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RUNNING YOURSELF TO DEATH

It’s sadly ironic, but we happened to spot the other day an Internet biography blurb about a famous athlete . . . and the item was posted on a JOKE web site. Do you remember Jim Fixx, the famous runner? He ran something like 20 marathons, and was well known for logging 60 miles a week. In fact, he once estimated that he had run a total of 37,000 miles in his lifetime — that’s one-and-a-half times around the globe.

So why is that a joke? Maybe you also remember that Mr. Healthy, Jim Fixx, died tragically at the premature age of just 52. And how did he pass away? From a massive heart attack while doing just a four-mile run.

The Internet blurb pointed out the sad irony: Jim Fixx was the author of the book The Complete Book of Running. And yet when they did the autopsy there in Greensboro, Vermont, they found that one of his coronary arteries was 99% blocked. Another was 80% gone, and a third one was 70% clogged up. Then the news came out that Jim Fixx had already had three other coronary attacks in the weeks before his death. There was damaged scar tissue all over the place, and this in the heart of the man known around the world as a legendary athlete.

Our topic today is moderation, as we continue with our radio series based on the recent bestselling book, Live 10 Healthy Years Longer. Authors Cecil Murphey and Jan Kuzma have titled Chapter 17 “Take It Easy!”, and what a tragedy that instead of living that extra decade, Mr. Fixx was really robbed of maybe 20 or 30 years by those clogged arteries. But was his lifestyle of running 60 miles a week harmful? It doesn’t sound exactly “moderate”; that’s for sure. But was it dangerous to run so far week after week? Can there be too much of a good thing.

These two writers explain that for a long time researchers didn’t really know why Fixx had died. They essentially assumed his coronary attack just stemmed from a genetic condition. But about a decade later, friends of Jim began to admit that his lifestyle actually was anything but healthy.

“Ultra-marathoner Stan Cottrell said he and Fixx appeared together at a conference,” they write. “Just before Fixx went in to speak, he ‘stuffed himself with four donuts and said, “I didn’t have time for breakfast.”’”

And apparently he lived this way all the time: reckless and wild in his diet, and then reckless and wild in running so, so, so many miles, figuring that the excesses of one would cancel out the excesses of the other. We remember seeing in a running magazine once an admission by an athlete who was clocking 60 or 70 miles a week on the road. He was basically running so much to make up for the fact that he was pigging out constantly at the dessert buffet. “Hey, I can have two desserts at every single meal,” he boasted, “and still lose weight . . . ‘cause I run so much.”

Now friend, there have been times in this series when we didn’t preach moderation. If you want to be a moderate smoker, we’re going to shout at you as loud as we can here on the radio. The best number of cigarettes for you to smoke a year is zero . . . and the 27,514 people in the Live-Longer Lifestyle suck away on exactly that number. We also recommend total abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A total, complete, burn-down-the-laboratory ban on illegal drugs. But in so many arenas of health and lifestyle, swinging to the extremes — either side — is where we get hurt. Walking or jogging zero miles a week can hurt you. So can doing 60 . . . especially if it’s done to cancel out the extremes you’re indulging in at the dinner table.

We already mentioned that right after a marathon, runners have a brief period where their defensive NK cells are basically catatonic for a while. And a Dr. David C. Nieman, also associated with Loma Linda University, did research with the 1987 Los Angeles Marathon, and found out that 40% of all participants had gotten sick — flu or a cold — in the two months before the 26.2-mile event. After the marathon, something like 2,300 runners got colds. Even though running’s good, the body’s just not made to go that hard, that far. Even the most diehard devotee will admit that after 20 miles, the body is hurting itself, consuming its own tissues to get through that “wall” and do the final six miles. Dr. Kenneth Cooper, whose name recognition in the field of exercise and aerobics is right up there with the late Jim Fixx’s, states emphatically that “excessive exercise is dangerous, while a moderate program is helpful.” And other Loma Linda studies tell us that “moderate exercise is just as effective as intense training in reducing deaths from all causes AND in prolonging life.” If you have to rest up for an hour after each exercise session, that might be a clue that you’re overexerting yourself. And moderate exercise should be both enjoyable and relatively stress-free. You shouldn’t dread it.

I guess we can all think of caricatures of excess on television. Homer Simpson, of course, is always dreaming about donuts, and consuming 20 at a time when he gets the chance. “Frank,” on Everybody Loves Raymond, loosens his belt before porking out and overindulging at a restaurant or during one of Marie’s enormous dinners. And I know we’ve all had moments on Thanksgiving afternoon when we wonder why we ate so much. Old-time preacher Dan Venden, uncle of our own Morrie Venden, used to say apologetically at a meeting after a big church potluck dinner: “I’m afraid my wife’s husband ate too much.” Well, we smile at a line like that, but there’s nothing funny at all about a teenage girl who takes the goal of dieting — often a good goal — and spirals into bulimia or anorexia.
In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey writes with real sorrow about a young man who became hugely concerned about diet. Was he eating too much? Was he eating the right kinds of food? Should he cut back? And again some sad irony — because even though we’ve been talking about this test group of 27,000 Seventh-day Adventists who have succeeded in living long and abundant lives, this man was an Adventist too! But the concept of moderation was foreign to him. If cutting back a little was good, wouldn’t cutting way, way back be even better? And as Yancey tells the story, this person actually died! He starved himself to death, trying to “obey all the rules.”

Well, friend, that kind of response runs headlong into what we’ve come to appreciate as the closing section of each chapter in this great book, Live 10 Healthy Years Longer. It’s entitled “Getting Practical” — and how often do we fail to do that, lurching from one extreme to the next one? In fact, that’s really Principle #1 Jan and Cecil share with us:

“Make GRADUAL changes. If you decide to become a vegetarian, for example, begin by eliminating red meat and continuing to eat poultry and fish for a while.”

By the way, they make an excellent point for those of you who might be the head of a household.

“Don’t shock your family,” they write, “with too much good at once . . . and risk rejection of all health reform.”

I can just imagine it: “Kids, guess what? From now on, it’s nothing but tofu and prune juice! Yum yum yum! You’re never going to see the golden arches again!” And thankfully, Cecil and Jan go on to observe:

“In everything, keep a positive, optimistic spirit. Be flexible. Laugh at your mistakes. Don’t take yourself too seriously.”

Here’s Goal #2 in achieving moderation:
“Set small, easily obtainable goals. If you are 40 pounds overweight, don’t try to lose all those pounds in four weeks. Ease into a program of reducing food intake and increasing physical exercise.”

Well, there’s more good stuff, but let me take just a closing minute here to remind us all that even Jesus didn’t allow Himself to become a workaholic. In Mark chapter six, after a long, hectic time of ministry work, He said to His 12 exhausted followers:

“Come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”

That’s good advice even today, isn’t it? And you know, even in our Christianity — our praying, our Bible studying, our church attendance — it’s good to practice moderation, to stay steady on the course: not crawling and not sprinting. In their exceptional book, Becoming a Contagious Christian, Bill Hybels and Mark Mittelberg write about people who lurch from one fad to the next. And for the moment, it’s Christianity.

“[Family members] have seen you go through all kinds of phases before,” they write: “earth shoes, eccentric diets, tae kwon do classes, pyramid marketing schemes, subliminal tapes you played under your pillow each night to improve your attitude, and the like. Now you’re coming along and saying, ‘I’ve found what’s been missing in my life all of these years. It’s Jesus Christ!’ And they’re thinking, ‘Yeah, isn’t that what you were saying about those herbal food supplements a couple of years ago? How long is this fling going to last?’” And then Hybels closes with the sobering question we should address on the running track, at the dinner table, and when we pick up our Bibles: “The question is, are you willing to prove them wrong by making the sacrifice of living a consistent, high-integrity, Christian life, not just for a season, but for the long haul?”

That sounds like the best kind of steady moderation there is.