Running

Research summary

• A meta-analysis and large cohort study both show that running, even in modest weekly amounts, is associated with meaningfully lower all-cause and cardiovascular mortality compared to not running, and broader cardiorespiratory fitness meta-analyses support the same general pattern.
• Some studies in this dataset concern unrelated topics such as metabolite biology in aging mice, which do not bear on running specifically and are set aside here.
• The core running-mortality association is consistent across the relevant studies and aligns with the wider physical activity literature, though as with walking and cycling, most evidence is observational, so the exact causal contribution of running versus overall fitness or lifestyle is not fully isolated.