U shaped relationship between resistance training and mortality rates?

Hi both,

I recently watched Dr Milo Wolf’s youtube video discussing the 2022 Haruki Momma et al. meta-analysis on resistance training and mortality rates (Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies - PubMed). I know there is another meta-analysis by Shailendra et al. (Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases: a systematic review and meta-analysis of cohort studies - PubMed) in the same year with a similar conclusion.
I was quite surprised to learn of the U shaped relationship observed between minutes spent doing resistance training and mortality rates.

Personally I found it quite confronting given I train 4x per week, typically for an hour at a time and have done for years now. I don’t want to disregard the relationship completely as I know that wouldn’t be evidence based practice but that would support my bias :rage: I also watched Greg Nuckols take on the same topic. The general conclusion I gathered from reading and listening to others is that lifting for longer than 30-60 minutes per week may or may not be better for health and could actually be worse. Although, there was another journal article I read that suggested not reducing your lifting frequency if you’re already tolerating it (How much resistance exercise is beneficial for healthy aging and longevity? - PMC) which I found somewhat reassuring.

I understand the meta-analyses are based on observational studies and so there could be potential confounding variables. The authors do state a cautious interpretation of the data due to the lack of studies. Greg made another good point that generally the studies were performed on older populations and I could see the populations studied were generally 45 and over… which makes sense if you’re studying mortality I would imagine.

Anyway, I’m just wondering if you are aware of these studies and what your thoughts were? And if they differed at all from my own conclusions?

Thanks

Dan.

We’ve discussed this a number of times on this board before. We would not agree with the idea that " lifting for longer than 30-60 minutes per week may or may not be better for health and could actually be worse."

It’s also good that the studies included older people, as data on younger individuals would not be helpful at answering this question. Still, the observational data does not provide evidence of causation. This is important, as well controlled experimental data shows that greater exercise volume is associated with better health, reduced mortality, and greater function. That said, most people don’t need to lift weights for many hours per week. It doesn’t seem harmful based on well-controlled data.

Thanks for the reply Jordan. I thought it might have been discussed previously but I couldn’t find anything linked to barbell medicine when I was searching on Google. I think Milo’s video has gotten quite a few people worried looking at the comments on his video.

Is the experimental data specifically on resistance training exercise volume? And would you have any links to research on that? I’ll likely have a search if not so don’t worry if you don’t know the authors names off the top of your head but if you do I would be interested to read it.

I think it is problematic when experts do not do a good job communicating science. We’ve definitely been guilty of that before and its not easy.

Yes, higher levels of both conditioning and resistance training exercise volume is associated with improvements in all-cause mortality and metrics of health. I am not really interested in doing another review here, but here are a few thoughts and resources to keep you going:

  1. Self reporting RT in minutes per week is not very instructive. Extreme caution should be used here
  2. Relatively few participants did RT for > 140 min/wk, making generalizability difficult. The authors do not make Dr. Wolf’s claim, for reference.
  3. In the analysis being discussed, diabetes risk decreased in a dose dependent manner with increasing RT volume
  4. Research review on dose dependent relationship: Volume for Muscle Hypertrophy and Health Outcomes: The Most Effective Variable in Resistance Training | Sports Medicine
  5. All cause mortality: Dose-dependent association between muscle-strengthening activities and all-cause mortality: Prospective cohort study among a national sample of adults in the USA - ScienceDirect I could keep going regarding various metrics of health, e.g. resting blood pressure, blood sugar management, lipids, and so on.

-Jordan

Interesting that the prospective cohort study you linked last wasn’t included in the Haruki Momma meta-analysis. I’m assuming it’s because Momma et al. only included studies assessing resistance training independently and in combination with aerobic exercise, whereas Dankel et al. only looked at resistance training from what I can see. I wonder if that could have potentially excluded some important studies and maybe altered the results if other studies like that were missed as well.

I’ll keep reading around the topic but I do find some of that reassuring at least.
I appreciate your time Jordan,

Thanks again,

Dan

Yea, I think there are multiple issues here. For the record, I have little concern for an independent risk of lifting weights too often.