Monday, July 19, 2010

Swimming with the Fittest?

“This study, which involved 40,547 men ages 20-90 who completed health exams between 1971 and 2003, found that ‘swimmers had lower mortality rates than those who were sedentary, walkers or runners.’ But swimmers being more fit than runners? ‘It doesn't quite make sense to me,’ says [Steven Blair, a leading exercise scientist from the University of South Carolina and study lead] with a laugh. Over the course of the study, 1,336 of the 20,356 runners (or 6.6%) had died, compared with only 11 of the 562 swimmers (1.9%). ‘That small number of [swimmer] deaths could lead to erroneous conclusions,’ he says. In addition, the study was ‘observational’ — that is, the researchers simply followed the different groups of people over...

http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/features/la-he-swimming-20100719,0,1332646.story

No comments: