Heartbreaker

My son's best friend had a minor heart-attack–well, as minor as such things can be spoken about.  A big surprise to him and my son, because his buddy is a serious handball player who works out a lot.

Speaks to a point I've made here a time or twelve: You mostly can't eat your way out of poor health, nor can you just jock your way out–you need to do both. 

Just because you look fit and healthy doesn't mean you are, and there all kinds of guys who are serious athletes who aren't nearly as fit as they thought. Call it the Fixx Syndrome, after the late Jim Fixx, who ran marathons but who keeled over of a heart-attack while running in his forties. Proving that the assertion at the time, if you could run a marathon you'd never die of a heart-attack, was wrong. 

That's not the one you want to disprove yourself.

Fixx's contention was that diet didn't matter, and he got quite irate at people pushing all that rabbit foot and roots and twigs. A fatal error.

Yeah, yeah, we all gonna die, and you pays your money and you makes your choice, but whatever time you have can be made much better if you are riding in the limo of good health until you get there. Ask anybody who is ill; remember what it feels like when you have the flu or even a bad cold or a tight back? How much better it is not to be there? 

Remember Richard Pryor's routine where he's lying on the floor praying for God not to let him die because he's having a heart-attack? And God says: YOU SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT THAT WHILE YOU WERE EATING ALL THAT PORK!

And there is some evidence that diet and exercise, along with decreased risk factors, will let you live longer. 

Whip up some smoothies with some green leaves in 'em. Leave off most of that empty calories crap we all lust after. There's a reason they call sugar "white death," and point out that the whiter the bread, the quicker you're dead ...

Word.