Exercise 4: A philosophical question about benefits

Exercise is Healthy: A Philosophical Question

We have all been indoctrinated by the view that exercise is healthy for you. In fact to the extent that we glibly say ‘any exercise is healthy for you’.

Under this doctrine my Lion and Springbok exercise program is also heathy for you.

Lets consider this believe in the health aspect of exercise.

It is certainly not based on any evidence that people who exercise live longer than those that do not.

When one read about the lifestyles of people that are more than 100 years old one find mostly that they are farmers from Russia or other people that have never jogged in their lives. Similarly communities that have been identified as having people that live to older ages than other communities are never communities that would have jogged or exercised as their life style.

In fact, if one goes back and look at people that were great sport heroes in their time (which would imply that they are fit and therefore healthy) one finds no evidence that they lived longer than their counter parts who did not exercise.

Part of the problem is that jogging and other exercise only became fashionable since the mid 50’s. So that people who were born then, and might have been exercising as a routine to become healthy are now only about 50 years old. So there is not yet a generation of people that can be used to demonstrate that the joggers live longer than the couch potatoes.

Kenyans dominate the Olympic long distance races. Obviously they have to be a great jogging nation. Their life expectancy (see the CIA website) is 58 years, compared to the Americans at 78. The difference is not that Kenyans jog more, or Americans eat healthier food (they don’t), but the state of health care in the two countries.

So, if longevity is not a benefit of exercise that one can prove then one has to ask what is the evidence that exercise is a healthy option? (Which the presence of surgeons at the Sport and Science institute belies – see my first post).

Largely the evidence flouted is that lots of exercise will lead to a slower pulse, and that your blood pressure will be more ‘normal’, and your lung-capacity will be more. These all sound good, until one thinks about it.

It is notable that these are the three things that one can easily measure about your body.

Not jogging does not mean your heart rate increases to dangerous levels, just that it might if you suddenly do start to run. People with low heart rates will not necessary live longer than those with a faster heart beat.

People with huge lung capacity also get lung cancer, its just that afterwards their lung capacity declines.

Blood pressure has a lot more to do with stress, than what it has to do with exercise. Joggers tend to be ‘up tight’ people and probably more prone to high blood pressure problems in their daily lives than non-joggers.

So one has a philosophical problem: the three easily measured things of the human body are not demonstrated as leading to a longer life, and whilst it is true that if one of them goes out of kilter one is unhealthy, there is no evidence that these are out of kilter due to a lack of jogging.

Wally Hayward is still going strong at age 100, but several springbok rugby players have had a by-pass at age 45. Individual examples do not make a statistical argument.

It is true that people are now more health conscious and jog more than they did 100 years ago. It is also true that they now live longer than what they did 100 years ago. This is, however, a spurious correlation. People live longer due to advances in medicine. In very developed countries like the USA, where more people jog than in any other country, and where people live longer than before, the biggest problem is due to the poor diets resulting from modern processed food. Yet, despite this they live longer than before.

A major reason cited for people living longer is that their work environment has changed from doing long hours of menial work outdoors to much shorter, less strenuous work, and more time to relax and less stress. The pro-jogging lobby would like to see us go backward in time by replacing these hours we now have to relax with strenuous exercise outdoors.

Not content with just changing our lifestyle they would prefer us to worrying about the types of food we eat, what we drink, whether we smoke, and anything else that is pleasurable and not stressful. They do this while they get high on their internally generated drug, which is still legal, and which they have no intention of banning.

What is undisputable is that joggers have less resistance to most diseases. Next season change when the next virus from Asia hits your office watch who are the people that succumb first, and who succumbs most: the joggers.

Doctors warn joggers to stop jogging when they feel the least bit ill because of the danger that the virus will attack the heart muscle of people doing exercise. One would have thought that if exercise strengthens the heart then their muscles will be the least to succumb to the virus.

So, the question of whether jogging, or cycling, or swimming, is good for your health is totally dependent on how you define health. If your definition of health has to do with heart rate, blood pressure and lung capacity then you will have a nice chicken and egg argument proving jogging is good for you. If your definition of health includes saying: healthy is when you are not sick, then the evidence is against jogging as being healthy.

In the modern anti-smoking environment it is always educational to watch all the smokers (who tend to be drinkers) stand outside braving the cold and rain, while the joggers are not inside the building working, but sick at home.

The final word on whether exercise is healthy has to come from the joggers themselves. Every jogger will tell you that they jog because it makes them feel good. Well that is what every smoker of dagga, user of heroin, and other drugs will tell you. “I do it because it makes me feel good”.

So maybe we should not be asking the heroin junkies why they do it.

The second reason they mention is that jogging makes them feel healthier. Implied in this is that they feel healthier than me, because I do not jog. Great stuff, but how do they know how healthy I feel? There is a great arrogance in believing you ‘feel’ better than what I ‘feel’.

This belief that they feel better than me is supported by a whole shelf full of magazines and books about jogging, exercise and diets which all supports the view that I do not feel healthy. Then there are the two minute infomercials on television that tells them that they will feel better if they buy the equipment that is advertised. Obviously there comes a time when anyone will believe that so many people can’t be wrong as long as you ignore that they make money out of propounding what is possibly a myth. No-one has even set out to prove that there is a correlation between IQ and jogging.

From an employers perspective joggers are seldom good workers. They get flu when there is some to be got. They leave early so they can jog, or they arrive late because they had to jog. When there is a marathon coming up they have to work their way up to a peak, so things just get worse. Then they have to recover. Much rather employ golfers.

Possibly the most dangerous sport is boxing due to the blows that the brain receive. The human body is not built to travel faster than 12km per hour, nor is it built for the head to be knocked about by punches, nor is it built for the continuous jarring and shocks that jogging provide, for hours at a time every day. This continuous jarring occurs because the knees, ankles and hips are not designed to absorb such shocks. Obviously this translates into physical changes occurring to the protection mechanism of the brain the protective sheet around the brain grows thicker (like a callous) and ultimately is the reason why joggers appear and act like brain dead people who cannot wait for their next heroin fix.

(I have to admit that I made up this bit about the brain damage, but it sounds good)

This is the second basic tenet of the Lion and Springbok Exercise Program: remember that nature works on a ‘use it, or lose it’ principle and this is true for your brain.

Joggers lose it because jogging is designed to not use it (the brain I mean). When a jogger takes on ‘the posture’ the second thing they do is to switch of their brains before they put their feet into motion. The whole idea of being a successful jogger is to not think while you jog. Do not be aware of the environment, other joggers, or even the pain in your body. Just run in a daze until the heroin comes in.

Next time you watch a group of joggers on television, or on the road, take note that they are not socially chatting while they jog. They are totally anti-social. No-one says: ‘Look at that beautiful bird sitting on that beautiful branch over there. Did you know it is a …’. They do not even ask: “So how are your children these days?..”. There is no use of their brain while they jog (other than the occasional glance at their watch, and even this is specially designed to have a stop-watch feature telling them how far they have run so that they do not have to do complex mathematical calculations.)

But, besides this not using of the brain while they jog, it is being pounded – literally on the ground. So joggers will lose it even faster.