Athlete Michael Johnson "does All The Right Things" And Had A Stroke

aquaman

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There could be many factors involved, but the comments from Michael Johnson (the ex-200m runner) on how he "does all the right things" like daily exhaustive exercise and "clean eating" shows how flawed the thinking is:

from: Michael Johnson: How ‘Superman’ Olympic champion’s world was changed by stroke

1 week after having a stroke, he was back to doing twice-daily exercise!

"Having been doing all the right things like training every day and keeping myself in good shape while other people aren't, and they are fine and I am laying in a hospital bed having suffered a stroke, obviously you are going to be angry about that," he says.

I'm guessing that he's been training exhaustively since about the age of 10. He's now 51.

He talks about avoiding snacks and eating healthy food, which I guess means limited saturated fats, no sugar, low carb, healthy grains etc.

"The best thing for me is to keep the risk factors at bay by continuing to eat right and continue to keep myself in great shape. To watch the different factors like heart rate, blood pressure and diet, take the medication I've been instructed to, and then just move on with life.

So he did all the right things, had a stroke, and is now doubling down on the medical advice, medication, "healthy eating".
 

Whichway?

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Probability is that he took some kind of supplements to enhance his athletic performance during his career. Doubt he would still be on them now, and I’m not aware of lasting after effects for stroke from steroid use.

More likely as the OP said, wrong diet along with years of high stress from his exercise regime and training has led to deficiencies, which has contributed to his stroke.
 
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thomas00

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Where's the quote from the pop-quacks telling us "even if you do all the 'right' things, you can't change your genetics".
 

yerrag

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Doubling down on wrong advice doesn't make it right. Touche
 

alywest

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Ray talks about high endurance athletes becoming hypothyroid, and although the mainstream health professionals say that such a low heart rate is good, we know that it's a clear indication of hypothyroidism. Also, some endurance athletes still have high blood pressure, and I wonder if that's due to a) hypothyroidism and b) forcing the body to compensate for a low pulse rate. Assuming he's on a low-carb, high pufa and protein diet (nuts, seeds, margarine or some other substitution for butter), possibly low sodium too. That is totally an assumption, by the way, but if you consider the way most athletes are brainwashed...
 

tankasnowgod

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tankasnowgod

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1 week after having a stroke, he was back to doing twice-daily exercise!

"Having been doing all the right things like training every day and keeping myself in good shape while other people aren't, and they are fine and I am laying in a hospital bed having suffered a stroke, obviously you are going to be angry about that," he says.

I'm guessing that he's been training exhaustively since about the age of 10. He's now 51.

This reminds me of Broda Barnes talking about exercise, and how more frequent exercise may be a sign of better health, and not so much causal- "When people have a cold or the flu, we don't send them out jogging, we send them to bed!"
 

ilikecats

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Michael Johnson was a sprinter so that’s more peaty than being a marathon runner. Peat said doing sprints might be okay I believe. But obviously there’s a lot of factors that come into play here and over training is damaging regardless of chosen excercise. Ray mention that very intense excercise damages the mitochondria. Ray varies his tone on excercise sometimes he can be down right dismissive of it all together which is actually pretty understandable to me. MJ should of taken a page out of that Dwain Chambers/balco labs playbook and guzzled down that liothyronine.

“Sports stars are using a drug code-named “the lightness” to boost their performance. The substance is not on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list, but Victor Conte, who ran the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco) drug factory before turning whistleblower, insists that it is performance-enhancing and should be.

Conte claims that he has repeatedly told the authorities that his athletes were using a thyroid hormone known as liothyronine during the darkest days of Balco. “Why are they not testing for this?” he asked. “I used to give this to Dwain Chambers. I gave it to Kelli White before every race when she won double gold at the World Championships in Paris in 2003.”

I’d like to point out that Victor Conte used to be the bass player for the world famous funk band TOWER OF POWER before he got into the steroid business. Why don’t more people acknowledge how insane that is and dwell on it more???
 
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ilikecats

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Everybody always cries steroid use when ever you talk about a famous athlete but I don’t know... I mean most of people (im thinking of mostly sprinters) who got caught were on weak experimental hepatotoxic steroids used to avoid detection. I bet a lot of these guys would have performed the same without the roids. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them did more harm than good actually. Got me thinking of boxer yuriorkis Gamboa’s steroid cycle. HGH, 100mg DHEA daily, test without an AI- estrogen city. And I think they stopped the test like 2 weeks before the fight to avoid detection? (Don’t quote me on that) dudes gonna be practically shut down when he fights. Liothyronine is great but I’ve experimented with it a lot and taking 50mcg before doing a race (contes protocol) probably wouldn’t do me any good. A lot of it’s just salesman stuff. It’s easy to get “results” when you’re dealing with some of the greatest athletes in the world. I can’t see why hgh would be effective for anything besides gaining size (in body building it’s “useful”) and that’s not what gamboa wants or needs. Most of the mainstream ideas (maybe the alternative mainstream?) about HGH are wrong, it increases estrogen and prolactin and it’s certainly not the “fountain of youth” considering the incredible life span increases seen in GH deficient mice. Once again probably more harm than good.
 
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sunraiser

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This reminds me of Broda Barnes talking about exercise, and how more frequent exercise may be a sign of better health, and not so much causal- "When people have a cold or the flu, we don't send them out jogging, we send them to bed!"

It's just a reflection of better health in most cases, I agree.

It matches with my own experiences also, but I find the way these observations are perceived and pushed on to others to be so disturbing.

A person that has the privilege of health is observed and their habits are pushed on to others as the healthy model to follow when they're a reflection of good health as opposed to a cause of it in many cases.

The same with depression - habits of a healthy non depressed person are observed and pushed onto a person with depression when the happy person could not even begin to imagine what the physiology of depression feels like.

The privileged will always self aggrandise and have influence in society. There's such a small sphere of perspective that becomes the "authority" in society because health and wealth bring success as opppsed to actual capacity for well reasoned input.

That said, I'm sure there exist people that have the energy and health to exercise but choose to play computer games instead.

Also I find exercise when craved to be far and away the best and most impactful positive thing for my sense of wellbeing.

Bit of a tangent but I find the whole above issue to cause a huge amount of cruelty in the world.
 

tankasnowgod

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It's just a reflection of better health in most cases, I agree.

It matches with my own experiences also, but I find the way these observations are perceived and pushed on to others to be so disturbing.

A person that has the privilege of health is observed and their habits are pushed on to others as the healthy model to follow when they're a reflection of good health as opposed to a cause of it in many cases.

The same with depression - habits of a healthy non depressed person are observed and pushed onto a person with depression when the happy person could not even begin to imagine what the physiology of depression feels like.

The privileged will always self aggrandise and have influence in society. There's such a small sphere of perspective that becomes the "authority" in society because health and wealth bring success as opppsed to actual capacity for well reasoned input.

That said, I'm sure there exist people that have the energy and health to exercise but choose to play computer games instead.

Also I find exercise when craved to be far and away the best and most impactful positive thing for my sense of wellbeing.

Bit of a tangent but I find the whole above issue to cause a huge amount of cruelty in the world.

I pretty much agree. I do think there should be a difference made be low intensity movement, and high intensity exercise, however. Obviously, there are times you need nothing but rest, but at a certain point, some movement, even if you don't feel like doing it, is beneficial. It could be little more that a leisurely walk or two. Just got back from visiting my mom, and she mentioned that she felt better with all the walking we incidentally did (and it was far less than I am used to), but a lot of her knee pain and joint pain went away from that movement.

The only other thing you mention.... "privilege of health." I understand what you mean, but this phrase angers me a bit. Health is really our birth rite, and thinking of it as a privilege angers me a bit. For the vast majority of people, good health has really been stolen from them, through horrid nutritional advice, and sometimes mandated programs. It's really that theft that makes me angry. But, I do understand your point.
 

Whichway?

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It's just a reflection of better health in most cases, I agree.

It matches with my own experiences also, but I find the way these observations are perceived and pushed on to others to be so disturbing.

A person that has the privilege of health is observed and their habits are pushed on to others as the healthy model to follow when they're a reflection of good health as opposed to a cause of it in many cases.

The same with depression - habits of a healthy non depressed person are observed and pushed onto a person with depression when the happy person could not even begin to imagine what the physiology of depression feels like.

The privileged will always self aggrandise and have influence in society. There's such a small sphere of perspective that becomes the "authority" in society because health and wealth bring success as opppsed to actual capacity for well reasoned input.

That said, I'm sure there exist people that have the energy and health to exercise but choose to play computer games instead.

Also I find exercise when craved to be far and away the best and most impactful positive thing for my sense of wellbeing.

Bit of a tangent but I find the whole above issue to cause a huge amount of cruelty in the world.

Great post!
 

Fractality

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There is also a psychological issue at play for those athletes to deal with. They have to reconcile their aging bodies and drop in performance with their identity as a top athlete. This is highly serotonergic. It's not just athletes. Aging is hell on most people. There really should be some education on how to gracefully age.
 

Hairfedup

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Everybody always cries steroid use when ever you talk about a famous athlete but I don’t know... I mean most of people (im thinking of mostly sprinters) who got caught were on weak experimental hepatotoxic steroids used to avoid detection. I bet a lot of these guys would have performed the same without the roids. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them did more harm than good actually. Got me thinking of boxer yuriorkis Gamboa’s steroid cycle. HGH, 100mg DHEA daily, test without an AI- estrogen city. And I think they stopped the test like 2 weeks before the fight to avoid detection? (Don’t quote me on that) dudes gonna be practically shut down when he fights. Liothyronine is great but I’ve experimented with it a lot and taking 50mcg before doing a race (contes protocol) probably wouldn’t do me any good. A lot of it’s just salesman stuff. It’s easy to get “results” when you’re dealing with some of the greatest athletes in the world. I can’t see why hgh would be effective for anything besides gaining size (in body building it’s “useful”) and that’s not what gamboa wants or needs. Most of the mainstream ideas (maybe the alternative mainstream?) about HGH are wrong, it increases estrogen and prolactin and it’s certainly not the “fountain of youth” considering the incredible life span increases seen in GH deficient mice. Once again probably more harm than good.

What about SERMs/SARMs?
 

ilikecats

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@Hairfedup serms like clomid are estrogenic even though they can raise testosterone, so I guess its possible that they could help performance but even if they did the help would probably be minor at best I'm thinking. And I've only seen reports people using clomid to raise their testosterone into the upper end of the medical reference range. I don't know enough about SARMs so I can't comment. Obviously bioidentical test and DHT could be pretty helpful. Just pointing out that some of the protocols that athletes have engaged in and ruined there career/legacy over probably didn't even help much and in some cases might even had a negative effect on their performance.
 

Jsaute21

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There could be many factors involved, but the comments from Michael Johnson (the ex-200m runner) on how he "does all the right things" like daily exhaustive exercise and "clean eating" shows how flawed the thinking is:

from: Michael Johnson: How ‘Superman’ Olympic champion’s world was changed by stroke

1 week after having a stroke, he was back to doing twice-daily exercise!

"Having been doing all the right things like training every day and keeping myself in good shape while other people aren't, and they are fine and I am laying in a hospital bed having suffered a stroke, obviously you are going to be angry about that," he says.

I'm guessing that he's been training exhaustively since about the age of 10. He's now 51.

He talks about avoiding snacks and eating healthy food, which I guess means limited saturated fats, no sugar, low carb, healthy grains etc.

"The best thing for me is to keep the risk factors at bay by continuing to eat right and continue to keep myself in great shape. To watch the different factors like heart rate, blood pressure and diet, take the medication I've been instructed to, and then just move on with life.

So he did all the right things, had a stroke, and is now doubling down on the medical advice, medication, "healthy eating".

Thanks for posting this. I don't think you could find a better example of how detrimental restrictive diets and over training are. I grew up watching Michael Johnson compete and man was he a phenomenal athlete. His physique is arguably top 5 all time in sports, which leads me to suspect that despite his incredible genetics, he was probably using anabolic steroids as most great sprinters do it seems like. I love to workout but have learned to listen to my body and not train exhaustively. Sucks to see such an incredible athlete (or anyone) run into these health issues at this age.
 

Hairfedup

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@Hairfedup serms like clomid are estrogenic even though they can raise testosterone, so I guess its possible that they could help performance but even if they did the help would probably be minor at best I'm thinking. And I've only seen reports people using clomid to raise their testosterone into the upper end of the medical reference range. I don't know enough about SARMs so I can't comment. Obviously bioidentical test and DHT could be pretty helpful. Just pointing out that some of the protocols that athletes have engaged in and ruined there career/legacy over probably didn't even help much and in some cases might even had a negative effect on their performance.

Thanks for the reply you seem mad knowledgeable on the subject. I went through the track system and I'm trynna get back in to it. Would love to chop it up with you
 

lampofred

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There is also a psychological issue at play for those athletes to deal with. They have to reconcile their aging bodies and drop in performance with their identity as a top athlete. This is highly serotonergic. It's not just athletes. Aging is hell on most people. There really should be some education on how to gracefully age.

What do you mean? Is it aging itself that you are referring to as serotonergic or the psychological aspect of noticing you are degenerating that is highly serotonergic?
 

sunraiser

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I pretty much agree. I do think there should be a difference made be low intensity movement, and high intensity exercise, however. Obviously, there are times you need nothing but rest, but at a certain point, some movement, even if you don't feel like doing it, is beneficial. It could be little more that a leisurely walk or two. Just got back from visiting my mom, and she mentioned that she felt better with all the walking we incidentally did (and it was far less than I am used to), but a lot of her knee pain and joint pain went away from that movement.

The only other thing you mention.... "privilege of health." I understand what you mean, but this phrase angers me a bit. Health is really our birth rite, and thinking of it as a privilege angers me a bit. For the vast majority of people, good health has really been stolen from them, through horrid nutritional advice, and sometimes mandated programs. It's really that theft that makes me angry. But, I do understand your point.

I get why it angers you but it's more a matter of fact statement, in that a person that has always had health likely won't consider it a privilege as it has always been an innate part of their existence - their sphere of perspective, emotions, physiological feelings cannot be expected to fathom poor health as it hasn't ever existed for them.

That's why I think integration between all walks of life is so important - it allows people to observe the things they're not experiencing and gain at least a degree of empathy and enforces a degree of reflection on what one has and what one could lose.

It's a morbid example, but after WWII in the UK we had huge social reform - during the war rich and poor and people in the middle all had to live through horrendous ***t and hardship and loss together and that creates empathy alongside huge social impetus.

I totally agree with you that health should be a human right and it's a travesty that so much goes on that takes that away from people under the guise of being helpful or healthful.

The hardest part of being a good human for me is to have the patience and empathy for those with that privilege - but it's the only way to go. You cannot enforce understanding on a person when they haven't lived an experience, only really share yours and move on. But animosity won't solve anything! As hellish as my (and lots of people here, I'm sure) battle has been at times, I'm unimaginably thankful it has happened and also thankful I've had the time and space and access to information to forge my way to better health. The perspective and empathy alongside robust sense of self it has given me means I can have a far greater appreciation of life and also a more wholesome sense of wellbeing and care for others - it adds a depth and colour to existence that I'm extremely thankful for.
 
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