Vigorous Exercise Tied to Macular Degeneration in Men : NYT & JAMA

[aspergerian]

Vigorous Exercise Tied to Macular Degeneration in Men.

nytimes.com/2017/12/14/well...

jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...

jamanetwork.com/journals/ja...

[alexask]

Firstly this is in men only. One of the risk factors for this is high blood pressure. The surveys don't specify what exercise is being done. It may be that if they are pumping iron then this will raise their blood pressure enough to make a difference.

I would have thought that reasonable cardiovascular exercise which has the overall effect of lowering blood pressure would be relatively risk free.

The survey also highlights those exercising 5 or more times a week suffer from this. This level of exercise also suggests to me these guys may be those gym addicts that are hanging round the weights building those big muscles. Women, of course, don't go in for such nonsense, and the survey shows they are not affected.

My take on this is that your 45 minutes of cardio without killing yourself will be vastly beneficial to your parkies without raising the risk of macular degeneration unduly, if at all.

[PDConscience]

If you're looking for a reason to stay parked on your favorite sofa, this one falls WAY short...

[park_bear]

Meh - the hazard ratio reported by these two studies was only in the range of 1.2 to 1.3 - meaning the risk was elevated only by 20 to 30%. This result was barely stat sig. The cut off for statistical significance is arbitrary, meaning, these results can still be due to chance. In any case the elevated risk is minimal. By comparison, the hazard ratio for Parkinson's resulting from exposure to permethrin is about 3, meaning exposure to permethrin triples a risk of Parkinson's. Now there is a hazard ratio to be concerned about!