“Ageless athlete” profiles: inspiring or just sort of irritating?
You have emotions that arise so naturally, so spontaneously that they seem pure and unassailable and right. Justified. Nothing to be ashamed of. But life is rarely that clean and neat for very long. Sometimes emotions are strong and automatic and still you suspect that they are, well, suspect. You’re confused by how you feel,...
Flabby old heart no impediment to wrecking knees, hips
“We always worry about marathoners who are sort of dropping dead, if you will, and having a heart attack during the marathon,” says Dr. Davinder Jassal as he explains the purpose of his recent study and, simultaneously, gives us our favorite quote of the month. Jassal (an associate professor of medicine, radiology and physiology at...
Saturday mash-up: July 14, 2012
It’s the weekend, it’s the summer, it’s all about food and drink and what it does to us. Some good, some not so. The world’s favorite 101-year-old marathoner Fauja Singh will carry the Olympic torch next weekend. If you thought nothing could be sweeter than watching that (still-unrecognized-by-Guinness-but-nevertheless) world record-holder stride through the streets of...
Tramps: how travel is like sex
The desire to travel is like the desire for sex. When you aren’t doing it, it seems like the most attractive thing imaginable. If you can’t fulfill your desire for travel—because, let’s say, you are working—it can grow into a mild obsession. Like sex. You start buying travel magazines. You visit travel websites then wipe...
Exercise might make you less fit
It’s been a painful week for exercise. First, a review of six studies of physical exercise found that 10 percent of the subjects—people who exercised regularly—actually experienced a decline on one of four common measures of heart disease (blood pressure, insulin, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides). Seven percent scored worse on two measures. So, for reasons...
How dangerous is distance running for old folks?
Older runners who are in excellent shape, with years of marathons under their collective and not very long belts, can still be cut down in mid-stride by a cardiac arrest. That’s the lesson suggested by the autopsy of famed 58-year-old endurance runner Micah True (AKA Caballo Blanco), who reportedly died from an undiagnosed enlarged left...
Obesity studies are the empty calories of public debate
There was yet another conference last week where experts confirmed what we all already know. The United States is fat and getting fatter. The conference issued a companion report. There was also a new study out last week. There’s a four-part HBO series, The Weight of the Nation, that premieres tonight. The HBO series has...
Hiking and the spiff of health
You know the seasons are wheeling around because of all the hiking stories that are popping up online. Over the past week or so we’ve been reminded of the joys of hiking, and the toys of hiking, and the health benefits, including this simple and stunning fact, from a study by a team at the...
North Pole marathoner thinks you could be more active
In a moment, we’ll get to North Pole marathon runner Dr. Andrew Murray. But first, consider this Easter thought: People sometimes talk about sports and competition and fitness like they are all the same thing. They are not. If you draw a Venn diagram of these three notions, you’ll see some overlap, but they are...
Booze: still bamboozling
People who exercise aren’t particularly puritanical. Often, they are the opposite: they can be dedicated (indeed, disciplined) sensualists, hedonists, in it for the endorphins, for the euphoria. So it’s no surprise that they seek the same buzz in other places, including the pub. A study by the University of Miami found that women who exercise...
The good news about your atrophying muscles is that maybe they aren’t
About a year ago one of the networks ran a story about a detective who found people who’d gone missing. The detective advised his colleagues to study the lost person’s photograph, then make a mental adjustment to accommodate the fact that he was over forty and had invariably lost muscle mass over the past few...
You’re “dramatically” more active today than in 1992?
The president of Sports Goods Manufacturers Association says you are, and it’s his business to know. The organization does an annual survey of Americans’ exercise activities, and it sees a boom in boomer sports. “Are the boomers playing more sports than 20 years ago? I think the answer to that is yes,” says Tom Cove,...
