supermarmot - Aug 15, 2006 5:55 am - Voted 10/10
Re: Re:and my grandmother smoked for thirty years without ever developing lung cancer.
there are always exceptions. overwhelmingly, poor diet and sedentary lifestyle will increase the hell out of your risk for heart disease. period.
i'd be interested to read about the net healthcare expenditures study, if you know where i can find it. however, my arguments were intended more for publicly funded healthcare (as was the article), and i would not be surprised if things were different in the states.
as to your 1982 mrfit study, i think it is time to let go. at this point consensus is that people who eat healthy foods and exercise will in fact live longer (that's a big part of why we do it, right?), and i doubt if that study holds any water when compared to more recent and sophisticated medical research.
cheers,
david
p.s. nice jump!
MoapaPk - Aug 15, 2006 3:48 pm - Voted 10/10
Re: Re:I'm quoting statistical studies, not relying on anecdotal evidence.
"as to your 1982 mrfit study, i think it is time to let go."
MRFIT is still widely quoted by medical researchers as a "success". I saw its data -- greatly massaged -- in a 2003 grant application. The medical community does not undertake many long-term studies of mortality, and the MRFIT study is actually one of the more recent (more recent than the framingham study, e.g.).
"at this point consensus is that people who eat healthy foods and exercise will in fact live longer (that's a big part of why we do it, right?)"
That may be the consensus, but the support in actual statistical studies is probably much weaker than you realize. At one time, the consensus was that the earth was flat. Don't underestimate the power of the medical profession to draw and widely disseminate conclusions that are not consistent with the data they collect. The Framingham study -- still used to beat people with high cholesterol -- is a prime example. You have to go to the original study to get past the layers of abstraction presented to the public.
Here are a few articles on obesity and health:
http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/short/AJPH.2004.045823v1
'Normal weight individuals of both genders did not appear to be relatively more long-lived than mildly obese individuals (BMI's of 30-35), whereas overweight people (BMI's of 25-30) appear healthiest of all.'
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=15840860
To me, the main reason for staying fit is to allow me to do more things with less pain, now. And I want to have a short morbidity when I reach the end of life, not a long period of painful function loss.
PS -- I have low total cholesterol, low pulse, high HDL, low blood pressure, low CRP, low homocysteine, never smoked, ate healthy -- all the right things -- and I had a stroke in 2002. I'm partly paralyzed on my right side as a result.
It turns out that 40% of strokes are cryptogenic -- no known cause. Mine fit in the remainder of strokes that are unrelated to the commonly cited risk factors, and was partly induced by medical treatment for something else. But when I left the hospital, I was given a pamphlet that put the blame squarely on the familiar risk factors, and emphasized "healthy life style". The only clear tie between stroke and cholesterol is this: people with low cholesterol are more likely to have hemorrhagic strokes.
I do believe some common risk factors are real, in terms of decreasing life span -- smoking, high blood pressure, extreme obesity tied to diabetes. The last one does cost society a lot.
PPS-- the tidbit about smokers' total costs to the health care system was most prominently mentioned in Lamm's keynote speech to CAS; full text of that speech is at:
http://www.casact.org/pubs/proceed/proceed93/93196.pdf
jblas21 - Aug 16, 2006 7:49 pm - Hasn't voted
An interesting documentary...There is an interesting documentary on this very subject playing on the documentary channel right now. It's called "On The Edge: The Nature of Risk"
It's worth checking out...
www.documentarychannel.com
great article. love the type t personality and agree that we should celebrate it. I'm shocked and amazed everytime I watch an X-games event.
MountaingirlBC - Aug 17, 2006 5:43 am - Hasn't voted
Re: An interesting documentary...cool... looks like i missed it but I'll see if I can catch it next time it's on. thx!
ajfraser - Aug 16, 2006 8:16 pm - Voted 10/10
well spokenThanks for a thoughtful and well-backed article. Yes, it is hard to explain the benefits of risk-taking to the comfortably sedentary being.
To echo Chris McCandless in John Krakauer's 'Into the Wild',
"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."
I'd also recommend David Roberts' 'On the Ridge Between Life and Death', a great reflection on risk and reward.
Thanks again for a valid argument and a great read.
MountaingirlBC - Aug 17, 2006 5:46 am - Hasn't voted
Re: well spokenI've read 'Into the Wild' but I'll have to check out David Roberts' book. thx!
ShaunR - Aug 17, 2006 6:14 am - Voted 10/10
"Experience is what you get when you don't have experience."In a Utah county full of nearly 12,000' peaks, rivers, lakes, caves and trails, the vast majority of Search and Rescue calls are not for extreme sports enthusiasts, but for amateurs. Boy scouts, college students, 4 wheelers, and hikers with twisted ankles or dehydration or caught in cliff bands that experienced climbers would know to avoid create well over 90% of the missions.
The most extended and expensive searches tend to be avalanches with vicitms out on steep slopes during extreme danger days and without beacons - the last one took 6 months for the snow to melt enough to see his coat sleeve through the snow from an airplane. The big one before lasted from Christmas to Easter Sunday before the final victim's hand melted through the snowpack.
So when you're talking about costs - at least in my neck of the mountains - it's not generally the fault of mountaineers, climbers, and other extreme sports enthusiasts, but of the general public out in an environment they aren't really prepared for.
MoapaPk - Aug 18, 2006 1:49 am - Voted 10/10
Re:There are lots of snowboarders around here who are very fit, and tend to go amazing places to hit fresh powder. I don't think many carry beacons or avylungs. They were very active in the spring 2005 season, when we had about 20 avalanches, including one that caused a fatality. I guess I would say those folks are extreme sport enthusiasts, AND members of the public.
I don't think of roped class 5 climbing as being risky -- if done correctly. Class 4 without protection is possibly much more risky.
MountaingirlBC - Aug 18, 2006 2:04 am - Hasn't voted
Re: Re:"Class 4 without protection is possibly much more risky."
Totally agree. I was thinking the very same thing while on some very exposed Class 4 this week.
Arthur Digbee - May 2, 2007 10:03 pm - Hasn't voted
very interestingThis was a very interesting article and subsequent discussion, I'm glad I came across it. Thanks to MGBC and to the others who have done their research on these topics, and thanks to MGBC for kicking it all off!
I did find it a bit hard to read the text because (a) I'm getting old; and (b) there weren't any pictures. It would be fun, I'm sure, to select a few pictures for including in the article.
iceisnice - Jan 27, 2008 1:44 pm - Hasn't voted
RelativityIts all relative. "Risk" is actually "accepted risk", and what we are willing to accept only has meaning and value to ourselves. That is the beauty of climbing. A "5.6 leader" can get the same degree of danger/risk/etc when climbing a big 5.7 route as you top elite alpinist climbing a 5,000ft 5.11/M8/WI6X route. As your skills and abilities advance you can continually find challenges that will fall within your "accpeted risk" zone.
weightloss - Mar 10, 2018 9:20 am - Hasn't voted
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