Anyone read the ESPN Body Issue?

[marmasatt]

Well, I'll say this in the simplest of terms. If I had a choice to be 30lbs overweight living a sedentary lifestyle "unhealthy" or the Ryan Hall *possibly* "unhealthy".... I'm choosing the latter every time. Don't think I'm alone on that, but I could be wrong. Seems kind of obvious to me. Yeah he's got a whole different set of risk factors and what not, but again the benefits are going to outweigh the problems in general.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Yeah, this discussion is nuts. Let's be honest here. He's a lot "healthier" than he is "unhealthy".....The pro's he has are going to far outweigh the cons. That makes sense, right? I mean it's foolish to argue on a false premise.

Overall, sure. His average health is going to be much better. I'm talking about his weaknesses and, if you look at him from an orthopedic standpoint rather than an internal medicine standpoint, he's at risk no matter what. His heart will pump for years and years, but if he breaks his hip later in life due to low muscle mass and poor bone density, he's still at risk for things like infection, thromboembolism, avascular necrosis, etc. Those are a serious problem with an aging (and non-aging) low bone density population. The risks are very real. You're thinking on different terms than I am. It's always the weakest link in the chain that creates the problem. If that's his musculoskeletal system, then he's gonna have problems regardless of his internal health.

 

[SociallyChallenged]

Well, I'll say this in the simplest of terms. If I had a choice to be 30lbs overweight living a sedentary lifestyle "unhealthy" or the Ryan Hall *possibly* "unhealthy".... I'm choosing the latter every time. Don't think I'm alone on that, but I could be wrong. Seems kind of obvious to me. Yeah he's got a whole different set of risk factors and what not, but again the benefits are going to outweigh the problems in general.

You're comparing to sedentary - I'm not. I'd like to compare to the ideal. If Ryan Hall weren't an athlete who was very sport specific, I'd suggest he put on 15-20lbs of muscle mass (plus a few pounds of fat). That might reduce his overall mile time, but it would improve his health. There's no weighing of the issues here. As I said, the weakest link is the one that breaks. Regardless if his organs work fantastically, a broken bone still takes a long time to heal (plus directly and indirectly reduces his organ health due to immobility).