Some of what we know about preventing heart attacks can be traced back to a study in which Dr. Jeremy Morris (who, at 99, died a couple of weeks ago) looked at how heart attack numbers related to one’s occupation, including working on a double-decker bus.
In the middle of the 20th century, the number of people dying of heart attacks was rising sharply in the developed world, but nobody knew why. Jeremy Morris, a doctor who died the week before last, figured it out.
Morris thought there might be some link between occupation and heart-attack risk. And when he looked at the men who worked on London’s double-decker buses, he found a striking result: The conductors — who went up and down the stairs on the bus all day long — were half as likely to die of heart attacks as the drivers, who sat at the wheel all day.
Since that study, we just keep uncovering more and more examples of the same thing:
Moving, good.
