| Date: Oct 25 2008 12:00AM |
| Table Tennis Is Dangerous |
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| Have you ever been mysteriously ill and not sure why or what the cause was? Many of us have. I have suffered memorably bouts of illness on two separate occasions. It was the most recent occasion over the evening of the 24/25th October 2008 that prompted this article.
I'm lucky that I don't often get ill and during a normal week I typically limit what I eat. This makes it fairly straightforward for me to unpick what might be the cause of any sudden change in health.
It might be useful the next time you're unwell to try to work out the cause in a bid to prevent future illness. How would you feel if something about your sport of choice, table tennis, caused you to occasionally become ill?
It was a Sunday evening. As soon as my throat began to feel odd I knew something was up. I recognised the signs and, as always, pounced on my illness immediately. I took Beecham's flu capsules, a bottle of Supermalt before bed and orange juice over breakfast. Early the following morning I had a mild sore throat that was gone by Monday lunchtime. That was about 2 years ago.
On Saturday 25th October I woke up with a dull ache in my stomach. This was my second experience. The ache was sufficiently dull not to be alarming but bad enough prevent me eating or doing anything other than curl up all day in front of the TV. I watched more TV that Saturday than I had watched in the previous 6 months. The ache turned into pain whenever I walked, coughed or pressed my tummy. It was not until around 10pm that night that I began to feel well enough to eat. On Sunday the ache was milder accompanied by a headache, both of which lasted all day.
Over that long Saturday I worked out that these incidents were both table-tennis related. On the first occasion I had been practising that afternoon and had been sweating a lot just like I like it. At the end I shook hands with my practice partner (he had been sweating a lot too), drove home. When I got home I picked up a few grapes on the way to the kitchen sink, ate them then washed my hands. Unwittingly I had transferred germs I had picked from shaking hands while practicing were sufficient to cause the mild sore throat that lasted half a day.
On the more recent occasion I decided to take a couple of apples (for energy) to a league match at Ashford where I was playing. As is usual we shook hands with the opponents at the end of each game and with my team mates too. At the end of the night I half-ate one on the way home. However, that small part of the apple, plus the exchange of fluids that accompany hand slapping and hand shaking, were sufficient to cause my ache that lasted 2 days.
In hindsight, these incidents were entirely avoidable. A simple precaution could have saved me much grief. I should simply have washed my hands before the leaving the venue and in the event that I couldn't wash my hands earlier washed them immediately when I got home. This is particularly useful after travelling on public transport. I could have taken fruit that can be eaten just by holding the skin,just like bananas. Being the fragile carbon units that we are it does not take much to render us useless.
In fairness this precaution is less about table tennis being dangerous and more about playing any sport where celebrating via hand touching or hi-fives is normal. The headline, after all, was designed solely to grab attention. So the next time you become ill the cause might be more obvious.
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Sourced by: Anthony Small |
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