Run & Become, Become & Run

Ongkar Tony Smith began the first chain of running-specific sports shop in the UK

“Before I knew it, for once in my life, I was helping lead a boom, in road running.” Smith, while he headed the running club Runners are Smilers, now called Self-Transcendence, made his races some of the simplest and best in the UK.

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Fascinating response from a physiotherapist looking for a job

Check below a response (highlighted) from a physiotherapist looking for a job. 

From:

Date: Jan 8, 2013 9:36 PM

Subject: Re: Job | Physiotherapy/ Physical Therapist

To: "Back 2 Fitness"

if i had that much money, i mean 50,000 plus the 1 lakh rs u want as bond amount, i wud have started my own clinic

i knw very well knwn cricketers and i will earn better then ur so called 2 lakh per annum, this is the stupidest job offer i have got any tym 

dare not to mail me again

I sincerely pity this young enthusiastic lady. By just one response, she has shown her class. Her response reminds me of my Dean in Medical College, Dr. J. S. Nagra, a gentleman who did an amazing job of making a bunch of rogues into the finest doctors on the planet. He had once told a student, who was being over-smart, very similar to this lady, "to make a horse out of a donkey, no amount of money is ever sufficient."

Is healthcare industry very 'trigger' happy?

Consider the evidence from a series of widespread doctor strikes in Los Angeles, Israel, and Colombia. It turns out that the death rate dropped significantly in those places, anywhere from 18 percent to 50 percent, when the doctors stopped working! This effect might be partially explained by patients’ putting off elective surgery during the strike. That’s what Craig Feied first thought when he read the literature. But he had a chance to observe a similar phenomenon firsthand when a lot of Washington doctors left town at the same time for a medical convention. The result: an across-the-board drop in mortality. 

“When there are too many physician-patient interactions, the amplitude gets turned up on everything,” he says. “More people with nonfatal problems are taking more medications and having more procedures, many of which are not really helpful and a few of which are harmful, while the people with really fatal illnesses are rarely cured and ultimately die anyway.” 

So it may be that going to the hospital slightly increases your odds of surviving if you’ve got a serious problem but increases your odds of dying if you don’t. Such are the vagaries of life.

- Super-Freakonomics (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner)

- Page 81

Medical Columns in newspapers

"Shut your eyes to the medical columns of the newspapers, and you will save yourself many forebodings and symptoms."
— Samuel Hopkins Adams
'The Sure-Cure School,' Collier’s Weekly (14 Jul 1906). Reprinted in The Great American Fraud (1907), 84.

This holds true even after more than a century. Most folks take every word in the newspaper as gospel-word without appreciating the source and person who has just taken something out of context without even understanding the condition and making it very sexy and sell-able.

Disclaimer: I write for a health column in Mint newspaper. The intention is always to present very well researched but simple advice to problems.

Making Champions, Sacrificing Childhood

A few days ago, I received a call from a gentleman who wanted to make his 9 year old son a badminton world champion. He needed my help to get his fitness levels up to the mark.

The problem was that this gentleman wasn't interested in his kid, but was looking only for a world champ. The kid pain thanks to playing the sport without being fit enough, but the father didn't seem too bothered about that.

Just make it more interesting, he then told me that he could do training with his son. Why did he need us or any one else?

I just wasn't sure why he had come to us in the first place.

It's sad to see that kids are used commodities, and not as living beings, leave alone sons and daughters. Can there be some legislation for this?

Most efficient and practical cardio-vascular exercise session

With marathon boom happening in India, people are confusing passion with activities like long distance running being best for your health. It was in 2007, during India's first Ultra marathon held in Bangalore, where the maximum distance was for 78 km, I did 100 km. The race organisers could not comprehend triple digits and it didn't show up on their results page. But during first weekend of October 2012, an ultra marathon was organised around Bhatti Mines where twelve people had signed up for 100 miles.

I am very clear in my head that I run because I am crazy about it. So might be the case with folks who attempted 100 miles. From 3-4 such people in 2007, today we have over a hundred who would happily enter for 100 km race. In 2006, there would a few hundred who would sign up forna marathon but today I would imagine more than a lakh run a marathon every year.

But for maintaining health and health benefits from cardio-vascular exercise, it's shorter duration higher intensity exercise that is more important. I usually suggest people to have 30-45 minutes brisk. Now, there is evidence for the same.

Intensity versus duration of physical activity: implications for the metabolic syndrome. A prospective cohort study -- Laursen et al. 2 (5) -- BMJ Open
http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/5/e001711.full