Posted on 11/20/2012 10:36:15 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
After all these years of media scare stories trying to terrify readers with worries about how kids are too sedentary and don't eat well, I suppose it's comforting to find a scare story about how teen boys are obsessed gym rats who consume lots of protein and very little fat. The New York Times delivers the goods:
Take David Abusheikh. At age 15, he started lifting weights for two hours a day, six days a week. Now that he is a senior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, he has been adding protein bars and shakes to his diet to put on muscle without gaining fat.
“I didn’t used to be into supplements,” said Mr. Abusheikh, 18, who plans on a career in engineering, “but I wanted something that would help me get bigger a little faster.”
Pediatricians are starting to sound alarm bells about boys who take unhealthy measures to try to achieve Charles Atlas bodies that onlygenetics can truly confer. Whether it is long hours in the gym, allowances blown on expensive supplements or even risky experiments with illegal steroids, the price American boys are willing to pay for the perfect body appears to be on the rise.
Here's the new data to justify the article:
In a study to be published on Monday in the journal Pediatrics, more than 40 percent of boys in middle school and high school said they regularly exercised with the goal of increasing muscle mass. Thirty-eight percent said they used protein supplements, and nearly 6 percent said they had experimented with steroids.
Over all, 90 percent of the 1,307 boys in the survey — who lived in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, but typify what doctors say is a national phenomenon — said they exercised at least occasionally to add muscle.
Yes, the same paper that recently warned that overweight teens who don't exercise were at increased risk of diabetes and likened teen obesity to smoking, and which in 2009 published a lengthy piece on how
teen obesity led to early death (sample expert quote: "We know that health behaviors are established early on in life.") is now concerned that large numbers of teenage boys are exercising, and experimenting with diets that will help them build muscle.
Why exactly should we be so worried?
“The problem with supplements is they’re not regulated like drugs, so it’s very hard to know what’s in them,” said Dr. Shalender Bhasin, a professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Some contain anabolic steroids, and even high-quality protein supplements might be dangerous in large amounts, or if taken to replace meals, he said. “These things just haven’t been studied very well,” he said.
So the problem with supplements and other muscle-boosters is that the government has left them alone and worried nannies have not yet determined if there are problems with them?
No public health scare story would be complete without someone to blame. The New York Times points to television shows like Jersey Shore and Girls, which apparently feature muscled men who inspire admirers to spend time in the gym hoping to achieve a similar look. But The New Republic's Alec MacGillis has
a different villain in mind: buff Beltway politicians like Paul Ryan:
Before we lay all the blame on The Situation, it's worth noting that the muscle-head mindset has infected a more rarefied realm of American life as well: Beltway Washington.
There is, for instance, the 2012 Republican nominee for vice president, who is famous for leading sessions of the rigorous P90X workout regimen on Capitol Hill, who posed as your standard frathouse gym rat before the election and who prompted nine times more Googling of "Paul Ryan Shirtless" than "Paul Ryan Budget." And yes, he is pumping up musclehead business with the broader public.
Truly these are dark days when America's youth look to politicians for exercise tips.
Indeed, and some still do. This reporter needs to visit a farm and see what it's like for a 12 year old boy to work 12 hours a day up in a 100 degree barn throwing and stacking hay bails. I think I bailed hay every summer from when I was 9 to 20 years old. No gloves, no shirt, no long pants. $2/hr. Glad to get it.
I started weight training about 1988. Within a few months I blew a Mitral valve and ended up having a mechanical replacement in 1990.
No more weights for me! Walking is my thing, but not to excess!
Save your sanity. Ignore all advice from the government.
Trying to get my joints back up to par, I've been doing 3 days light weight/high rep and 3 on cardio. No supplementation, although I've upped my water intake a bit to help keep the system flushed.
I hate to admit this, but I've been thinking of getting in to crossfit. Most lifters frown on it as it leans you out a lot and the granola-munchers have kind of infiltrated it. But, that's kinda what I'm looking for now. Leaner, less bulky.
Getting too old to be carrying this much weight, even in muscle much less fat.
True. You have to give your muscles some rest time to rebuild.
Does your husband lift too?
It’s not “like” milk... It IS milk. Just the protein and concentrated.
Alternate meat and whey proteins. Guys should stay away from soy proteins as they contain veggie estrogen. Doesn’t work QUITE the same way animal estrogen does, but why risk it? ;-)
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/core_march_9.htm
A sphincter says what?
Future nanny state mandate: Thou shalt only be as pumped up as the skinniest dweeb!
Nanny State PING!
Future nanny state mandate: Thou shalt only be as pumped up as the skinniest dweeb!
Nanny State PING!
I heard Michael Savage say once that light exercise is the key to good health and long life. The stories here about the damage done and repaired needed due to excessive weightlifting are testament to that, I think.
We certainly can’t look to our genetic background to suggest we should be doing anything to our bodies that requires surgery that wasn’t available in the past. Also, the extent to which a modern exercise routine at a gym mimics what primitive man would do in the wild is questionable. There would’ve been more varied movement and physical activity on a hunt or on a farm, not being locked in position on a machine.
And, of course, ingesting any kind of supplements, especially unnatural ones, could easily have unpredictable and deleterious effects on one’s health. Not to mention doing that is TOTALLY unnecessary if your goal is to improve your health.
Physical health is a worthy goal. Men becoming obsessed with their physical body image the way that a young woman suffering from anorexia or bulimia does is not. Human history tells us how harmful and destructive vanity is to the human spirit.
The real fear is that these kids are releasing teststerone into the world. This is something leftists cannot abide. They like their men sissified and their women bullish and angry.
You. Owe. Me. A. New. Keyboard.
. . . and ugly.
You hardly sound like a dead corpse.
I concur, based on experience. What is possible may not be what is best.
Or as I always point out, the first documented marathoner, dropped dead right after finishing it.
I knew the soy was a bad idea. He eats plenty of meat, I think, but he likes the extra protein from the milkshake, especially when he’s running and doing weights.
It funny that “they” would be concerned about a boy’s spending two hours a day in the gym, but not about his spending two hours a day playing video games or eight hours a day sitting in classrooms not paying attention.
I saw earlier where LA County lifeguards can make $150,000/yr, but assume it entails joining a union (and certainly entails living in a morally dead zone).
Nobody has a neck that long.
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Like a giraffe!
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