Athletes are dropping at ever alarming rates. Most from cardiac conditions or conditions related to clots or vascular disease. This is highly suspicious and should be concerning to everyone given the repetitive messaging that exercise is good for your heart. “Cardio”, as in today is cardio day, is shorthand for cardiovascular training. It is supposed to make our heart, vessels and blood adapt in productive and positive ways. To make us more resilient. Not dead.
So why is this happening and what can we do about it?
WHY WE NEED EXERCISE
The benefits of exercise are huge and enormous. The science of exercise is both complex yet very simple too. Put simply, our bodies are constantly evolving and adapting to the environment around us. Our bodies learn habits and actively changes itself at the biochemical level as well as structural too, to better respond to expected demands placed upon it. Based on patterns it experiences, it evolves to do them better.
Forget exercise for a moment and consider starting a job as a building laborer after years of sitting behind a desk. Boy those first few weeks suck. Back breaking physical labor. Aches. Fatigue.
But after a month or two the aches ease away. The body becomes better equipped at doing the long hours of repetitive lifting, carrying, climbing. You are still tired but not as before. You got stronger. You got fitter. You have adapted.
However, the opposite is also true. Go from a building site to the desk and after a few months you might start feeling a little weak. That scaffolding is harder to climb. Moving furniture is hard work now. Deconditioning also occurs. Unfortunately.
Exercise is in essence the way of artificially creating the environment or stimuli that forces your body to adapt and retain it’s habit and competitive edge. To be prepared for its need to perform into the future.
BENEFITS OF EXERCISE INCLUDE
Cardiovascular health
Lymphatic drainage (immune health)
Supportive muscles stabilize joints. Making you resilient to trips, slips, falls or crashes.
Neuromuscular control and proprioception (balance)
Increases bone density
Stabilizing and boosting sex hormones
Flexibility and myofascial mobility prevents injury
Neurotransmitters (dopamine, endorphins) increase mood and promote mental health
Can aid in digestion and prevent intestinal obstructions.
SUMMARY = LOTS OF GOOD THINGS
WHY ARE THE ATHLETES DYING?
Shouldn't they be fittest and best prepared, having the healthiest hearts and cardiovascular systems? Yes. In theory they should. But it is not working that way anymore because they are spiked.
As you stress the heart and cardiovascular system you increase the rate of blood flow and increase its turbulence. Micro clots seem to be forming in this turbulence and building into larger clots. These obstruct vessels such as arteries, cutting off oxygen supplies to tissues. Which leads to ischemia or tissue death. And in the wrong places such as in the heart, lungs or brain. These cause heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms or strokes. Bad things. Really bad things.
Coupled with higher metabolic rates in athletes and increased cellular respiration. If you increase cellular respiration (required for energy) you also increase emissions, also known as oxidative stress.
Oxidative stress is like our cells engine exhaust fumes, or it makes up some of it anyway. It is produced when ATP is formed from combining oxygen and glucose. These exhaust fumes are somewhat toxic and your body must remove them as they can cause complications including mutagenesis and premature aging. In small amounts, this is fine and natural, our bodies are suited to the task and have adapted methods of doing this. But nowadays… something has changed and it seems the build up is higher than our bodies are capable of handling alone. If too much exhaust fumes build up in intracellular spaces and are not cleaned away, we will thus see an increase of various chronic diseases. Essentially, cells are aging prematurely due to this increased oxidative stress build up. You think you are 38 years old, but your cells think they are 80. They are dying of old age before their time. Alarming stuff. And possibly related to genotoxicity within the mitochondrial DNA.
EASE UP ON THE INTENSITY
In our society today more is often more. More money. More possessions. More everything. You may be inclined to think the same is true with exercise too. But can this thinking be wrong and harmful? I think so. Especially now.
Exercise is essential to stave off deconditioning and to keep your body mobile and alive. Without movement we struggle to keep homeostasis. But we are going to have to change the way we see and do exercise. Because high intensity interval training (HIIT), the gold standard for weight loss and within competitive coaching is about to become high intensity dead.
Ephemeralization: To do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.
Tai chi, yoga, Pilates. Gentle swimming and dancing too. Less can be more if done right. And by right, I shall proceed to show you how.
The method you use does not matter. Whatever exercise type you do, just do it. Ideally a type you enjoy doing so you continue to do it.
Consistency is better than intensity. 20 minutes of exercise 5x a week, is better than 60 minutes of exercise 3x a week. Try it. I bet you will see it works faster and better doing it my way.
Exercise should be a habit. There is no point doing it once or twice and then having a week or two off. Habits require repetition. Habit requires a pattern to emerge and for your body to adapt to the pattern.
That’s it. Three points. Keep it simple.
Today in a world of internet connectivity with YouTube and a thousand other video hosting sites available. If you want to learn yoga, tai chi or Pilates. Just do it. Start small and give it a go. But just do a little bit and do it a lot. Make it habit.
But if you are jabbed and spiked, it is probably best that you stop HIIT. It’s not safe.
A few points I'd like to add. First is, that time after being jabbed, frequency, and dosage will play a role. The web site howbadismybatch.com elucidates just how much variety there is by brand and batch and effects over time. With more time passing, hopefully the body will have ability to detox, and more intense workout can be less risky. I like to follow mountain bike Kyle Warner for learning about recovery. I have also run across mention of enlarged heart muscles for high performance athletes; this may also contribute to greater risk. I've never really been of fan of HIIT, but more out of not being able to just stand around when time was allocated to workout. I also don't enjoy approaching that very uncomfortable breaking/failure point, and probably why I'll never make it as a performance athlete. I opt for grass, gravel, mulch, dirt, and free weights or bodyweight exercises whenever possible. I figure my knees, hips, and joints will thank me thirty years from now.
I posit without proof that exercising in the sun (getting enough vitamin D) could help reduce the SADS.