Last month (Daily Dose, 5/13/2005), I wrote to you about a 49-year-old marathoner who couldn't wait to get back in his running shoes after suffering a major cardiac event shortly after running in the Los Angeles marathon back in March. This, despite the fact that he had to undergo a multiple emergency bypass surgery to save his life. But lest you think, because I normally harp on the marathoners for taking exercise to the extreme, that things like bicycling, mountaineering, swimming, aerobics classes and other rambunctious-ness are perfectly safe for your ticker, here's a story (rather, here's another story) about a man who exercised himself to death - and he wasn't running, either... According to a CNN.com article from last month, 57-year-old Broc Bebout, a man who'd undergone quadruple-bypass surgery 18 years earlier at age 39 (by the way, if that's not a billboard-sized clue to avoid pushing it, I don't know what would be) collapsed dead of a heart attack the day after completing a 2400-mile - yes, you read that right - bicycle trek from Carlsbad, California to Brunswick, Georgia. To the late Mr. Bebout, I say with all due respect: Happy trails. And not to take anything away from his accomplishment, but I really hope he'd already done everything else he wanted to do before embarking on what would become his last ride. It doesn't take a genius to see that he was chancing it. If I were a bookie in Vegas, I'd give no more than 3 to 1 odds against him making it without incident. Apparently, the gamble was worth it to the Indiana retiree. According to an email he sent to his wife shortly after finishing up on the east coast, the trip was at the top of the list of things the hardy (foolhardy?) retiree wanted to do before he died. Also on the cross-country trek were 30 other determined souls, including a retired college health professor who'd noticed Bebout had been coughing for weeks - and who knew he'd been taking medication for his heart and also for arthritis... I wonder: Does this "professor" feel any pangs of guilt about not urging his coughing, medicated comrade to quit the trip and save himself further cardiac stress? Or did he buy into the ludicrous mainstream dogma that dictates putting as much stress as possible on an already-damaged heart... Nah - he probably thinks Bebout's celebratory steak dinner is what killed him. **************************************************** Red meat, White milk, and Blue-ribbon clones Speaking of steak dinners, there's breaking news on a topic that's of increasing interest to me - and also to my readers, if the letters I've gotten in the past are any indication... Meat from cloned livestock. According to a recent Reuters health online article, some groundbreaking new research indicates that both the meat and the milk from cloned cattle are virtually indistinguishable from the prize-winning natural-born livestock they share their genes with. Though the authors of the study are quick to point out that the research isn't definitive, they claim the findings suggest strongly that the products are perfectly safe for humans to ingest. Published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the research pinpointed only minute differences in the two varieties of meats - mainly in their levels of fat and fatty acids. All the differences fell well within accepted industry standards. The studies also concluded that unlike some cloning exercises in the past, the livestock these meats and milk were extracted from were chromosomally healthy. In other words: Normal. Naturally, the FDA is scheduled to issue its first set of standardized guidelines on the safety of cloned products soon. Until this time, no meats or other products from cloned livestock are allowed on the open market. Soon, though, we may all be eating high-quality, nearly perfect meat from the same prize-winning steer. As always, I'll keep you posted... Always a "spokes"-person for true health, William Campbell Douglass II, MD | 
