More Bad News for White Athletes and Would-Be-Athletes

Too much exercise takes a toll on male cardiac arteries (whites only)!!

We all know that white men (still) can’t jump,*  but now we find that a new study reveals, “White men who exercise at high levels are 86% more likely than people who exercise at low levels to experience a buildup of plaque in the heart arteries by middle age. . . .”

See: uh-oh

Yes!  Another occasion for white males to feel like a victimized minority. . .

This research hits home with me especially because last year I discovered I had cardiac disease that required the installation of two stents in my Left Anterior Descending artery, the so-called “widow maker.” Now I find that a white male age 71 who runs and cycles maybe too much is increasing his risk of heart disease.

For most of my adult life I have engaged in endurance exercise (once 2,500 running miles a year, now 4,500 cycling miles a year), believing that among other things it would prolong my life, or at least improve its quality.

Whereas I was slowly** trying to kill myself.  If you’ve been following lessons from similar studies over the last decade or two, you may have heard this note sounded repeatedly—that a moderate amount of exercise is good for you, but overdoing it damages your health (thus the reference to “U-shaped trends” in the linked article).  For decades I have also been dismissing the U-shaped findings as the work of not-very-fit scientists trying to dig up some rationale for their lack of commitment to an exercise regimen.

Let me note here in my defense that my mother, her father, and one of my brothers died from heart attacks, and another brother has cardiac issues as well. So at least for me, there is a hereditary component.  Small consolation, I must say.  🙁

Black Males Exempt: Evolutionary Explanation?

The study found that the excessive plaque buildup did not occur in black men. Which begs for an explanation.  My half-baked idea follows:

I will go very far out on an amateur evolutionary science limb here to hypothesize that since blacks have more recently arrived from Africa where the climate is suitable for year-round running, those who were subject to cardiac disease from prolonged endurance exercise would have been weeded out—i.e. suffered premature death from heart attack or starvation due to inability to hunt. The survivors and their progeny now carry a set of cardiologically superior genes with them to every corner of the globe (geography challenge of the week: find a corner of the globe).

Whereas those in northern climes (white) people spent many of their frigid winter days hunkered down in caves or artificial shelters; plaque buildup from prolonged exercise did not factor in their mortality, since they had a lot less exercise on a year-round basis.

One apparent flaw in my hypothesis is that coronary disease typically strikes men past what we have come to think of as their reproductive age.  However, we think of it that way because our recent culture has gravitated toward monogamous relationships*** and long periods of joint parenting.  But in the more distant past, vigorous men were more successful and apt to be siring children with multiple partners well into old age, while weaker men—such as those of any age physically weakened or killed by cardiac disease—were less likely to reproduce. Hence the ubiquity of descendants of Genghis Khan, whose preference for horseback riding may have spared him the affliction of coronary artery disease.

Alternatives Might Be Worse

If you are tempted to advise your overdoing-it white male friends and loved ones to taper off, please take into account the prevalence of exercise addiction in men who might otherwise be turning to drink or drugs to get their fix (if you think they drink too much beer now, just wait until they taper off!).  You don’t want to be responsible for driving them into substance abuse!

So, as one who has found piles of miles on foot or the bike to serve as a kind of therapy, I will state here that you will convince me to cut back only over my dead body!

============= Footnotes follow=================

*http://variety.com/2017/film/news/white-men-cant-jump-remake-blake-griffin-1201961798/

** “slowly” is the operative word when it comes to my running and cycling  🙁

*** Not strictly! 🙂