Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So Do Their Doctors

Baby Boomers Stay Active, and So Do Their Doctors


By BILL PENNINGTON

Published: April 16, 2006

N.Y. Times (see entire article there)


For America's baby boomers, a generation weaned on Jack LaLanne, shaped
by Jane Fonda videos and sculpted in the modern-day gym, too much of a
good thing has consequences.

Encouraged by doctors to continue to exercise three to five times a
week for their health, a legion of running, swimming and biking boomers
are flouting the conventional limits of the middle-aged body's
abilities, and filling the nation's operating rooms and orthopedists'
offices in the process.

They need knee and hip replacements, surgery for cartilage and ligament
damage, and treatment for tendinitis, arthritis, bursitis and stress
fractures. The phenomenon even has a name in medical circles:
boomeritis.