Reposted from Men’s Health:  Hundreds of guys — including some of the world’s fittest men — have taken their final breaths while wearing running shoes. Here’s how to outsmart the reaper –

Guy goes out for a run. It’s just a 4-miler–nothing, really, to a seasoned marathoner who usually runs 10 miles a day, 7 days a week. Nobody knows why he stops 40 or 50 yards short of his front door–maybe he’s checking his pulse, maybe he’s tying a shoe–but everybody knows what happens next to Jim Fixx, the 52-year-old patron saint of running: He dies.

You’ve heard that story. But you may not know about Edmund Burke, Ph.D., who was to serious endurance cycling what Fixx was to running. He died on a training ride last fall, at age 53.

And you almost certainly haven’t heard of Frederick Montz, David Nagey, or Jeffrey Williams, three brilliant physicians at Johns Hopkins University who died while running. The oldest of the three was 51.

You’d think that exercise icons should live to be 100. And yet, every year, a few of them go permanently offline at half that age.

Two questions arise. The first is obvious: Why do the hearts of such highly conditioned men fail during exercise designed to make their hearts stronger? The second is so radical it borders on treason against the health and fitness cause: Is there something wrong with the entire notion of endurance exercise as a healthy, life-extending activity?

I’ve been skeptical about the benefits of aerobic exercise for years. But the answers surprised even me. Pull up a chair–you’ll want to be sitting down when you read this.

The Road to Nowhere

The idea that a well-trained endurance athlete could just drop dead was unfathomable a generation ago. Thomas Bassler, M.D., went so far as to say that anyone who could finish a marathon in less than 4 hours could not have serious heart problems. He conducted a study on 14 marathoners who had died of cardiovascular disease, and concluded that all were malnourished. Unfortunately, he reported this conclusion in the July 27, 1984, edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Fixx had died 7 days earlier.

Nobody today believes that endurance training confers immunity to anything, whether it’s sudden death from heart disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis. Every time you lace up your running shoes, there’s a chance your final kick will involve a bucket, and every expert knows this.

“I think the risk is inescapable, and it’s bigger than we’re letting on,” says Paul Thompson, M.D., director of preventive cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut and a researcher who studies sudden death and exercise. One of Dr. Thompson’s studies showed that 10 percent of the heart attacks treated at his hospital were exercise related. “Those heart attacks tend to be in people who aren’t fit,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that’s the only group that gets it, unfortunately. There are these very fit guys who go out for a run and drop dead.”

Dr. Thompson’s studies and others show that the chances of sudden death are about one in every 15,000 to 18,000 exercisers per year. That comes to one death for every 1.5 million exercise bouts. Curiously, the most serious endurance athletes seem to be at the greatest risk. Here’s how it breaks down, according to an often-cited 1982 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine: <* />

One death per 17,000 men who exercise vigorously 1 to 19 minutes a week

One death per 23,000 men who exercise vigorously 20 to 139 minutes a week

One death per 13,000 men who exercise vigorously 140 or more minutes a week

I had to look at the chart twice to see its startling conclusion: The highest death rate is among the men who exercise long and hard, and is much higher than that of the men who exercise short and hard. Worse, the guys who do hardly any vigorous exercise had a lower death rate than the guys who do the most.

About a zillion studies — I lost count in the millions — have shown that aerobic exercise leads to a healthier heart and a longer life.

So I have to wonder why more of such a healthy activity is worse, rather than better.

Sweatin’ to the Oldies

In 1970, a study of San Francisco longshoremen made a strong argument that physical activity helps prevent heart disease. The longshoremen who got promoted to mostly sedentary management positions developed heart disease 25 percent more often than those who worked on their feet.

An important note about this study, and similar ones that preceded it: The subjects weren’t doing formal, steady-pace endurance exercise. They were walking and stopping, lifting things up and putting them down.

Numerous formal exercise studies followed, many of them attempting to quantify how much physical activity is needed to prevent heart disease, and at what intensity levels. The Harvard Alumni Health Study found that heart-disease risk starts going down when you expend more than 500 calories a week and continues to decrease until you get to 2,000 calories a week. Then things level off–more exercise doesn’t offer more protection.

The bottom number isn’t much exercise; a 200-pound man walking 2 hours a week at 3 mph will burn 600 calories. And the top number isn’t particularly intimidating, either. Our 200-pounder would have to run about 16  miles at a 12-minute-mile pace to burn 2,000 calories a week. (Lighter guys will burn fewer calories per minute or mile; bigger men will burn more.)

Intensity is a separate issue, with some studies showing that moderate-intensity exercise (walking, bowling, playing golf) helps your heart, and others showing little benefit until you start cranking (running, lifting serious iron, playing basketball or soccer).

Still other studies measure heart-disease risk by activity level, and these show something really interesting: Once you get past the 75th percentile of physical activity–guys who exercise more than three-quarters of the population–protection against heart disease levels off. In fact, among the most active, it actually declines slightly, according to a review in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. In other words, the superactive are more likely to die than the merely active.

Snow Problem

One reason it’s so hard to understand the whole death-by-exercise phenomenon is that so few people die during formal exercise–there are only about 100 cases per year. So it helps to look at those who suffer heart attacks during heavy physical exertion in general, rather than fitness activities in particular. One important study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993, looked at 1,228 nonfatal heart attacks, 54 of which occurred during or soon after serious exertion. (The cutoff point was 6 metabolic units, or METs. This means the exertion was greater than or equal to six times the energy required by a body at rest. Heavy strength training is considered a 6-MET activity, as are wood chopping and snow shoveling; running 12-minute miles racks up 8 METs.)

The researchers divided the cases into three categories and found that about 18 percent of the exercise-induced heart attacks occurred during lifting and pushing, 30 percent during jogging or sports (racquet sports in particular), and 52 percent during yard work, such as splitting wood.

And that brings us to a major cause of death by exertion: snow shoveling.

A researcher at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, tallied 36 snow-related deaths in the Detroit area following two heavy storms. (Curiously, several of the victims were using snowblowers.)

It’s easy to see why frozen precipitation scores such a high body count. “Heart rates go up like a maximal treadmill test,” says Barry Franklin, Ph.D., director of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at the Beaumont hospital. “Combine that with cold weather, which constricts arteries, and you have a prescription for disaster.”

An interesting point: The men who shovel off to meet their makers following a snowstorm, or who have to call an EMT after putting ax to wood, aren’t doing aerobic activities. There’s no endurance component. Snow shoveling and wood chopping are anaerobic activities–strenuous efforts that can’t be continued longer than a few minutes without stopping to rest.

In other words, these activities resemble strength training and are very different from running or cycling. So you’d probably guess that weight lifting also has a pumped-up body count.

My liver died suddenly for reasons that I still do not know.  In January 1998, I was healthy and active; in February I realized I was sick and on March 6^th I flew to Stanford University in California.  On March 9^th I was in a coma and placed on the transplant list.  My family gathered, but could only wait and pray.  On March 12, 1998, I woke with a new liver and a new life.

I reached out to my donor family early by most standards after my transplant.  I am so very blessed that they reached right back.  We spoke by phone and I met my donor family on the one year anniversary of my transplant.  I learned that my donor was a nineteen year old man who lost his life in a tragic motorcycle accident.  Terry Snow’s parents, John and Kathy, had never discussed organ donation with Terry.  In the midst of their own unimaginable grief, the Snow’s made a decision that would bless several families with the gift in the form of a heart, lung, kidneys and a liver.  Five families received miracles that day.  Words cannot adequately express the gratitude in my heart for my donor family. 

Since my transplant it has become my strong desire to share my experience and accomplishments as a transplant recipient.  I seek out opportunities to show how successful organ transplantation can be while raising awareness for the growing need.  My donor family is an incredible part of that outreach.  Their strength, courage and compassion are unmatched.  Kathy was a nurse at the time of Terry’s death; she is now a Renal Transplant Coordinator.  Our lives have been forever molded together.  Side by side, Kathy and I now share our collective experience and encourage families to discuss organ donation.

During one of our visits in 2001, my donor family told me about the U.S. Transplant Games.  John and Kathy have accompanied my husband, daughter and I to the games in 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2008.   I have competed in cycling, swimming and track.  With John and Kathy by my side, I was honored to receive the Jerry Cound Outstanding Female Athlete Award at the 2006 US Transplant Games.  I have been honored to represent Team USA at the World Transplant Games both in Bangkok, Thailand and in Gold Coast, Australia.  Over the past few years, I have begun competing in triathlons and hope that through my athletic endeavors, I may be able to continue to peak interest and show the success of organ donation.

We held our first Donate Life Walk in 2008.  Our goals were humble as we hoped to have 100 participants.   It became quite evident that first year that we could truly share the need while impacting our community in a positive way as over 300 people came out to support the walk.  It is my personal desire to continue to be a part of this wonderful outreach and to truly impact our community by sharing our stories, honoring donor families and showing the success of organ donation.  I hope that you will consider participating in the 3^rd Annual Donate Life Walk on May 16^th at the Sparks Marina.  

 I have truly been blessed with wonderful experiences and incredible personal recognition; however, the true heroes remain my donor family.  I hope to honor them and the memory of my donor, Terry Snow, in every aspect of my life.

Written by:  Tracy Copeland
Read more on the 3rd Annual Donate Life Walk in Northern Nevada

There are over 107,000 people currently waiting on the National Transplant Waiting List.  Every 10 minutes another name gets added to that list.  Sadly, 18 men, women and children die each day because of lack of available organs.  This April is Donor Awareness Month.  Please consider registering to become an organ donor.  You have the power to donate life!  For more information on organ and tissue donation and transplantation visit The Transplant Network.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking to an undergraduate class of business students about SheerBalance.com. Being back on campus was fantastic in many ways: the intellectual stimulation, the clean air of Ithaca, the beautiful fall weather, and of course, the youthful atmosphere—it just doesn’t get better. 

During my presentation, I became distinctly aware of how different one’s mindset is when one is in school, specifically about health. I looked around the class and I would venture to guess that a good 80 percent of the class looked healthy and fit (yeah, I know they were fifteen years my junior, but that isn’t the point). Looking back, when I was a freshman in college, I discovered exercise and its benefits because I was trying to look good. I’m not ashamed to admit this. I’d be lying if I didn’t. The pressure and desire to look good in your teens and early twenties is enormous. And so, I made sure I looked my best by eating right and exercising. At the time, I viewed my resulted good health purely as an added bonus. 

Today, in my mid-thirties, my perspective is different. My primary objective for eating well and exercising is to be in good health, with ’looking good’ as the added bonus. I’m not sure when this transition occurred, but I have to believe that it is part of the settling down and life changes quotient: you get married, you have children, you have a job that is demanding, and somehow, looking good just isn’t as important as it used to be. That was when it dawned on me: if you never have the transition in mind-set from looking good to feeling good, then in short, you stop feeling incented to exercise and eat right. 

After the class was over, I had a discussion about this with one of the students, who indeed, was in pretty good shape. He asked what challenges I had with Sheer Balance.com. I briefly explained my new found epiphany to him and interestingly enough, he agreed that yes, college students were indeed incented to be healthy to look good. Further, he agreed that yes, maybe, if you remove the desire to look good, then it might be difficult to entice people to be healthy. 

Wow. Is it possible that we care more about our looks than our health? If you look good, but don’t feel good, all is a-okay? And on the other side, if you feel bad but look great, you are a-okay too?

What is your perspective? Do you exercise for vanity or for health?

Reposted from SheerBalance
Article written by Brett Blumenthal
Brett’s Blog: Do you Exercise to Look Good or Feel Good?

Sheer Balance is an online media company geared towards providing women with information on living a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Aimed at natural, holistic approaches, the Sheer Balance provides visitors with information on everything they need to know about fitness regimens, healthy nutrition, holistic and natural health, mental well-being, beauty and even spas and how they fit into a balanced lifestyle.

2. “Because it’s good for you” will never convince a person they should start exercising. You have to appeal to their vanity or remind them that one day they’re going to die and if they don’t get on the wagon, they’ll get run down by it.

3. Once a person starts an exercise routine and sticks with it, they morph into an alien.

I feel the need to pause and discuss number three. Somewhere around week three euphoria sets in. You feel your entire life has a beautiful new veneer. You look better, your clothes fit, and your friends start to notice a difference in your appearance. You feel enlightened. You realize that the answer to any difficult question is exercise. Everyone should exercise. Your natural inclination is to start badgering your friends about their exercise routines. You can’t help it. Someone says, “I’ve been having trouble with my back.” A response leaps out of you, “You need to exercise.” You continue, “I used to have the same problem, but now I exercise. It changed my life.” You’re no longer satisfied with just being healthy yourself, you have to assimilate others. Someone says, “My kids are stressing me out.” You say, “you should try exercise.” “I get headaches a lot” leads straight to “You need an exercise routine.” “My dog won’t stop crapping on my living room rug.” Exercise.

Exercise is always the right answer.

4. Once you have become committed to an exercise program, you live in fear of illness or injury. Really, you are fearful of anything that might knock you off the wagon, because face it, you like being an alien.

5. Exercising regularly makes you want to go to the doctor for your annual physical. Every other year you’ve gotten the lecture from your doc about how you’re NOT exercising, so this year you’re ready to really stick it to him. This, of course, opens the door to ask him about HIS exercise routine.

6. Finally, exercising will tell you who your real friends are. You’ll separate the wheat from the chaff. Your fair weather friends will simply avoid the new you, while your real friends will tell you outright that you’ve become a complete pain in the butt. You will hear such loving phrases as “shut up about your exercise, we don’t care” or “you can only come in if you’re not going to talk about those stupid workout videos” or “no, I don’t want to see your ab muscles again.”

There they are. Six shining reasons to start your own exercise program. Notice how they started out as observations, but they have become reasons to exercise. I can’t help it, the aliens got me fair and square.

Exercise is always the right answer.

Exercise can kill you. Well, so can lots of other things, but people tout exercise as all good, all the time.  Before couch potatoes get excited here, life as an inanimate object doesn’t get excellent results either.  Well, then, obviously, some middle ground exists. However, since slugs receive unending, universal criticism while people who live at the gym reap admiration, I’ll talk about the exercise buffs.

Exercise stresses the body. It builds free radicals, those natural enemies that rust out our various and sundry parts.

Exercise’s benefits come from recovery. After you stop exercising, your body sets about making things right. Your feelings of well-being, even euphoria, come from recovery.

If exercise leaves you feeling exhausted, you’re doing yourself in. Your exercise created too deep a stress pit for recovery to dig out. Very bad idea.

Let your body tell you what to do. Exercise in short bursts and find your balance between exercise and recovery. This is especially essential for anybody with endocrine problems-thyroid, adrenals, etc. You’re in enough trouble without force-marching your body through rigorous exercise.

Walking can build you up. Just don’t walk so fast you can’t carry on a conversation as you go; that’s a sign you’ve passed the stress/recovery balance. And don’t go so far that your patooty’s dragging on the way home.

Lifting light weights as you watch TV helps. A few lifts with two-pound weights may be where you start. Not to worry. You’re doing something. Just let it build.

Don’t go at exercise to prove anything, just to bless your health.

The ideal is always to do what you can do without knocking the stress/recovery balance for a loop. Results happen wherever you start. The stress-recovery balance moves up as you keep on keeping on.

Let your body lead the way.

The next day, you run into one of these newly-understanding people while out on a power walk. A week later, you use your handicapped tag when you both go to the mall…and suddenly your newly-understanding friend gets a smug look on their face and say something like “Last week you could walk 3 miles but today you can’t walk from the other side of the parking lot? Yeah, right. I wish my doctor would say I needed a tag for when I’m tired, too.”

And the emotional pain starts all over.

For some reason, in our world, it’s all or nothing. Everything is black and white, no gray, no shading, no middle ground. Either you’re fully disabled every day or you must be faking every day. Why is it so hard to get people to understand that chronic illnesses change day by day? So many factors affect how a chronic sufferer feels on a given day…the season, time of day, weather, emotional or mental stress, what you’re wearing, what you’ve eaten, when you ate, how you slept, sometimes even how you were sitting earlier in the day! And that’s just a partial list. That’s WHY the motto is “one day at a time”, after all!

I have good days. I want to be thankful for those days, but sometimes I can’t shush that little voice in my head that says “better be careful who knows it”. Teachers/professors are especially tricky with this one. I used to actually get nervous that if I walked across campus one day and a professor saw me, it would start a problem the next time I was a minute late for class because I had to drive between buildings or wait for the elevator…and believe me, this fear was NOT unfounded.

I have good days. I even sometimes have good weeks! I’m very very lucky; my doctors and I have worked together over the past few years to stabilize my conditions. In relative terms, they are very controlled, and progressing fairly slowly (delaying the inevitable has become a focus for me). As someone who used to have serious flares at the drop of a hat, I definitely appreciate this gift of stability. My flares were rough…sometimes lasting 2-3 weeks (not counting the gradual recovery period), and they included a whole range of miserable symptoms from complete exhaustion to muscle, joint, and bone pain that never let up, to incapacitating stomach pains. The extreme swings from high to low I had in high school would make a roller coaster look like a ride on a lazy river. It’s not that I never have flares anymore, or that I feel good every day, but my flares are fewer, farther between, and often not quite as severe as they used to be. Instead of true ‘flares’, I more often just have a ‘low’ day where I don’t feel 100%, but can still function in most ways. If the long term goal of sufferers is to find a cure for their illness, this stability is the short term goal of almost every chronic illness sufferer on the planet. And I’ve been blessed to nearly achieve it!

But that brings me back to the villianization of exercise and my opening scenario. Since I am in the most stable place I’ve been in most of my life, I have begun some light exercise I couldn’t do before. I like to do boxing on the Wii game system…it’s no impact, cardio, and works my core and arms. Since I need no-impact exercise I have an elliptical trainer, and aquatic workouts would be ideal. However, I can’t swim, nor can I afford the money or time to join a club right now. So, the primary exercise I’ve been doing is good old walking. Walking is actually very good for me…I walk a good distance so I work on my stamina and the motion of walking helps my flexibility and range of motion. Naturally, my doctor is thrilled. My critics, however, are not.

As an invisible illness sufferer (and let’s face it, one who puts herself and her illnesses out on center stage to try to raise awareness), I spend a lot of time trying to convince people that I am legitimately disabled to an extent and have a right to specific accomodations. When they see me do something ‘normal’, I lose a lot of the ground I’ve gained. But the exercise is PART of my illnesses! “Do what you can while you can so you can continue” is how I like ot explain it. I can’t run, do jumping jacks, or take a step class. But I can walk, at least on a good day, and doing so will help slow the progression of my diseases even more. So I do what I can (walk) while I can (now), so I can continue. As it is, I face the possibility of needing a hip and/or knee replacement at a young age, and the risk of being in a wheelchair a lot sooner than the average person might worry about it. By walking (within reason, I can’t push it too hard or I’ll damage my joints instead of helping them), I am strengthening the muscles and tendons that are a risk of being damaged by illness so they will last longer. I’m also encouraging production of the fluid that lubricates and cushions the joint.

As a side note, for anyone unfamiliar with autoimmune diseases, this is how they work. With most autoimmune diseases, and unlike AIDS, the victim’s immune system is actually OVERactive, and attacks normal, healthy tissue in their body. In my case, my body attacks my moisture producing glands as well as connective tissue. As a side effect of being so preoccupied with attacking healthy tissue, my body may ‘miss’ the things it should be attacking (like viruses), allowing me to get sick very easily even though my immune system is overactive. And again, personally, damage to moist tissue leads to easier infections as well (think of all the parts that help keep illness at bay in your respiratory system…they’re nearly all moist tissue). This is why many drugs for autoimmune diseases are actually immunosuppresants – which of course also raises the risk of contracting a serious infection. Quite a cycle.

So this villianization of exercise experience takes me back to familiar territory. With chronic illnesses, a sufferer will find themself needing to learn some lessons over and over, and one of those lessons is to know what you need and live by that without appologizing. If I’m having a good day and go for a long walk, I should be proud and thankful, not ashamed and making excuses. It may mean a longer struggle to educate others on my illnesses, but it will also mean a longer healthier life for myself in which to do that work, which is clearly worth the effort.

Reposted with permission

Written by:  Jenny Pettit

Follow Jenny’s blog at http://www.myuiiblog.blogspot.com/

The Villianization of Exercise