Exceed yourself in the gym and you will break more than your fibers. We tell you how to take care of terrible problems that you can generate.
A few years ago I was a cover model for Men`s Health. The previous year I was fat. I decided to get fit for various reasons that motivated me. One, I am vain. Two, I wanted to prove that normal people are able to achieve it (leaving the requirement of vanity apart). And three, because they gave me a cardiac evaluation and I found, to my heart’s surprise, that my fast life would end in a quick death if I didn’t start practicing what I preached. I trained every day for six months, made my first diet and got the six pack of the cover model, with everything and excessive pride, increased by my problem. Really, I had never felt healthier. But, to my embarrassment, it seems that getting rid of my excess body mass can do me more harm than good.
According to a small but growing group of experts, such intense exercise can be dangerous to health. This was like a bucket of cold water.
The idea that exercise can be harmful is difficult to rationalize, especially in our era of vices, when the World Health Organization estimates that in 2015 70 million people (one sixth of the world’s population) will be obese. Are you sure that exercise prolongs more lives than it actually shortens? To top it off, with public health institutes crumbling in the face of the global obesity epidemic, no doctor will allow any patient to remain in a sedentary lifestyle.
To our bad fortune, it seems that good things in excess will also hurt us. Despite being an exclusive health issue, it turned out that my arduous training was not the healthiest route of action. According to Dr. Arthur Siegel, an eminence in the study of the effects of exercise on the heart and director of Internal Medicine at McLean Hospital in the United States, “educating people about how they can limit the risks of exercise can save countless lives. ” Not only mine. “The danger is the popular reasoning of whether it is good, more is better , it is completely fallacious,” says Siegel.
Reduce excess
As with the best things in life, much can be fatal. “Exercising in excess can harm our health,” argues Dr. Kenneth Cooper, a man credited and blamed for founding the aerobics movement in the 1960s. The definition of excess depends on the age, physical condition, family history, Lycra appearance, etc., of an individual. But I had no idea of being right in a danger zone. “Excessive” is training for the Marathon or becoming Arnie, right? In fact, I was exercising a lot, but I was just running to and from the office, plus a one-hour routine five days a week.How much is too much? “If you exercise more than five hours a week at a high intensity, there is a chance that you are causing more damage than benefits,” explains Dr. Cooper. I was just double. And I think a few of you too.
A study by the American Medical Athletic Association Journal claims that “vigorous exercise is responsible for up to 17% of sudden cardiac deaths.” If that is true, it means that strenuous activity precipitates thousands of deaths around the world every year, and not all of them happen because of an explosive combination of stunning blonde blonde.
Why does this happen? During extreme activity, the body heals muscle damage and can react by making the blood thicker, explains Dr. Siegel. For people with a stealth block in the coronary arteries, this blood transformation can culminate in sudden death. Why would people expose themselves to this risk? “An analogy that I like to use is that intense exercise is like cocaine. Both intend to engage those who seek them, ”says Siegel. “Strenuous exercise – same as cocaine use? temporarily increases to 10 times more relative risk of acute cardiac episodes compared to a resting state. People need to be informed about the risks of both options. ”
When doctors recommend half an hour of exercise for three days distributed in the week, they have a good foundation. If you think exercise is an effective medicine, increasing the dose suddenly and massively can be serious.
The growing popularity of resistance events, such as marathons, triathlons and meetings to see the National Team games means that more and more people are risking their health. Those who need to be more careful are those who are starting from scratch. Like me.
Do not take risks
Endurance sports are not for the faint of heart. Most of the participants in a marathon are ordinary people running extraordinary distances. “These subjects generally do not train enough and their hearts show unprecedented levels of stress right after the race,” explains Dr. Malissa Wood, who, along with Dr. Siegel, studies the impact of endurance sports on health. They have found that, although exercise improves the heart condition in the long term, resistance activities can overestimate it in the short term. “Neophytes who do not train properly for a resistance competition undertake an effort journey that could place them in the vulnerable position of a heart attack,” warns Siegel.
After all the kilometers I ran, it is natural that this had me worried, so I went back to the hospital for tests. Fortunately, nothing had worsened. Is all this talk obsessive, is it? The medical community is divided. In fact, Dr. Siegel’s partners do not declare themselves able to agree with the results of their studies. Outside the record, I received an email from one of them. “Hi Dan, I am a researcher of the exercise / marathon article and I am a physical activity enthusiast,” he said. “I totally disagree with Dr. Siegel’s conclusions. You may be exaggerating about the risks of the exercise, but don’t relate your personal opinions to the article. ” I asked for a second opinion. “There is still, in my opinion, reason to be alarmed,” says cardiologist Paul Thompson.
In response to this, Dr. Siegel recounts his most recent statistics: 2006 was not a good year for those who believe that running improves their heart condition. In fact, it could have been the worst year since 1984, when Jimmy Fixx – the celebrity who revolutionized fitness in the United States and put everyone running, died of a heart attack at age 52. While jogging. “Train yourself with all of the law,” says Siegel, a marathon veteran. “Just don’t compete.”
Wear and tear
Dr. Siegel’s research is controversial. But what is beyond questioning is the fact that physical activity produces bone and joint wear. “The deterioration of the joints caused by high impact activities can have profound long-term effects on mobility and freedom of movement,” says Dr. Belinda Gabbe, eminence in sports medicine.
Amateur runners underestimate the impact their bodies suffer when running. “The competitors of a marathon are thin people who run for two hours straight,” says Richard Sinnerton, an orthopedic consultant at the London Hospital. “When you run, an impact equivalent to four or five times your weight falls on your legs, and is absorbed somewhere. We see more and more young patients requiring joint replacements, largely because of exercise. They have an incredible heart and lungs, but their hips and knees are for trash. ”
And there come sports injuries. Runner’s knee, tennis elbow … sports and their respective impediments are so inseparable that they have generated a new lexicon. According to the Ministry of Health, in the United Kingdom alone there are 700,000 emergency hospital admissions related to sports. The vast majority are men close to 30 years. However, there are millions who do not receive medical attention.
Many health experts believe that sports injuries carry the worst of threats: gain weight. “It’s the everyday scenario,” explains Dr. Jay Irrgang, a sports specialist. “A healthy and active man hurts his ankle and should stop exercising for a while. Soon he will have gained weight and lost muscle tone. The injury itself is not so serious, but it is the starting point of the downward spiral. ” The body becomes accustomed to physical activity and metabolizes food accordingly. If the activity stops, the body cannot adjust to the change and people ingest depending on their hunger.
Eliminate the unhealthy obsession
For me, the problem of the injury was not only physical, but mental. When I was thundering a rib in boxing training, I thought if there would be more things that would have thundered. The idea of not being able to exercise frustrated me. Don’t make the Hulk angry. My transformation was from a normal man with a gym subscription to the treadmill’s native creature. I started buying my food according to the nutritional information on the labels. I stopped going with my friends because beers could interfere with my training. I was wondering if there was a gym that opened at Christmas. Yes there is.
Yes, I had managed to have my laundry abdomen, and I felt better than ever. We can become addicted to the torrent of endorphins that the body produces with physical activity. “The body becomes dependent on a certain level of activity,” explains psychology professor Robert Thayer. Just like coffee, liquor or intense porn, we soon develop a biological resistance and need larger amounts to get the same effect.
Knowing when we have reached the right medium with exercise is important, when we have a harmonious balance between life and physical activity. Easy to say, but not so much to practice. Red wine, tofu, sex, all this is good in moderate quantities. But before we know it, we could be participating in an AA meeting or some vegan circle in the Himalayas.
After I recovered from my rib injury I looked around in the gym and was able to recognize the addicts. They nodded to me, as if I were one of them and shared the code. It was time to leave the ship.
That does not mean that the exercise has stopped. I only controlled the time spent. In view of all the risks listed above, each one is tiny compared to the massive risk factors associated with the serial killer of the decade: obesity. Doing some exercise will always be better than doing nothing, but now we have to worry about limiting the damage. I still run every day, but I don’t do it anymore to move to the office. I still eat healthy, but I stopped taking the 12 vitamin supplements with rancid flavor and my protein viscous smoothie. I still have my laundry but I also keep the screws in place.
“The benefits of exercise far outweigh the risks, but it is important that you be aware of them,” warns Dr. Wood. So, everything in moderation is the healthiest regimen of all, and one that I am willing to follow … after becoming the next Iron Man.