did i catch your attention? death usually does. inspired by the concluding line of this article – http://www.medpagetoday.com/MeetingCoverage/EuroPRevent/32513 – the statistic is astounding if true. 122 deaths among joggers vs over 10,000 among non-joggers!. of course, it depends on how many were in each group and the article about the study was unclear on that front. so once again, read the original to truly be impressed. nonetheless the article does point out that a meta-analysis showed an average extra lifespan of 6 yrs for those who jog. and those tend to be healthy ones, and happy ones. what gives?
well, i’m not going to conjecture. what i wil do, in the way that i do when i discuss something scientific, is recognize the inherent inequity of the implied result: that jogging is good/better for you. they studied joggers but didn’t look at dancer, gardeners, or athletes of other sports. we don’t know, for ex, if martial artists who continue training if not competing live longer and happier as a result of their doing what they love that is healthy for them. is it jogging per se, or activity done consistently? my guess is the latter.
another article came my way: on bone building drugs and how long you should take them: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/new-cautions-about-long-term-us…
the summary conclusion suggests that these drugs are for short term use for those with higher levels of bone loss – osteoporosis, compared to osteopenia. whlle there have been very few truly negative side effects – jaw osteonecrosis, spontaneous femur fractures, etc – they are statistically insignificant compared to the overall benefits and we still don’t know the exact mechanisms by or circumstances under which these events occur to say who should and who should not take these drugs for how long. my opinion is, like with a lots of meds that get prescribed for large numbers of a class of people – in this case, post menopausal women – that, yes the big pharm industry is snookering both government and the public by over-advertising and docs are complicit by over–prescribing, but statistics still show benefits that most people assigned to these drugs will derive. what does not get enough attention or consideration is the fact that so much preventive work by individuals could mitigate the need for these drugs or at least delay their necessity. so, when it comes to bone building, why not reinforce dairy consumption in the first few decades of life and encourage some exposure to sunshine esp if accompanied by wt bearing and impact activities? and even after those formative years, why not push for more physical exercise and better diets – including perhaps less mass marketed junk foods – as a means by which to control the effects of natural aging? instead, we continue to reinforce the merit and value of taking this or that class of drugs to manage a problem we failed to take control of sooner. bass ackwards if you ask me…..
we live in pretty horrific times politically. we demand people take responsibility for themselves and then we dole out all kinds of methods by which to either undermine personal responsibliity or to cover our butts when we fail to assume such responsibility. this crosses political party lines so i’m not getting political here. i am waxing philosophical, tho. we americans share a common fate, somewhat separated from other nations and continents but not entirely, not now when our economy is so global. we have a free market attitude toward most everything, a pioneer spirit toward that which we personally enjoy and believe in, but then a lost sense of social cohesion, a fantasy of our idealized past when we seemed to care more for our families, neighbors, communities, etc. maybe those days never existed, except in our collective mental pasts. but maybe those days better start existing…or else we not share a collective future. allowing such powerful forces as big biz, big pharm, big medicine, big government, etc to overwhelm our indvidual choices based on providing all kinds of choices may be the demise of human culture if not human life. we should consider the options before we get there. but again our political environment is not conducive to it.
so you might want to start jogging, a lot, now…….
