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Decorated Olympic Swimmer Discovered He Had High Cholesterol

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009


Olympic champion, Mark Spitz, leads an active life as he swims and tries to maintain healthy cholesterol levels.

Before Michael Phelps's monumental recent performance in the Beijing Games, swimmer Mark Spitz was the only athlete in history to win every individual event he entered in a single Olympiad. And he set the world's fastest times for each one in the process. This happened in 1972, at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, where Spitz won a record seven gold medals. Seventeen years later, Spitz, then a 38-year-old, began intensively training in an attempt to qualify for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. In the course of his comeback bid, a doctor's routine checkup turned up an unexpected roadblock: high cholesterol, a potentially fatal condition.

Despite still being in Olympic shape — Spitz had maintained extraordinary fitness levels with regular exercise and a healthy diet — his tests indicated that he had high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol. Undetectable without blood analysis, high cholesterol makes an individual prone to cardiovascular complications and increases the chances of developing heart disease. Spitz's diagnosis required immediate action — he started on statin medication to lower his cholesterol to healthy levels.

Mark Spitz became aware that you had high cholesterol during his early training days; he had his cholesterol levels checked regularly. Even then, they were a little elevated — around 210 or 220, which in that day was considered okay, but his doctor recommended a closer monitoring.

When Spitz elected to make a comeback at age 38, he weighed 220 pounds and his cholesterol was 227. Three months of training later — after working out four-and-a-half hours a day and eating a healthy diet — his cholesterol was 317. It was pretty clear his diet and exercise weren't causing it. Rather, he had a genetic predisposition on his mother's side for high cholesterol.

Two decades later, Spitz, now 58, leads an active life, swimming recreationally, and frequently traveling for speaking engagements. His high cholesterol, though, is a chronic condition, necessitating a life-long commitment to treatment.

Mark Spitz

11-Time Olympic Medalist in Swimming

Mark Spitz is considered the greatest Olympic athlete of all time, and is known the world  over for his ability and election as one of five athletes of the century. Between 1968 and 1972, Spitz won nine Olympic gold medals, one silver, and one bronze.

Mark Spitz has won more Olympic medals than any U.S. athlete (11 medals). He broke seven world records in winning 7 Olympic Gold Medals at the 1972 Munich Games. He was the 1971 Sullivan Award winner as the best amateur athlete in the United States.

 

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