Over exercising can also lead to heart attack

By: Vikram Sheel Kumar/Forbes India

Pushing our bodies to do more can be dangerous. Even fatal

Small town boy turned global technology hero, Ranjan Das died suddenly on October 21 at the age of 42. This event has shocked the corporate world. As MD of SAP India, Ranjan was seen as a quality candidate to one day become CEO of SAP global.

More insidiously, the shock comes as Ranjan represents that jet-setting, highly accomplished and frantically fit person that many of us are or hope to become.

Ranjan had a penchant for running, not just one of the largest enterprise software companies, but also marathons. He was, perhaps, also the quintessential child of the global day. According to a former associate, Ranjan would often shut his eyes after a conference call in California to open them a few hours later to a call in Singapore. When questioned on how he would maintain his schedule, he would say, "I do not need much sleep."

Like many of us who try to balance our hectic professional lives with sports and exercise, Ranjan was known to be a die-hard fitness enthusiast. A former associate told us that Ranjan would spend at least an hour on his fitness every day and would not miss his routine for anything. After a red-eye flight to Singapore, he would hit the gym instead of the sack, and bounce from there directly to a business meeting.

Maybe his work-outs just lacked the endurance activities that get the blood pumping? Nope. Ranjan's fitness regimen had a lot of cardio. Did he eat poorly? No. He was very particular and ate only small portions of healthy, non-greasy foods. According to his associate, however, he did face a lot of stress.

"The last four quarters have been stressful for every executive at his level. There was a stress of expectations with India being a key country for SAP." While it is tempting to blame his death on stress, he was not a very high strung person. "He was just like rest of us."

The fact that Ranjan was like the rest of us leaves many important questions for us all.

Ranjan died shortly after a work-out. Can endurance activities such as exercise and running do more harm than good? Why do people suddenly die while running or exercising? How do we find out if we risk such a fate? And finally, what can we do to lower our risks of sudden cardiac death?

We are not the only people asking these questions. Sudden cardiac death from endurance exercise has been making headlines again lately. In the last month, six runners suddenly died in marathons in Detroit, Baltimore, and San Jose. This has brought responses across the spectrum.

A former Detroit marathon director suggests that runners need to take the responsibility for constantly monitoring their health so "tragedies like this do not happen." Dr. Rajat Chauhan, an ultra-marathoner and sports medicine specialist in Delhi is of the opinion that running clubs and race organisers need to play a more active role in the health of their runners. He suggests that marshals should be placed throughout a marathon to pull out runners that they feel are not doing well.

Dr. Donald Redelmeier from the University of Toronto studied data on over three million marathon runners to ask if running a marathon is more dangerous than something usually less strenuous: Driving a car. His results show that not only is running safer than driving, but that marathons are overall good for society by saving lives as they block vehicular traffic over the 42 km course of the race. If you are a runner and your faster friends tease you about how long it takes you to finish a race, you can now tell them how you are doing your bit for the society.

Dr. Chauhan puts the risks for sudden death at one per 200,000 runners per year. He cautions misinterpretation of those numbers. "It doesn't mean that every 200,000th person who runs will die," he says. "You may not have any deaths for a while and suddenly after 600,000 odd runners you might have five deaths together."

On running and exercise being good for the body, the data is unequivocal. The Harvard Alumni Health Study and Nurse Health Study followed individuals over many years; they both found that physical activity reduced the risk of heart disease and death by 30 percent. In fact, even small amounts of activity, like taking the stairs instead of the lift, showed benefits. Other studies have shown that elderly men who engage in walking two miles or more a day have nearly half the mortality rate of those who walk less than a mile a day.

If running and exercise are so good for us, why do some people suddenly die from them? The answer to that is non-obvious. One of the greatest risks of running and fitness is its benefits.
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