Whenever someone dies while exercising it always seems to make the news – it is almost as if it gives all those who do not exercise a justification for being lazy not having the time to exercise. Whenever someone has a heart attack during a marathon it is a chance for all the exercise cynics out there to say ‘ha – told you so, exercising is dangerous!’
I have written before on the concept of ‘relative risk’. The simplest example of it is to say that doing exercise does not prevent you from having a heart attack, it just lowers your risk.
A study out of the British Medical Journal recently makes an excellent comparison: Marathons run in the US over the last 30 years have actually prevented more deaths (46) that would have occurred had the roads that the marathons were run on been open to cars, than occurred through the marathons themselves (26).
Not to mention all the heart attacks saved (and caused?) during training for the marathons…
