Coronary Curb

Bully for the strenuous life!

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

--Theodore Roosevelt, 1899

If the experience of Teddy's fellow Harvard alumni is any guide, his advice seems to be right on target. After a long-range study of 16,936 Harvardmen, a leading public health figure last week told an American Heart Association meeting in Miami Beach that the risk of heart attack can be significantly reduced by exercising--but only if that activity is really strenuous and calorie consuming.

In the early 1960s Epidemiologist Ralph Paffenbarger, now at Stanford University, sent questionnaires to some 36,000 Harvard alumni dating back to the class of 1920. Each alumnus was asked things like how many stairs he climbed daily and what sports he played every week. Nearly half of those surveyed replied, and in 1972 Paffenbarger again questioned them --or those who knew about them--to learn what changes in health had occurred during the intervening decade.

Paffenbarger found that there had been 572 heart attacks among the alumni, 257 of them fatal. That number was not unexpected in so large a group of mature men (ages ranged from 35 to 74). But in his subsequent statistical analysis. Paffenbarger discovered that those who exercised only casually--which he defined as burning fewer than 2,000 calories a week--ran a 64% greater risk of heart attack than did their more active classmates. It did not seem to matter much whether a person was a smoker or overweight, had high blood pressure or a family history of heart trouble. Only the strenuousness of the exercise appeared to influence the odds.

The results supported and amplified another study reported by Paffenbarger in March--a 22-year survey of San Francisco longshoremen. It showed that men engaged in heavy labor ran only one-half the risk of sudden, fatal heart attacks as did those who performed lighter work.

As examples of desirable activities for those who do not have strenuous jobs, Paffenbarger cited swimming, running, basketball, handball and squash, all of which burn up more than 2,000 calories a week if pursued for an hour or so a day. By contrast, games such as golf, bowling, baseball, Softball and volleyball seem to use too few calories to reduce the chances of a heart attack. As for tennis, Paffenbarger commented: "Batting the ball around on Sunday with young children generally isn't strenuous, but a stiff competitive game of singles is." qed

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