Diet and Exercise Dangers

By Anastasia Toufexis

All the instruments and experts agree that there are often painful pitfalls on the rigorous road to glowing health. Pick up a racket, and you run the risk of a sprained ankle, twisted knee or tennis elbow. Condition your heart by pumping over hill and dale on a racing bike with low-slung handle bars, and you can come up with chronic low back pain. Play softball and be prepared for torn knee ligaments and broken fingers.

Though many different sports put a strain on the same parts of the body and result in the same injuries, some produce their own peculiar ills. Golfers get twinges of golfer's elbow. Swimmer's shoulder may catch up with anybody who favors the butterfly stroke. There is even something known as "dunk laceration syndrome" that strikes highflyers who slam the ball through the basket, hitting their hands against the hoop.

At its best, exercise--particularly regular exercise--is good for the heart rate, blood pressure, respiration and metabolism. Says Jim Barnard, research cardiologist at U.C.L.A.: "It's similar to tuning up your car's engine to make the car run more efficiently." Vigorous physical effort helps release tension too. But it can also do a lot of damage, especially if the athlete is a neophyte or weekend warrior, both of whom tend to try to do too much too soon.

The trouble usually starts when sudden demands are made on an unconditioned body. In tennis and basketball, the knees and ankles must accommodate quick stops and starts and lightning changes of direction. In jogging, the athlete's feet typically strike the ground 800 to 1,000 times a mile, with an impact equivalent to about three times the body's weight. The shock jolts the entire skeleton. Statistically, at least, every one of the nearly 30 million runners in the U.S. can expect some ailment.

Besides forcing their bodies to perform beyond their capabilities, many people have the Spartan belief that exercise will do no good unless it is pursued until the body aches. Says Gilbert Gleim of Lenox Hill Hospital's Institute of Sports Medicine in Manhattan: "If you're training to be healthy, exercise should never hurt." A few simple precautions, sports specialists point out, can prevent many injuries. Choose an appropriate sport for your weight and body build and always do warming-up and cooling-down exercises.

Dieting poses a whole set of different hazards, especially the quickie weight-losing schemes that separate U.S. dieters from a few pounds each year. Among the current In diets are the Pritikin, the Atkins and the Beverly Hills Diet. Nutrition experts insist that many fad diets are not really diets at all but bizarre and temporary ways of depriving the subject of adequate nutrition.

The problem of course is that nobody can (or should) stick to such diets for a long time. Fads fail because they do not offer a diet people can live with. And that, actually, is a blessing. Most people do not stay on such diets long enough to do themselves any physical damage. But more than 80% of people who do lose weight by dieting tend to gain it back within a year.

Fad diets are usually based on some nutritional fallacy. Of the currently popular regimes, the one that comes closest to being nutritionally acceptable is a low-fat diet recommended by Nathan Pritikin, somewhat similar to the one that people in underdeveloped countries follow of necessity. Pritikin, 66, founder of the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, Calif, is a self-taught nutritionist. He forbids all fats, salt and sugar, oils, most processed foods and dairy products, and discourages the use of tobacco, caffeine, sugar and salt substitutes and even vitamins. Devotees eat mainly fresh fruits, vegetables and whole-grain breads, hoping Pritikin is correct when he claims that the diet curbs heart disease, diabetes and hypertension. Doctors say more testing is needed to substantiate such claims. They also say the Pritikin Diet is unnecessarily restrictive, especially for healthy people. Says Nutritionist Myron Winick of the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University:

"If you follow it, you almost can't eat in a restaurant."

The diets that get the poorest medical marks are two very popular ones--Atkins and Beverly Hills. The first, conceived by Dr. Robert Atkins, 51, restricts carbohydrates but allows unlimited consumption of meat and fat. Says Nutritionist Nancy Tiger of Boston's Beth Israel Hospital: "You can eat as much bacon, fresh sausage and those kinds of things as you want. They're high in cholesterol and saturated fat. Not good in terms of heart disease."

The Beverly Hills Diet is the creation of Californian Judy Mazel, 37, an aspiring actress until she became a nutritional guru. Mazel allows only fruit the first ten days--as much as five pounds of grapes a day--and no meat, poultry or fish until Day 19. Some doctors say the book should be listed under fiction. A leading nutrition expert says, "If you went to a bookstore and bought a history that said the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1827 or World War I began in 1905, you'd be pretty angry." If followed too long, the Beverly Hills Diet may lead to diarrhea, and although medical evidence is scant, doctors warn of other complications.

Many physicians shake their heads at the public's gullibility about diets. As Psychiatrist Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania points out, "The only way to lose weight is to make really big changes in your life-style."

--By Anastasia Toufexis.

Reported by Joyce Leviton/Atlanta and John E. Yang/Boston, with other US. bureaus

With reporting by Joyce Leviton, John E. Yang, U.S. bureaus

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.