Sports Medicine & Science presentations

Prevalence of atrial fibrillation among Masters swimmers. Incidence of sudden cardiac death among Masters swimmers. USMS has the potential to create a large database that could enhance our understanding of cardiovascular disease among Masters athletes. I suggested this to Rob a few years ago. This February, Steven Blair, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina presented their findings on swimming and mortality based on the 32-yearAerobics Center Longitudinal Study ((ACLS), which has followed the health and activity levels of 40,000 adult men, aged 20-90. What the most recent analysis showed is that regular swimming for exercise cuts a man's risk of dying by nearly 50 percent compared to walking or remaining sedentary. Perhaps even more surprising, swimmers also had significantly lower mortality than runners. 1. It might be good to get Dr. Blair to make a presentation. He's a pretty big name in exercise physiology--the guy who found that fitness is more important that fatness in cardiac risk, for instance. 2. I think your idea, Gull, about using USMS data to study swimming and cardiac problems (as well as other diseases and conditions that increase with age) is a great one. You might want to talk to Mary Sweat, impressario of the Go the Distance program, which is slowly accumulating a ton of data on distance swum and (starting this year) time swum. Paul Williams of the National Runners Health Study has been collecting data on runner for decades now, and this could be an excellent model for a longitudinal swimming study. One of the interesting aspects of our sport is that for those of us who actually write our workouts down, there is no guesstimating involved--the data of when we swim, how much we swim, and to a large extent the intensity involved is not subject to recall bias--it's collected after every practice. 3. Finally, I think that the vast majority of USMS members would be glad to participate in a longitudinal health study. I, for one, would be more than happy to give a blood sample, for instance, at nationals or a regional meet, fill out questionaires, etc. Ransom Arthur, the patron saint of the masters movement, did studies at the very first nationals more or less designed to show that adults who competed very, very vigorously were not inviting the Grim Reaper into their widowmaker arteries. He showed, if anything, that the precisely the opposite was the case. Anyhow, perhaps you, Jane, Jim Miller, and other physicians in the masters ranks could send out a letter to leading exercise physiology/sports medicine/and related residency programs nationwide, letting the research community know that we have a huge and burgeoning group of test subjects willing to donate our data to those interested in mining it!

Prevalence of atrial fibrillation among Masters swimmers. Incidence of sudden cardiac death among Masters swimmers. USMS has the potential to create a large database that could enhance our understanding of cardiovascular disease among Masters athletes. I suggested this to Rob a few years ago. This February, Steven Blair, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of South Carolina presented their findings on swimming and mortality based on the 32-yearAerobics Center Longitudinal Study ((ACLS), which has followed the health and activity levels of 40,000 adult men, aged 20-90. What the most recent analysis showed is that regular swimming for exercise cuts a man's risk of dying by nearly 50 percent compared to walking or remaining sedentary. Perhaps even more surprising, swimmers also had significantly lower mortality than runners. 1. It might be good to get Dr. Blair to make a presentation. He's a pretty big name in exercise physiology--the guy who found that fitness is more important that fatness in cardiac risk, for instance. 2. I think your idea, Gull, about using USMS data to study swimming and cardiac problems (as well as other diseases and conditions that increase with age) is a great one. You might want to talk to Mary Sweat, impressario of the Go the Distance program, which is slowly accumulating a ton of data on distance swum and (starting this year) time swum. Paul Williams of the National Runners Health Study has been collecting data on runner for decades now, and this could be an excellent model for a longitudinal swimming study. One of the interesting aspects of our sport is that for those of us who actually write our workouts down, there is no guesstimating involved--the data of when we swim, how much we swim, and to a large extent the intensity involved is not subject to recall bias--it's collected after every practice. 3. Finally, I think that the vast majority of USMS members would be glad to participate in a longitudinal health study. I, for one, would be more than happy to give a blood sample, for instance, at nationals or a regional meet, fill out questionaires, etc. Ransom Arthur, the patron saint of the masters movement, did studies at the very first nationals more or less designed to show that adults who competed very, very vigorously were not inviting the Grim Reaper into their widowmaker arteries. He showed, if anything, that the precisely the opposite was the case. Anyhow, perhaps you, Jane, Jim Miller, and other physicians in the masters ranks could send out a letter to leading exercise physiology/sports medicine/and related residency programs nationwide, letting the research community know that we have a huge and burgeoning group of test subjects willing to donate our data to those interested in mining it!