I was reading a piece last night in “Ironman” magazine called “Radical Revenge - The Free Radical Dangers of Over-training and Over-eating” by Michael Chiccone discussing health and diet, and it noted that just because professional athletes (specifically discussing diet for bodybuilders and strength athletes in this case) are in shape and tend to be careful about what they eat, it does not mean they live longer, and it started ticking off a bunch of athletes in a wide variety of sports that have died young due to health problems. The article further claimed that the mean (non-accident related) death rate for professional athletes is actually worse than for the population at large!
It asked “Can you name any pro-bodybuilder who has lived to be 100 years old? For that matter any pro athlete who has lived to be 80 or 90 years old? On the contrary what you have is whole bunch of pro athletes who die young or develop serious health problems at a young age.” and it started listing a bunch of them.
It asked “If all this exercise is so good for you why are so many people who exercise dying young or coming down with “old people’s” diseases?”
He ascribes the health problems (mainly) to the physical damage caused by over-training, and to the over-production of free radicals as a result of the large caloric intake necessary to support high levels of strength & muscular body-weight while training intensively. He claims this generates a massive (free radical) “oxidative load” that the body has to deal with and which damages the body on a cellular level. He then says anti-oxidant supplements are the best way to combat this and discusses specific types.
I found this quite surprising. Is it possible the article is correct, and that the author has a point about intensive training and eating shortening lifespans?