Dara Torres pulls it off.  An Olympic swimming silver at age 41 amidst rumors of faked asthma and doping…

We’re not going to comment on doping because who’s to say.  We would like to think everything is on the clean.

So we though we would weigh in how Dara might be doing it on her own, from the organic, eco, healthy point of view.

It’s no secret that a lot of swimmers develop asthma over time.  And there is a growing body of study evidence pointing to chlorinated water exposure as contributing to that trend.  So, we don’t think it’s surprising, giving the amount of time the average top level swimmers spend in the water that Dara might have developed asthma over time.  She’s got a lot of company.

It’s one of the reasons we are keen on pools that don’t use chlorine.  It doesn’t seem fair to blame swimmers for asthma that they could very well have gotten from simply practicing their sport for hours on end, year after year.

There has been a lot of emphasis on the inhalers and medications that swimmers with asthma use, but in fact, if you don’t have asthma, those medicines don’t help you swim faster.  And if you do have asthma, at best, they just bring your lung function up to the same as competitors that don’t have asthma.

On a different note, it’s no secret that nutrition is different than it used to be.  We have a much better understanding of how the biochemistry of energy production and muscle strength in the body works.  How individuals are slightly different, with slightly different nutritional needs.  And there are all sorts of nutritional supplements to optimize performance.

And then there is good old food.  There is the idea of nutritional value of food and how the right food can maximize the health and performance of anyone, including athletes.  The concept of “food as medicine” exemplifies this perfectly.

Then there is the idea that organic food grown in nutrient rich soil and without toxins, antibiotics and hormones is different and worth it.  It is so worth it that the US is said to be importing some of it’s food for the athletes.  And China has made extra efforts to produce organic foods and institute strict monitoring of produce and meats.  In great part, due to pollution and hormone contamination concerns.

We don’t think Dara’s been eating mostly McDonald’s like Ryan Lochte.  And we don’t think, if Lochte decided to compete at age 41 he’d be eating McDonald’s then either.  But anyone that can pull off a world record backstroke IM double header, more power to him.

So if Dara’s doing it on her own, which we hope she is, we hope she’s doing everything green, eco and healthy that she can to do it.

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