[Libloather]

George Burns used to smoke eight cigars a day and lived twice this long. Can you be too healthy?

[lelio]

Did he have a history of heart problems?

[AGreatPer]

5 children. Hey, he was a rabbit.

[facedown]

When your number's up, your number's up.

[Hand em their arse]

This stuff scares the crap out of me, I've done two marathons and try to run about 25-30 miles a week but who the hell knows what works nowadays????

[dennisw]

Brian Maxwell

Founder and Former CEO, PowerBar, Inc.

Born in London, England, Brian Maxwell grew up in Toronto, Canada. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975 with a degree in architecture and received the Brutus Hamilton Award as the outstanding student athlete on the track team.

For the next eight years, Maxwell made his living as a long distance runner as he represented Canada in many international competitions and was ranked #3 in the world in the marathon in 1977 by Track and Field News. He was the top-ranked Canadian marathon runner on the 1980 Olympic marathon team that boycotted the Moscow Olympics. During this period, he also coached the distance runners at Cal-Berkeley, developing four NCAA Division 1 All Americans.

In 1983, Maxwell started a project to develop a nutritious, easy-to-eat food for athletes and active people. In 1986, he founded PowerBar Inc. and Brian and his wife-to-be Jennifer began selling PowerBar® energy bars out of their kitchen. Over the next 13 years, with Maxwell as CEO, PowerBar Inc. grew to $150 million in sales and 300 employees. Maxwell was named "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Inc., one of the "100 Superstars of Marketing" by Advertising Age and "100 Most Influential People In Sports" by Sportstyle. PowerBar also won the American Marketing Association's Best New Products Award in the nutrition/health category. Maxwell has also been featured in People, Forbes, Business Week, Fast Company and many other magazines.

In March of 2000, PowerBar was sold to Nestle SA for one of the largest multiples of sales ever paid for a food company.

Brian is now Chairman of Coolsystems Inc., a Berkeley sports medical device startup, and recently joined the Board of Directors of The Active Network. He stays busy advising several other entrepreneurial companies and serving on various charitable and arts boards. He balances his business activities with trail runs, mountain biking and various sports with his wife Jennifer and five children. He lives in Marin County, California.

[decimon]

Jim Fixx: 1932 - 1984.

author who popularized the sport of running; his 1977 bestseller The Complete Book of Running, is credited with helping start America's fitness revolution; died of a heart attack while running. Infoplease

[omniscient]

James Fixx Syndrome strikes again. What was it that Ian Fleming said about not wanting to waste the time he had left by worrying about prolonging it?

[Texas Eagle]

Maxwell collapsed Friday at a post office,

What happened? Did a postal worker ackowledge his existence?

[Fitzcarraldo]

I think it was Neil Armstrong who said he 'would never waste a minute doing exercise.'

[wardaddy]

Genetics, genetics, genetics.

Behavioral contributors pale in comparison.

[B-Chan]

Eat right, exercise — drop dead at 52 anyway.

I strongly suspect that health is largely genetic. I drink a quart of whole milk every day, eat meat, cheese, and butter in large quantities, drink wine, beer, and spirits in moderate amounts, and avoid strenuous outdoor exercise (it gets hot here in Texas), yet my cholesterol, blood pressure, and other health measurements are perfectly fine — and I'm pushing forty. Other people with different genetics might not do so well living the way I do, but it works for me.

And who wants to live forever if the price is giving up those things that make life enjoyable? Frankly, I'd rather drop dead than have to eat compressed sawdust bars.

Anyway, what a sad story. May God bless this poor man's soul and ease his family's grief.

[Capriole]

This kind of thing always amazes and appalls us, and we think there is nothing we can do to control our health. Gee, if a guy who runs marathons just drops dead, clearly we're powerless to control our health, right? I think what often happens is that folks who run marathons, play racquetball, eat a lot of salads, and are very slender and active think that that's it, they don't have to do anything else. They figure they're skinny so they must be healthy, right? But they should still keep track of their blood pressure and cholesterol, and they should probably still have a heart scan every few years, even if it's expensive. You can have five mostly-occluded coronary arteries and feel pretty good right up to the time you keel over dead. Best to check this stuff out before you keel over.

[Capriole]

My diagnosis: inadequate beer intake.

[Squantos]

Oat bran....the silent killer ...............

[Drango]

the Berkeley, Calif.-based firm

I munched a lot of powerbars doing triathlons...switched to other brands when I discovered they were made in Berkeley.

[omniscient]

Maybe he was pushing the envelope.

[NittanyLion]

It seems that some world-class athletes have congenital heart defects...very sad. An unusual heart that allows them to perform at such a high level perhaps is also the cause of their death.

Me, I eat anything I want - fat, carbs, I love 'em all. And I haven't experienced any prob...ackkkk..argggh...*thump*.

[Revolting cat!]

Keef will outlive us all, you'll see! (Or, rather, you won't see!)

[Revolting cat!]

During saner times the headline would have read:

Snake Oil Salesman Dead!

But these are not saner times. These are Magic Pill times! Snake oil salesmen are revered gurus now. Why, a drug dealer peddling steroids, whose biggest accomplishment had been playing bass for a mediocre disco band, passes himself off as a "self-taught scientist" and nobody laughs!

[chilepepper]

Powerbars == sugar and carbs...