Heart stopping action

[muck]

Copy/paste from a newsletter I get...

 

Heart Stopping Action May be a Phrase Too Close to the Truth

 

It is time for the readers to come clean. How many of you lost your grip on reality during the KU vs. K-State game? How many were

driven to expletive rich diatribes while watching the football team that calls KC home? And how many screaming, rabid fans were locked

in a death grip with their remote over the finals of the ice dancing competition? The point of asking this question is to determine how many

diehard sports fans there are out there and to point out that dying hard may not be a figure of speech. A study conducted on World Cup fans

in Germany during the 2006 competition determined that those who reacted with the most intensity to the contests ran the highest risk of

having a heart attack. On days the German team played, heart attacks were three times more likely for men and twice as common for

women – regardless of how well the team did. These results have not yet been extrapolated to the other countries and other sports but the

connection seems fairly logical.

 

Analysis: What is a fan to do? Part of the joy of following a sports team or performer is the internalizing of the experience. There is

exulting in victory and commiseration in defeat. The study did not suggest any behavior changes as it was only attempting to measure

whether there was an impact. But the next step is establishing some kind of “safe sports” practices. The most obvious solution would seem

to be to move someplace like Boston where one’s team always seems to come out on top but that may not be practical. In all seriousness

experts suggest that people build in some tension breakers when watching sports. The most effective seems to be building some kind of

physical activity into the process and that may explain why I did an awful lot of pitch and catch with my father during the halftime periods

of Green Bay Packer games! -CK

[The Holy Roller]

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