[cdoxsey]

In 1977 Jim Fixx published the best-selling book "The Complete Book of Running" which popularized running for sport, and purported to demonstrate its health benefits - including increased longevity.

7 years later he died of a heart attack while jogging at the age of 52.

His death doesn't mean running is a bad idea - a single anecdote is statistically insignificant - but perhaps it can remind us that nothing we do can guarantee a long and healthy life.

All too often we take a mildly correlated statistic, give it a hand-wavy air of "science", and then pronounce it as a set-in-stone moral absolute. How much of the received wisdom about healthy lifestyles that you were taught has been shown to be completely wrong? I don't doubt that in 3 years there will be another New York times article, demonstrating why running is actually terrible for you, and you should never do it no matter what age you are.

Growing up in a secular society ancient religions can seem awful strange: why did people worship stone statues and sacrifice to them? Did they really believe all that effort did anything?

But perhaps our modern obsession with "healthiness" reflects the same underlying human motivation: incapable of accepting the reality of our own deaths we grasp at anything to try and give ourselves the illusion of control. Is eating an organic strawberry in the hopes of living longer really any different than performing a ritualistic dance in the hopes of bringing rain?

[ronjouch]

"Nothing we do can guarantee a long and healthy life" it true, and shit happens. But running (or swimming, hiking or <insert your favorite non-violent sport here>) are not just a fad, and none made this promise. Their only promise is to exercise some vital functions, in a form of body maintenance, and maybe/even pleasure. You without a doubt believe exercising your brain (through reading, coding, etc.) is a sound occupation, why not your body?

Truth is, you aren't much without it. Stephen Hawkins might be able to think and write wonderful essays while occupying a severely diminished body, but you might not. I've seen people sinking into their growing disabilities due to lack of exercise, and I myself suffered from physical traumas (severe back pain, hernia), which seriously impacted my psychological stability and self-confidence.

Take care of your body, it will take care of you. Haruki Murakami has a wonderful book about body and mind, and their equilibrium, called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running [1], I very much recommend it.

[1] http://www.amazon.ca/What-Talk-About-When-Running/dp/0385681...

[kaitai]

Eat your organic strawberry because it tastes good, and because you don't have to envision farm workers being sprayed by pesticides from planes when you take a nice big bite. Run because you enjoy it (and maybe it's good for you). Use that handwavy statistic for dinner-party justification of things you like anyway, like red wine, chocolate, butter, and broccoli.

You're right that nothing we can do will guarantee a long and healthy life. If nothing else, we could be hit by a drunk or texting driver while crossing the street. So enjoy the strawberry for the taste.

[cscurmudgeon]

A little bit of searching shows that "healthiness" does in fact lead to longer lives.

Also, not all religious people do ritualistic rain dances. Newton, Godel etc were all completely rational creatures.

I have a feeling that you are just saying "these grapes are sour".

No matter how sore you feel things like yoga, meditation, good living and exercise contribute to better quality of life and longer lifespans. Just go to scholar.google.com and spend some time researching.

[rhblake]

> 7 years later he died of a heart attack while jogging at the age of 52.

> His death doesn't mean running is a bad idea - a single anecdote is statistically insignificant - but perhaps it can remind us that nothing we do can guarantee a long and healthy life.

Or one could see it this way: His father had a heart attack at 35 and died of another heart attack at 42. Jim Fixx, who had a genetic condition, was a heavy smoker until age 36, etc., might very well have bought himself an extra ten years or so.

[GigabyteCoin]

>nothing we do can guarantee a long and healthy life.

I don't think anybody who works out is under the assumption that they will live to be 130+ years old.

We're all very well aware of babies with Cancer these days. Anything can happen.

But one thing's for certain, being active certainly prolongs life. That much I think we can all be sure of at this point.

How many true couch potatoes do you know that have made it past the ripe old age of 90? 80 even?

[gonzo]

> But one thing's for certain, being active certainly prolongs life. That much I think we can all be sure of at this point.

what we can be sure of is that being active improves the quality of life. Hell is not being able to move.

[goodJobWalrus]

> But one thing's for certain, being active certainly prolongs life.

you forgot to say "on average" here.

[drcomputer]

> Growing up in a secular society ancient religions can seem awful strange: why did people worship stone statues and sacrifice to them? Did they really believe all that effort did anything?

I don't know, do you really believe there is anything that suggests mathematics exists in reality outside of the maintenance of symbols, structure, and meaning in the mind of man?

Some things exist to teach patterns, to maintain a style of thinking. There are tons of things we don't understand about culture socially - in maintaining peace, individuality AND unity with ourselves as individuals and ourselves in society, that might have been intelligently dealt with in a very real way in cultures you consider primitive, intelligible, irrational, unscientific, archaic, and non-secular.

You can't judge a book by it's cover, so to speak. The superficial observation of ritual does not mean it serves no purpose. The meaning of things change over time, as these things are interpreted and understood by different cultures that come from different backgrounds with different ways of representing and interpreting information about the world. Math does not always represent what it says it represents. Neither do dancing statues. There are certainly TONS of things people rely on, things they assume about how existence functions, that we can't even begin to touch the tip of, because we are blinded by the complexity of our own minds.

[perlpimp]

I found regular running increases not only health but quality of my life as well. The article states that in an overt way efficency of walking compared to youth - you won't get tired when you get there. Honestly day without running for me - not to say wasted but lost in some way as my attention is dulled, body feels less alive.

[thesz]

You may get hooked on endocannabinoids, if you run intensively for prolonged time (>1hr).

Running can and will mess with your endocrine system.

[fasteo]

Agree. Jim Fixx's example is particularly bad. Mr. Fixx did have a genetic condition affecting his heart, he was a heavy smoker and he was severely overweight before starting his running revolution.

[prestonbriggs]

I think crediting Fixx with the running revolution is a mistake. Instead, look to Frank Shorter winning a gold, on TV, in the '72 Olympic Marathon.

[ripb]

>but perhaps it can remind us that nothing we do can guarantee a long and healthy life.

Except advances in biotech...or at least I'm drastically hoping so.

[imanaccount247]

>How much of the received wisdom about healthy lifestyles that you were taught has been shown to be completely wrong?

Virtually none of it.

>I don't doubt that in 3 years there will be another New York times article, demonstrating why running is actually terrible for you, and you should never do it no matter what age you are.

I do doubt that. I doubt it very much.

>Is eating an organic strawberry in the hopes of living longer really any different than performing a ritualistic dance in the hopes of bringing rain?

That seems like really desperately grasping at ways to dismiss things you don't like. Exercise is good, even if you don't want it to be.

[MrJagil]

>> Virtually none of it.

What? Milk? Multi-vitamins? Stretching? This stuff is discussed heavily; I do not know enough about these things to weigh in on validity, but if nothing else, these discussions might be very symptomatic.

[charlieflowers]

8 glasses of water a day

[mlvljr]

And a whiskey shot ;)

[Symmetry]

The received wisdom you get from your doctor is mostly pretty good. The received wisdom you get from the TV news is mostly useless.

[thesz]

No. Doctors do not follow the field.

Most doctors I know still advise not eating after 6pm, while it has been shown to be either worthless or even plain ineffective.

[imanaccount247]

>Most doctors I know still advise not eating after 6pm

That sounds pretty sketchy. Do you mean "for people with acid reflux"? Because that's perfectly valid. I've never even heard of a doctor recommending that in general.

[imanaccount247]

Media misrepresentation of science does not invalidate science. What about milk, or vitamins or stretching?