(Washington Post via Yahoo!) – So he and his colleagues recruited 94 extreme runners, ages 35 to 50. Each had completed at least five marathons or two ultras (meaning any race longer than a standard 26.2-mile marathon).

The runners underwent a colonoscopy.

The outcomes “were rather startling,” Cannon said. Nearly half of the runners had polyps, also known as adenomas, in their colons. Some of these polyps could develop into cancer, Cannon said, although many won’t. But 15 percent of the runners had large, advanced adenomas, “which are much farther along on the continuum to cancer,” he said. None had colon cancer. (Read More)