9 time NYC marathon winner dies at 57

[Jake]

Meanwhile, she'll be outlived by many pack-a-day smokers who never get off the couch. Cancer does not discriminate. :ohwell:

Norway's former marathon world record holder and world champion Grete Waitz has died at the age of 57, the Norwegian Athletics Federation said Tuesday. Waitz had been suffering from cancer.

I remember watching the news in the 80s and it was like, oh yeah Waitz won the marathon again. She was a machine.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/19/us-athletics-waitz-idUSTRE73I2OG20110419

 

[Dryden]

Meanwhile, she'll be outlived by many pack-a-day smokers who never get off the couch. Cancer does not discriminate. :ohwell:

There has been some research, mostly foreign, that implicates sugar consumption in the rise of cancer (along with obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and a host of other diseases of civilization).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html

http://freetheanimal.com/2009/02/sugar-feeds-cancer.html

The argument goes that when University of Minnesota researcher Ancel Keys (wrongly) hypothesized in the 1950s that animal fat raised blood serum cholesterol, and elevated serum cholesterol causes heart disease, he set into motion the dietary sea change in America the has a nation gripped in fear of saturated animal fat and cholesterol (two substances that are necessary for our existance). This meant if we weren't eating those things, we had to be getting our calories from something else ... commodity grains. Sucrose and fructose, regardless if they come from sugar, wheat, corn, or soy, promotes insulin production, which contributes to fat accumulation in the liver and eventually metabolic syndrome, not to mention there is a high probabililty that these conditions also foster cancerous cell mutations and encourage tumor growth.

Beginning in 1977, we obediently did as we were told: We gave up our bacon, butter and eggs and replaced it with Special K, margerine and wheat toast, now we're fatter than ever, Type II diabetes is at an all time high, cancer rates are exploding through the roof, and our doctors want to put us all on statins (which not only don't do anything, but have dangerous side effects), cure our IBS, acid reflux, skin rashes, depression, erectile dysfunction, Alzheimer's, and cancer, which were all diseases that were either basically unheard of or exceedingly rare 50 years ago when we all ate bacon and eggs!

 

[MaxBuck]

Genetics can be a bitch.

 

[Jake]

There has been some research, mostly foreign, that implicates sugar consumption in the rise of cancer (along with obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and a host of other diseases of civilization).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html

http://freetheanimal.com/2009/02/sugar-feeds-cancer.html

The argument goes that when University of Minnesota researcher Ancel Keys (wrongly) hypothesized in the 1950s that animal fat raised blood serum cholesterol, and elevated serum cholesterol causes heart disease, he set into motion the dietary sea change in America the has a nation gripped in fear of saturated animal fat and cholesterol (two substances that are necessary for our existance). This meant if we weren't eating those things, we had to be getting our calories from something else ... commodity grains. Sucrose and fructose, regardless if they come from sugar, wheat, corn, or soy, promotes insulin production, which contributes to fat accumulation in the liver and eventually metabolic syndrome, not to mention there is a high probabililty that these conditions also foster cancerous cell mutations and encourage tumor growth.

Beginning in 1977, we obediently did as we were told: We gave up our bacon, butter and eggs and replaced it with Special K, margerine and wheat toast, now we're fatter than ever, Type II diabetes is at an all time high, cancer rates are exploding through the roof, and our doctors want to put us all on statins (which not only don't do anything, but have dangerous side effects), cure our IBS, acid reflux, skin rashes, depression, erectile dysfunction, Alzheimer's, and cancer, which were all diseases that were either basically unheard of or exceedingly rare 50 years ago when we all ate bacon and eggs!

I hear ya. I see the recent trend in soft drinks to "natural" versions, presumably so because they contain "real sugar" being presented as though they're healthier than those with corn sysrup or artificial sweeteners. Sugar is sugar and the human body wasn't meant to metabolize a ton of it.

What do we feed cows and pigs to fatten them up? Lard? Pork fat? No. We feed them grains, and lots of them. The body processes them as sugar and stores the rest as fat. Our bodies work the same way.

Not sure if any of that caused her cancer, though.

 

[Dryden]

Not sure if any of that caused her cancer, though.

Yeah, I go off on rants about this stuff.

Watching all my immediate family spontaneously die off over the past five or six years has heightened my awareness of nutrition and health, and most acutely made me realize that there are just as many fat, healthy people as there are skinny, sick people.

Even 9-time NYC Marathoners aren't the model of fitness we hold them up to be.

 

[BUCKYLE]

[FONT=georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif]I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street. ~Neil Armstrong [/FONT]

 

[Gatorubet]

Genetics can be a bitch.

[LindaMcCartney] Wurd!! [/LindaMcCartney]

 

[Wells4Heisman]

Sad world we live in... Not fair at all but my prayers are with her and her family.

Rest in peace.

 

[Dryden]

I keep checking every morning, but still no word in any articles about what type of cancer Waitz was battling. The NY Times mentioned she'd never revealed the specific type of cancer, but I was hoping somebody would have uncovered this posthumously.

It's interesting to me since Art De Vany has long suggested that marathoners and endurance athletes are at a higher risk for cancer, and a particular type of brain cancer especially, due to elevated cancer-causing proteins that result from the constant physical distress. He's observed that a number of marathoners have all died from brain cancer, and has been a longtime opponent of distance running.

 

[bkochmc]

I keep checking every morning, but still no word in any articles about what type of cancer Waitz was battling. The NY Times mentioned she'd never revealed the specific type of cancer, but I was hoping somebody would have uncovered this posthumously.

It's interesting to me since Art De Vany has long suggested that marathoners and endurance athletes are at a higher risk for cancer, and a particular type of brain cancer especially, due to elevated cancer-causing proteins that result from the constant physical distress. He's observed that a number of marathoners have all died from brain cancer, and has been a longtime opponent of distance running.

I don't know anything about Art but he stretching it with point #2. "At least four participants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years." The latest numbers I could find for national brain cancer mortality rates is 6.3 per 100,000 for men and 3.2 per 100,000 for women (4.75 per 100,000 average link). Boston has averaged over 20,000 runners per year the past 10 years which means Boston Marathon participants have a mortality rate of 2 per 100,000. While long distance running may contribute to some things I don't think brain cancer is one of them.

 

[Fungo Squiggly]

I don't know anything about Art but he stretching it with point #2. "At least four participants of the Boston Marathon have died of brain cancer in the past 10 years." The latest numbers I could find for national brain cancer mortality rates is 6.3 per 100,000 for men and 3.2 per 100,000 for women (4.75 per 100,000 average link). Boston has averaged over 20,000 runners per year the past 10 years which means Boston Marathon participants have a mortality rate of 2 per 100,000. While long distance running may contribute to some things I don't think brain cancer is one of them.

Ah, but you are, I think, assuming each runner is unique every year. What if 90% were making repeat appearances? In which case the total number of unique runners goes from 200,000 to 38,000, yielding a rate of 10.5 per 100,000.

 

[bkochmc]

Ah, but you are, I think, assuming each runner is unique every year. What if 90% were making repeat appearances? In which case the total number of unique runners goes from 200,000 to 38,000, yielding a rate of 10.5 per 100,000.

Ah, you suck. I think 90% is a high number, especially over a decade, but point taken. My guess would be around 25-30% (we are talking about a race that you have to qualify for and over the period of a decade) but there's no way to tell unless you have access to their database.

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

Ah, but you are, I think, assuming each runner is unique every year. What if 90% were making repeat appearances? In which case the total number of unique runners goes from 200,000 to 38,000, yielding a rate of 10.5 per 100,000.

Ah, you suck. I think 90% is a high number, especially over a decade, but point taken. My guess would be around 25-30% (we are talking about a race that you have to qualify for and over the period of a decade) but there's no way to tell unless you have access to their database.

Plus the fact that most of the runners in a marathon event even as elite as the Boston Marathon aren't running near the accumulated distances alluded to in the article.

 

[MaxBuck]

There has been some research that implicates sugar consumption in the rise of cancer

Genetics can be a bitch.

What do we feed cows and pigs to fatten them up? We feed them grains, and lots of them. Our bodies work the same way.

there are just as many fat, healthy people as there are skinny, sick people.

Art De Vany has long suggested that marathoners and endurance athletes are at a higher risk for cancer

Genetics can be a bitch.

 

[Dryden]

Genetics can be a bitch.

That is true, but it is only a tiny fraction of the story. There are numerous choices we make every day - what we eat, how we move - that determine how we look in our genes. That is epigenetics.