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Grant
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Just heard of a friend of a friend who was a keen exercise fan. He's just had a major heart attack and has had a stent put in. Still alive, but not good news.
Then I remembered all the other people I have known - or at least read about - who died whilst exercising and it got me thinking. Suppose exercise was actually bad for you? How long would it take before someone proved it in the stats. After all, people smoked for 400 years before enough evidence was gathered to show it was dangerous.
What happens now is that when someone dies when they are out jogging, we hear from doctors that, yes there was a congenital problem but if they hadn't been so healthy they might have died earlier. As far as I can see, this is just wishful thinking. Without the jogging they might have survived with their defect for another 40 years!
And there's another problem - the sheer irrationality in what you could call the exercise religion.
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Grant
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Let's look at exercise in its relation to the health of the heart. We are told that if we exercise our heart it will get stronger. But hang on.....
The heart beats 70 times a minute, so 70 x 60 x 24= 100,800 a day. Isn't that a pretty amazing amount of exercise anyway? How could we possibly make it healthier by making it go a little faster for half an hour? The idea is nuts! And think of the damage we do to joints and tendons when we pound the roads trying to raise the heart rate.
My prediction is that eventually we will discover that exercise actually reduces life-span.
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It is true that extreme exercise, like the ultra-marathon, is detrimental to one's health.
But people die exercising because they don't do enough of it. It's like those radio warnings that come on after a heavy snowfall. They warn middle-aged men to take it easy when they shovel the snow so they don't have a heart attack.
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Grant
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| But people die exercising because they don't do enough of it. |
What about James Fixx? And all the thousands of other regular runners who also dropped dead? According to medical orthodoxy every time a jogger dies of a heart attack there are two reasons: one, they overdid the exercise; two, there was a congenital problem (like with Fixx).
Suppose you buy an old car with 100,000 miles on the clock. Will it last longer if you drive carefully or if three times a week you take it to the local race track? It's not a perfect analogy because the car doesn't repair itself, but you get the idea.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Many of you have been bombarding me with anxious enquiries about the current whereabouts of our Editor-in-Chief, Keimpe. I can now reveal that he has been in strict training for the 2012 Olympic Marathon. The secrecy was due to the fact that, as an Applied Epistemologist, he had worked out that by running barefoot he would save one point two per cent of bodyweight and thereby beat the Ethiopians by at least two minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lHh8JseeHA
His request to run naked in order to smash the present world record has been vetoed by the Calvinist Reformed Church which said that a Dutchman not running in orange was an abomination in the sight of the Lord.
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GrouchoMarxthespot
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| His request to run naked in order to smash the present world record has been vetoed by the Calvinist Reformed Church which said that a Dutchman not running in orange was an abomination in the sight of the Lord. |
Would he not, as a Northern European, have become orange quite quickly by running naked?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Why do they all talk funny?
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Keimpe
In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Barefoot running strengthens the ankle joints. Having a vulnerable ankle suddenly doesn't seem so mythical after all.
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Keimpe
In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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It's not about strengtening the joints, but about not beating the hell out of them with every step. You see, when running barefoot, you cannot land on your heel (because that hurts) like you do in modern running shoes. You have to land on your fore/mid-foot. This puts less stress on the joints, because the impact on landing is much softer.
This and more in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrnj-7YKZE
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Keimpe
In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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| Grant wrote: | | What about James Fixx? And all the thousands of other regular runners who also dropped dead? |
People tend to drop dead. We are all perishable. I think more non-runners than runners have heart attacks.
Another important factor is pain killers. They increase the risk of heart attacks (http://arthritis.webmd.com/news/20050616/study-most-painkillers-up-heart-attack-risk)
And because some athletes who get injured, want to continue running so they take pain killers instead of breaks, this may increase their risk.
Football players are also prone to take pain killers before a match. This may explain the frequent accounts of football players dropping dead on the pitch. I've heard our star player, Wesley Sneijder, say he doesn't play a single match without pain killers. I hope he's insured....
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Keimpe wrote: | | Grant wrote: | | People tend to drop dead. We are all perishable. I think more non-runners than runners have heart attacks. |
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Not when you adjust for weight, I confidently assert.
The thesis also is consistent with why calorie-reduced diets tend to (mysteriously) promote longevity. Reduced heart strain is the key to long life in the mean.
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Keimpe
In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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| Ishmael wrote: | Not when you adjust for weight, I confidently assert.
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So you're saying fat people get more heart attacks than skinny people, but among skinny people more runners (or athletes in general) get heart attacks than non-runners?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Keimpe wrote: | | So you're saying fat people get more heart attacks than skinny people, but among skinny people more runners (or athletes in general) get heart attacks than non-runners? |
Yeppers.
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Keimpe
In: Leeuwarden, Frisia
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| Ishmael wrote: | | The thesis also is consistent with why calorie-reduced diets tend to (mysteriously) promote longevity. Reduced heart strain is the key to long life in the mean. |
There's nothing mysterious about it. Modern man eats way to much calories and especially carbs.
One month ago I did a 10 day fast, called "sportfasting". The essential element being that besides not eating, you also put in a high-speed 30 minute run every day. This switches your body from burning sugar to burning fat. This later lets you run marathons without having to load carbs beforehand, and (more importantly) without collapsing around the 30 km mark (because even skinny men have enough fat to run hundreds of miles in one go, but only enough carbs for 20-30 kms).
After the fast, you are only allowed one carb meal a day, and you must exercise vigorously for at least 4 hours a week.
The effects on me were amazing. I lost 4kg in the 10 days, the weight did not come back immdediately the day after, I felt years younger, and running never felt better. Unfortunately, a week after the fast, I BADLY sprained my ankle (not while running) and was unable to run for three weeks. This means my muscles have now probably lost the fat burning 'memory' and I'll have to take a short 3 day fast to remind them again.
Sportfasting is a Dutch 'invention'. This is about the only English information I have:
http://www.sportvasten.nl/?new_language=uk
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