Is exercise bad for you?

Courtesy a medical situation in Delhi I have spent the past few days with some very patient and dedicated doctors, most of them ex-army but with a great deal of ‘bedside manner’ (a commodity in short supply) and not dedicated to padding the bill but actually getting the patient well and out. And we are talking in the ICU which is like being marooned in the middle of the River Styx and has a mix of Lysol and frailty and this specialist says to me as we discuss sport:

You know when I was a young doctor I had a commanding officer and he used to say look at the world around us. Take the tortoise, who trudges along at the slowest speed of all, if he trudges at all. He lives to be a hundred. Take the elephant, who trundles along most of his life and occasional makes a lazy, leisurely move. He passes the century mark. Take the parrot which flies in spurts but never migrates or travels across some tundra. Hits 75 and still going.

Now, take your big cats. The lion and the tiger and the cheetah, your thoroughbreds and your greyhounds and all your galloping deer and you get fifteen years tops. Mostly less.

So , should we exercise?

Is exercise all that it is cracked up to be?

In Feb this year there was article in the UK stating that raining hard was as bad as not training at all especially if it is directed toward endurance training. If you are doing more than 150 minutes a week of organized training you could be putting yourself at risk.

Jogging is considered pretty much on top of the risk list.

One report says the downside of exercise is multiple. It becomes a fixation and causes stress, it hurts the heart, it also causes diabetes (according to some schools of thought) it is often rooted in a mental complex of not liking yourself. It causes inflammation, injures the joints and hastens aging. There is so much hype about its advantages that no one takes the downside seriously and yet, it exists.

Are there only so many calories allotted per person and if you burn them up what then?

They are doctors and I want to come up with a glib answer or thwart this story by saying the evidence suggests otherwise.

Then he says, take the crocodile, he does nothing but sun himself, hardly ever moving. Goes well into his eighties and he doesn’t even chew his food. Go figure.