Blog About Health & Medicine

Jogging and Overweight

Overweight people trying to shed pounds would be wiser not to do so by jogging. Bones and joints in the legs and feet can be severely stressed by this type of exercise when one is overweight. The combination of running and excess weight can even crack the bones of the pelvis in otherwise fit young people, according to Medical World News (23#25:57). The cracked bone causes aching in the buttock with hip move ments, and requires that, for six weeks, all activities that produce the pain be stopped.

Exercise can certainly help dieters. However, it should be of a kind that does not overly stress weight-bearing structures in the lower limbs. Walking three or four miles a day or working up a sweat on an exercycle or rowing machine is helpful and safe. It is better to lose weight by other means first before taking up running or jogging.

Is Jogging Safe?

Every year, just enough slim young people collapse and die while jogging that many physicians hesitate to recommend this form of exercise. At autopsy, the heart muscle in these cases usually looks as if it has not been getting enough blood supply. Until recently, however, the cause of this has been a mystery, since the young victims’ coronary arteries are rarely found to be narrowed by fat and cholesterol deposits (atherosclerosis).

Now, it seems, the mystery has been solved by the discovery of “bridges” of heart muscle across the coronary arteries. When the muscle contracts, the bridges squeeze the coronary arteries and thus reduce the amount of blood they can deliver to the heart muscle. Since the bridges are part of the heart’s muscular wall, coronary blood flow is reduced most severely during exercise when the heart is beating faster and more forcibly than usual. There could be no worse time for this to happen.

Since few of us know whether or not we have this abnormality (only 1 percent of us do), it is recommended that we avoid exercising our hearts past the point where bridges, if present, would tighten excessively around our vessels.

According to a report in Medical World News, this means not letting your pulse rate exceed 150 per minute. If your pulse beats faster than this during exercise, rest until it slows down and thereafter exercise more slowly. By training, you will more easily be able to keep your pulse below 150.

Leg and lower body exercise, as in jogging, has become a national compulsion which, as the body ages, may do more harm than good, the editorial writer in Modern Medicine suspects. The trauma of repeatedly pounding one’s feet on pavement while jogging, he points out, damages the ankles, knees, hips, and spine because the human body (unlike the bodies of four-legged animals) is just not well designed for endurance running.

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Signs and symptoms

The condition exists if one or both testes do not rest in the scrotum at birth. However, an undescended testis must be distinguished from a migratory or retractile testis. A migrating or retractile testis has completed its descent into the scrotum, but has risen temporarily into the groin. A migratory or retractile testis returns to its normal position as a boy matures, and it needs no correction. If the size of the scrotum is normal, the testis is migrating; if it is small, the testis is undescended. An undescended testis sometimes can be felt in the groin, but it may be mistaken for a hernia or a swollen lymph gland.

Home care

If a testis appears to be missing from the scrotum after birth, check periodically to see if it has descended of its own accord. To check for an undescended testis, place the child in a tub of warm water and pull his knees up toward his chest. If the testis is migratory it will often descend into the scrotum. If the testis is undescended, it will not.

Precautions

• Don’t worry the child by discussing the condition. An undescended testis can usually be corrected.

• Do not postpone correction of an undescended testis. It should be corrected when the boy is between four and seven years old.

• A boy with an undescended testis has an increased chance of an inguinal hernia.

Medical treatment

Your doctor will examine the child’s scrotum and groin carefully and check for the presence of a hernia, which often accompanies an undescended testis. Some doctors give hormone injections to encourage the testis to descend, but most prefer to perform surgery when the child is between the ages of four and seven, and not to use hormones at all.

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