former top runners with health problems

I know of a good DI women\'s team whose top 7 from 20 years ago have faced these types of problems:

MS

Fybromyalgia

Lupus

Arthritis

What is interesting, is that the runners with these autoimmune diseases were the really dedicated ones, who gave it their all. The ones who where more laid back have been healthy. This could be a total coincidence. But it would be valuable to track the long-term health of runners/endurance athletes.

If you really want to speak truth, how about presenting scientific evidence showing a statistically significant difference between runners and the general population at large? Otherwise this is just more drivel

Exactly. you need to do long-term studies (longitudinal), where elite runners are compared against controls (non-athletes, and maybe the more casual fitness jogger). Otherwise we are just speculating.

DOC,

Was unaware that Salazar was suffering from a serious health problem.

Sounds like you're going on a fishing expedition without many facts.

Something new?

Kenneth Cooper implied the same thing a few years ago - a correlation between high levels of athletic effort and auto-immune disease or cancer. (I may not have stated that absolutely right, but that's the idea.) I'm skeptical. But the real question is as follows: If, by some chance, it were to be "proven" that years of hard running makes one more apt to be sick with certain diseases, would the running community, especially the better runners, believe or excuse? Change habits or, smoker-like, hope for the best?

Salazar has been suffering from a serious lung disease since the 80's. Why do you think his career ended so ubrubtly and early? DOC is not fishing for facts, he has his straight. Do some research yourself before accusing one of this.

I wasn't aware that Coe was having any serious health problems, what's going on with him?

I remember reading either in RW or Running Times that Salazar had run for a couple of years before being diagnosed with exercised induced Asthma. Salazar had a history with health & other injuries: sheath compartment, low iron/anemia, chronic fatigue syndrome, used Prozac, etc.

Serious health problems? Or just you're typical middle-age run of the mill stuff? A serious study is probably warranted. Especially among the eastern bloc stars from the 70's and 80's.

If a survey was handed out to the top 100 athletes from 20 years ago and the results were contrasted to the rate of the general population(I suppose the environments and different geographic areas must be considered) I wonder if the rate of health problems would be any different.

Then again you would have to take out all the smokers to get a fair comparison (unless the tested athletes included Patrick Sjoberg).

The findings of a higher rate among the top athletes might determine an adverse effect of long term strenuous exercise, but this would be no means matter to anyone who has the drive to live this lifestyle, so I guess the findings would be meaningless. Or would they?

salazar is on medication for hypertension and hyperlipidemia...probably/possibly familial...Hans Selye's stress theories could explain some of the autoimmune connections

Margaret Gross (1988 OT marathon winner) and Bob kennedy have had thyroid problems.

Coe suffered from numerous bouts with mono during his career.

I had a short bout of mono as a collegiate freshman too, so what? So did a large number of public-at-large freshman at the university, probably one of the reasons I picked it up.

Meanwhile, I hadn't been to a doctor since then (1980) until this summer, and I've been pushing hard in various athletic pursuits all along.

There is no point to this without legitimate statistical data, otherwise it might all be explainable as predisposed conditions.