ago during the first real wave of the marathon craze. In 1976, Dr Thomas Bassler speculated marathon runners were immune from heart disease. Within two years he was proven wrong, but like the 10 percent of brain power notion, his idea has persisted. What serious athlete wouldn’t want immortality conferred unto them, as an idea if not in reality?
This isn’t the only research to cast doubt on the heart-running connection. As the NY Times reports, a recent study of middle-aged male triathletes found that top-notch competitors had more scarring inside of their hearts, while other studies pointed out that endurance athletes suffer a different form of atherosclerosis than their sedentary peers. As for the above study, which was focused on Minnesota-based marathon runners:
When the scientists compared the men’s running histories to their scan results, however, they found little relationship between how much they had run overall and how much plaque they had in their arteries. Those men who had run the greatest number of marathons did not tend to have less, or more, arterial plaque than the men who had run fewer races, indicating that extreme running itself had not increased the severity of heart disease.
Running is not a silver bullet for overcoming bad dietary and lifestyle habits, writes the team, which was led by William Roberts of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. Though there was surprisingly little variation in HDL cholesterol levels among these fifty men, limiting factors include differences in tobacco usage, age, when they began running, and dietary habits. As Roberts told the Times, “You just can’t outrun your past.”
Most importantly this sort of research calls into question the limits of the human body. Endurance is a human trait—it’s why we can’t beat a horse (or most any other quadruped) in a sprint but can easily jog past it in a marathon—yet how much we should endure is a constant question in fitness. Scientifically-backed data give us a clearer indication of how much is healthy and what amount is too much.
Of course, this, like most every exercise form, is individual, which also has to be taken into consideration. Many studies cannot be replicated broadly, and it should be remembered that running is a birthright. We just have to understand what it provides and what it does not. We know it’s better to hit the trail than to sit at home. Where that trail leads remains open for speculation.
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Derek Beres is the author of Whole Motion: Training Your Brain and Body For Optimal Health. Based in Los Angeles, he is working on a new book about spiritual consumerism. Stay in touch on Facebook and Twitter.
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Here’s how you know when someone’s lying to your face
When someone is lying to you personally, you may be able to see what they're doing.
