YOUR HEALTH Dr James Le Fanu: 8 November
The sight of Ben Walsgrove, the 33-year old Nottingham property developer limping across the finishing line of the London Marathon several years back – his face contorted with pain from what turned out to be a stress fracture of the hip joint – raises profound questions about human motivation.
No doubt the 32,000 other participants were blessed with similar reserves of willpower and there is always the consolation – no matter the degree of pain or discomfort on passing the finishing line – that the training necessary to take part increases a staggering fivefold their chances of surviving into their 80s.
Physical fitness, according to Jonathan Myers of Stanford University Medical School, overrides everything else. You can have raised blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoke a packet of cigarettes a day, or even have had a heart attack – but if you have the stamina to complete a marathon, none of this matters. ‘There is,’ he writes ‘an unequivocal and robust relationship between fitness and survival.’
All very well, but where does it leave the rest of us who might find it difficult to run two, let alone 26 miles, at a stretch? By way of encouragement, Dr Myers’s analysis of the findings from a survey of 6,000 middleaged men reveals it is only necessary to move up one grade of tness to substantially improve one’s long-term chances.
And the biggest gains occur in those who move from being in the ‘least fit’ category to the ‘next least fit’ group, which takes them over a third of the way towards the survival rates of those with marathon-level fitness.
Those who might wish to do better than this may take heart from an experiment reported in the New Scientist involving five men who had their fitness levels tested in their 20s. Now, 30 years on, they were seriously out of condition, so Dr Benjamin Levine of the University of Texas organised an exercise programme that slowly built up to five hours a week. ‘We reversed 30 years of ageing with six months of training,’ he reports, which, admittedly, sounds too good to be true.
The important message from all this is that if you keep moderately fit you can effectively ignore all the admonitions from the bossy brigade about what you should and should not be doing – just take care you don’t, like Mr Walsgrove, sustain a stress fracture in the process.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from Suffolk writing on behalf of her daughter, now in her mid-30s, who has long since grown out of the asthma that troubled her as a child. Nonetheless, the slightest hint of a cold or chest infection is invariably followed by a persistent and debilitating cough, resulting in sleepless nights – all the more tiring because she has three young children to look after.
This protracted coughing is strongly suggestive of some persistent ‘irritability’ of the bronchial muscles around the airways. The treatment is much the same as for an infective exacerbation of asthma: antibiotics and a reducing schedule of steroids, together with a bronchodilator such as a Salbutamol inhaler, used three times daily. To avoid any delay in initiating treatment it would be sensible to obtain a prescription for these medicines from her doctor.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
And when this occurs, she breaks off a leaf from the plant that she keeps in her kitchen, squeezing the moisture on to the affected area. ‘It is guaranteed to work,’ she says.
No doubt the 32,000 other participants were blessed with similar reserves of willpower and there is always the consolation – no matter the degree of pain or discomfort on passing the finishing line – that the training necessary to take part increases a staggering fivefold their chances of surviving into their 80s.
Physical fitness, according to Jonathan Myers of Stanford University Medical School, overrides everything else. You can have raised blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoke a packet of cigarettes a day, or even have had a heart attack – but if you have the stamina to complete a marathon, none of this matters. ‘There is,’ he writes ‘an unequivocal and robust relationship between fitness and survival.’
All very well, but where does it leave the rest of us who might find it difficult to run two, let alone 26 miles, at a stretch? By way of encouragement, Dr Myers’s analysis of the findings from a survey of 6,000 middleaged men reveals it is only necessary to move up one grade of tness to substantially improve one’s long-term chances.
And the biggest gains occur in those who move from being in the ‘least fit’ category to the ‘next least fit’ group, which takes them over a third of the way towards the survival rates of those with marathon-level fitness.
Those who might wish to do better than this may take heart from an experiment reported in the New Scientist involving five men who had their fitness levels tested in their 20s. Now, 30 years on, they were seriously out of condition, so Dr Benjamin Levine of the University of Texas organised an exercise programme that slowly built up to five hours a week. ‘We reversed 30 years of ageing with six months of training,’ he reports, which, admittedly, sounds too good to be true.
The important message from all this is that if you keep moderately fit you can effectively ignore all the admonitions from the bossy brigade about what you should and should not be doing – just take care you don’t, like Mr Walsgrove, sustain a stress fracture in the process.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from Suffolk writing on behalf of her daughter, now in her mid-30s, who has long since grown out of the asthma that troubled her as a child. Nonetheless, the slightest hint of a cold or chest infection is invariably followed by a persistent and debilitating cough, resulting in sleepless nights – all the more tiring because she has three young children to look after.
This protracted coughing is strongly suggestive of some persistent ‘irritability’ of the bronchial muscles around the airways. The treatment is much the same as for an infective exacerbation of asthma: antibiotics and a reducing schedule of steroids, together with a bronchodilator such as a Salbutamol inhaler, used three times daily. To avoid any delay in initiating treatment it would be sensible to obtain a prescription for these medicines from her doctor.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
A SOOTHING ELIXIR
The juice of the aloe vera plant is reputedly a panacea for all manner of skin conditions, including burns: ‘Being a sufferer of multiple sclerosis with poor coordination, I am frequently burning or scalding myself,’ writes a lady from Hull.And when this occurs, she breaks off a leaf from the plant that she keeps in her kitchen, squeezing the moisture on to the affected area. ‘It is guaranteed to work,’ she says.