I have started to really love my bike rides to work. I still wheeze up some of the bigger hills and the helmet hair is pretty ugly but I've become much faster which makes each ride much more fun. And in just two weeks I've dropped a pant size. My conscience has also been enjoying the satisfaction of being "greener."
I've also been very proud that I've managed to not get killed by all the giant vehicles around me (SUVs, delivery trucks, buses, trolleys, bulldozer-yes, one was driving down the street a few days ago- etc). I even get to go faster than them a lot of the time. I was beginning to feel like I had triumphed but it looks like they might get the last laugh after all.
In the New York Times article "For Athletes, an Invisible Traffic Hazard" by Susan James, it turns out that athletes who work out outside are increasingly exposed to air pollution, putting them at serious risk for asthma, heart disease and other nasty life-threatening problems. According to the article, "athletes typically take in 10 to 20 percent more air, and thus pollutants, with every breath as sedentary people do" AND "during exercise, low concentrations of pollutants caused lung damage similar to that caused by high concentration in people not working out" AND women JUST living in areas with poor air quality were far more likely to die from heart attacks than women living in areas with good air quality. It just goes to show, as nice as it is to save the whales and the spotted owl and all those other lovely animals, which I am all for, we really need to save ourselves from ourselves.
You can read the article here.
3 comments:
That's so frustrating. Just when you think you are improving your future health you find out you've worked really hard to damage it. argh
I bet Gold's Gym paid for that article to get people to exercise indoors.
Just think how Charlottesville is a little town with good air quality and then hold your breath the whole way there!
It's true--Charlottesville probably has pretty good overall air quality. So you, personally are ok.
I worry about the kids in inner cities who have so many health risks in the old apartment houses and without good nutrition etc, and then we (meaning NPs) tell them that if they want to be really healthy they should be outside exercising--I wonder how the risk of exposure to poor air quality compares to the benefits of exercise?
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