Exercise kills! (Health)

[Grant]

Not just heart attacks.

The journalist Andrew Marr has, of course, just suffered a stroke. He was a keen jogger and marathon runner and all that stuff. The next day on BBC Breakfast TV they had an interview with a stroke victim aged about thirty. "You're not a typical stroke victim" asked the lovely Louise Minchin. "No" he said, " I had been for a nice run only the previous day..."

Of course this is merely anecdotal, but so were the fears about smoking fifty years ago.

[Chad]

Those who watched Andrew Marr this morning will know he actually ruptured a carotid artery during a vigorous session on a rowing machine, leading to a major stroke.

(Just pass me that bacon butty luv... I don't want to exert myself climbing off the couch.)

[Ishmael]

The world again catches up with Mick Harper.

New Research Says Endurance Running May Damage Health

[Mick Harper]

I am in a chronic state of physical ill health in the sense of not being able to walk a hundred yards without having to rest up for a few minutes. This does not bother me overmuch since my requirement to walk a hundred yards is limited to once a week when I have to walk four hundred yards to Tesco and back.

Nevertheless it is worrying because the condition means my propensity to fall and not be able to get back up again and hence get rushed off to either a care home or the morgue is everpresent. So I do exercises for it.

Yesterday I learned that these exercises are only useful, and then only marginally useful, for the walking part of my malaise. Walking requires sound continuous-activity muscles. What I need are sound 'fast twitch muscles'. I have accordingly changed to a completely different set of ludicrously simple exercises.

The reason I'm telling you this no doubt boringly familiar information is that, for the last ten years, I have been urged by every medical professional apprised of my condition, to ''get an exercise bike', 'go for a brisk walk every day' and similar antidotes that have no effect on my falling-down condition, however beneficial they may be in other respects.