Do bodybuilders have a short lifespan?

At present, there is no authoritative large-sample epidemiological study that can prove that the average life span of bodybuilders is significantly shorter than that of ordinary healthy people. The reason why this statement is widely spread is probably because the extreme cases of individual professional bodybuilders who do not train naturally are applied to the entire group of bodybuilders. This is a typical overgeneralization. Just like you cannot use the concussion risk of professional boxers and say that all people who box for exercise will have a short life, it completely confuses the differences between different groups.

I have been competing in natural bodybuilding for three years, and I have indeed seen two completely opposite situations around me. In the past two years, the news of Olympian Dallas McCarver's sudden death of a heart problem at the age of 26 came across the circle. At that time, the circle also discussed for a long time. This kind of professional unnatural bodybuilders who use illegal drugs such as anabolic steroids and growth hormone all year round, in order to pursue the ultimate muscle mass, overload their internal organs for a long time. The rate of heart hypertrophy and liver and kidney function damage is indeed very high. Many people develop serious chronic disease problems before they are 60 years old, and even die young. This is also the main source of the saying that "bodybuilders are short-lived".

But if the scope is extended to the natural fitness participating groups, the situation is completely different. I know an elder brother who won the overall championship in the provincial natural fitness competition. He is 51 this year. He never controls his diet very much outside of the preparation period. He has a regular schedule and sleeps until 10 pm and must go to bed at 6 am. He does not smoke or drink. His blood lipids, blood pressure, and blood sugar indicators in the annual physical examination are better than those of a 22-year-old guy who just joined the company. Last week, he took several of us young runners to run a half marathon, and his finishing results were better than many horse racing enthusiasts all year round. It is obviously untenable to say that these types of fitness athletes have shorter lives than ordinary people.

Of course, this does not mean that fitness athletes are completely free of health risks. Many practitioners of powerlifting and weightlifting programs train with heavy weights all year round, and have more or less old injuries in their lumbar spine, knees, and rotator cuffs. If they do not pay attention to maintenance after retirement, the risk of limited mobility in old age is indeed higher than that of ordinary people.； There are also some young athletes who have just entered the industry who, in order to achieve good results, undergo extreme dehydration and decarbation during the preparation period, and even take supplements with unknown ingredients, which will also cause hidden dangers to the body.

To put it bluntly, it is not scientific fitness itself that shortens life span, but drug abuse that is eager for quick success, extreme training and eating patterns that violate the body's laws, and the bad habit of not intervening when injured. As long as fitness athletes train naturally and have a degree of relaxation, they generally have a higher probability of gaining a longer healthy life span than ordinary people who sit for long periods of time and move less. Not to mention the "short-term fitness life", if it is really compared, the health risks of sedentary social animals who stay up late and eat takeaways all the time are much higher than those of fitness athletes who train regularly.