Friday, Jul. 15, 1966
Is It That Good for You?
Most Americans willingly accept the notion that physical fitness is valuable for just about everyone. Now, Stanford University Drs. Jose Montero and Kenneth Smyth have the audacity to wonder if it is such a good thing.
They searched the available literature and found two foreign studies suggesting that physical activity might indeed increase life expectancy. Then they searched a little further and found an American study that showed that it does nothing of the sort. Is there any tie-up between exercise and disease?
"Apparently susceptibility to most diseases has no relationship to fitness," they concluded from their research. Exercise, they suggest in the current Journal of the Association for Physical and Mental Rehabilitation, is certainly not "a universal panacea."
The Stanford medics hastened to ex plain that they recognized that "as a result of President Eisenhower's heart attack, his devotion to golf and Dr. Paul Dudley White, we are now accumulating fairly substantial evidence that physical activity will prevent or retard certain types of cardiovascular disease." And "almost everyone agrees that graded exercise will enhance recovery from most traumatic and surgical conditions." What the two were arguing was that widespread and unquestioning acceptance of exercise has impeded the sort of research that would help give doctors the knowledge that they need to prescribe the right activity in the right amounts for the right patient. The team is not saying current standards for physical fitness are wrong. "We're questioning them," says Dr. Montero.
And they are not taking any chances in the process. Montero still swims half a mile three times a week, and Smyth runs a mile every evening.
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