photo by axinia
Great news for everyone who has always been feeling there is something wrong with that sport-hype. One has to do sports to stay healthy, fit, and all that… But why does my body oppose it so much (otherwise being quite wise in many questions)?
The fact is one can stay totally healthy without any sports (swimming, jogging and Co.). And actually, the classical idea of sport is a competition, an ambition for more fitness or muscular body.
We definitely need some motion. However the medically needed movement dose is easily reached by some daily activities: 187 min dish-washing or 172 min caring shopping bags home burns same amount of calories as 43 min of intensive swim training. We do not really need much to keep us fit! – hope the fitness Industry will not kill me at that point.
The famous College Alumni Health Study (1960) says any kind of motion is good, as soon as our pulse speeds up and the breath gets deeper. In a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Slentz (physiologist at Duke University medical center) and his colleagues looked at whether cardiovascular exercise could increase cholesterol: Simply jogging 20 miles a week elevates the larger HDL by 19 percent. Many other studies show that even a little motion is already quite significant for the human body and there is no need to exaggerate.
And some more recently gained facts:
- even soft swimming has impact on knee joint and intervertibral discs
- regular swimming escalates the Asthma risk to 50% – almost same for running and skiing
- the lungs of children that regularly swim are similarly damaged as smoker-lungs, found out the French researcher
- more that 45 min sport in a week increases miscarriage chances by pregnant women in the first 17 weeks
The point I wanted to make here is that in the case of fitness and sport we should really have a clear head and listen to the feedback of our body.
Do we really need that or do we let ourself be driven by the marketing and media (again and again!)
LOVE from a very unathletic but healthy and happy
axinia 
axinia
Hello Axinia (fellow yogi) I found your blog on worldpress.com and have been enjoying your posts and pictures.
I have enjoyed reading your insights, and will be back for more.
Thanks
Thanks, Alen, I am glad you found me
and I found you then too!
Thanks for your feedback and keep visiting!
Excellent post! With so many people starting in on extreme sports from ultra-marathons to 24 hours of adrenaline cycling competitions thinking that they are helping their bodies health..egads??!! Its nice to hear about studies that keep sports just like all things in moderation:-))
Di
well, i didn’t have any idea of that sport can be unhealthy for us when practice it regularly….. however this statement is quite interesting as it’s with a good sense of humour …
I don’t think I can agree with these results, Axinia
For sports definitely make us healthy! There is no doubt about it as far as I’m concerned
Professional sportsmen of course, carry the risk of injury throughout their playing career. Endurance sportsmen too may have to face certain conditions. And pregnant women should better avoid all sports, except may be chess
But how could the researchers say sports do not make one healthy
Sports are beneficial not just for the body, but the mind and soul as well 
There are other benefits, too. Sports inculcates the spirit of team work, fair play, resilience, fighting spirit, friendship, comradeship, brings out the best in oneself and others etc. In short one could say that sports are a celebration of the human spirit
Sports is also a key marker of civilisation. Societies without a sporting culture and those with a mono-sporting or bi-sporting culture all happen to be uncouth places populated by the rapidly overbreeding, semi-civilised hordes. Instead of spending their leisure time usefully, the young men and boys (who need sports more than anyone else) of such societies easily take to crime, alcoholism, drugs etc. Why, in certain primitive semi-civilised Third World countries, hordes of uncouth creatures prefer to while away their spare time in what is euphemistically termed as eve-teasing
The Taliban also decided to ban all sports, except soccer – and that too, only for men wearing long trousers. Why? It’s not as if the Taliban loved to play or watch football. They knew they would not get too many spectators to watch their public beheadings. So they had to allow soccer and interrupt the games to lash, stone or behead people
In uncouth countries, the barbaric hordes fight and kill each other with weapons like arrows, spears, stones, swords, guns etc. In civilised countries, people compete against each other in sports like archery, javelin throw, shot-put, fencing, stooting etc. It’s not a wonder that sports is derived from war and is meant as a war-substitute for civilised people. It comes as no surprise therefore, that in ancient Greece, all wars were stopped to hold the Olympics
I wonder why this thory seems for vague to my dear readers? onyl because since ages you ahve been reading soemthing else, showing the importance of sports?
The magaize where I found the material is a well known and respected German ZEIT Wissen magazin. They are not into publishing some spectacular bullshit…
But since the fitness inducstry is one of the most profitable, I guess we will nto find much infromation on it at all…
Sports became an industry only in recent times, Axinia. But the spirit of sports goes back to millenia, probably right back to the transition of humans from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agriculturists.
Hunter-gatherers would normally be fit and healthy because their ability to feed themselves depends on their fitness and agility. With the onset of agriculture, humans would have become lazier and less healthy since they didn’t have to strive too hard to get food. So sports were probably invented to prevent humans from becoming lazy, unhealthy “field potatoes”.
With the onset of industrialisation, humans must have become even lazier than they were as agriculturists. Therefore the need for sports must be greater. In service oriented modern societies, the need for sports is even greater than in industrial societies
So I guess sports has been a very essential part to prevent the decay of the human body over the ages. Without a healthy body, there can be no healthy mind. Nor can there be a healthy spirit
I’m actually very glad that the spiritual thinkers of the far East were smart enough to realise this and perfected martial arts as a spiritual way to develop the body, mind and soul. The bubble-dwelling saints of the Indian sub-continent failed miserably on this aspect
Now this is controversial , hahah. Can you provide with some proofs of the claims that you make. Not that I disagree with you completely. I too agree on a certain level that sports plants the seeds of competition, ” I am better than you ” in the players. Which is not very spiritual. From this angle I say that sports is not good when there is very unhealthy competition.
But if one is competing not for winning and accepts defeat gracefully, then its wonderful.
From health point of view, I think more proof are needed.
I love walking and feel this spaceousness that being outdoors delivers – always – my body tells me what is good and what is not.
I also love walking oudors, this is the best “sport” for me. But the studies mean the real sport, not something natural like walking.
how interesting… i always felt that there is something wrong with me because i love the motion, but hate it being elevated to the competitive level… cool. now, at least, I have been proved once again that my guts don’t lie to me
in fact, any kind of competition in humans feels wrong to me… i like more exhibitions than competitions… they feel more natural. again, it is just me.
it is just natural
it is true that some people overdo it and injure themselves. Too much jogging damaging the knees etc. However, it is always possibe to strike a good balance – cycling and or swimming limit the damage to ones body
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