I don't know anything about his family history, but as I understand it, there's a strong hereditary element in many cases of heart disease, which may be why he was so concerned about it - if you look at the Times article linked from the news story it goes into some of his beliefs / practices.
Reminiscent of Jim Fixx, the bloke who invented jogging who keeled over with a heart attack providing a lot of ammo for people who like sitting around on couches eating ice cream and chips, but in his case it was a hereditary problem.
To put it in perspective, I used to work with a very nice bloke who ignored all the dietary principles, ate badly, drank loads, took almost no exercise and had the classic spindly legs / beer belly body. He keeled over and died in front of his kids when he was 41... Who knows how long he'd have lasted if he'd had a healthy lifestyle?
My worry is that the mass media look at someone like Fiennes and come up with the classic 'exercise is bad / does nowt' line to console themselves and their sedentary readers. And if you've ever met a few national journos you'll know what I'm saying...
Posted: 09/06/2003 at 16:02
