How to Stay Healthy at the Gym.....

Hazardous to Your Health or Life Extending Fitness Facilities

Despite claims of amazing health benefits, fitness clubs are also home to a number of dangerous microbial predators. Finally the experts reveal just how to keep from catching more than just a great workout.

By Zoo Knudsen

Gym membership is known by the majority of unbiased health experts and sound scientists to be good for your health and immune system, but if you forget to remember a few simple tips, it may not be healthy as much as you might have thought it was before. Killer germs love to hide on a variety of surfaces found in fitness clubs. In fact, anywhere from exercise mats and weight benches to the place where water comes out of the water fountain can be teeming with microbial predators with nothing better to do than make you and your entire family sick.

And don't even get me started on locker rooms, which are the ideal place in gyms to change clothes and make new friends, but they're also ideal for bacteria and funguses to grow strong and healthy. But lowering your risk of death at the hands of microscopic germs, including the cold and Epstein-Barr viruses, athlete's foot, and especially the near unavoidable and overwhelmingly deadly staph infection known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), isn't as hard as you might think. Bunkie, LA sports medicine enthusiast Carl O. Spunkmeyer offers these tips:

1. Be sure to avoid any and all contact with the gym environment. Simply covering breaks in the skin isn't enough when facing a scourge of bugs with a blinding hatred for mankind. Even intact skin can be invaded eventually, which is why experts like Spunkmeyer recomment exercising in a state of the art protective suit that completely covers the body and is coated in a nonporous layer of metalized mylar. But keep an eye on your temperature, which may increase rapidly if the suits liquid helium cooling system were to fail. Watch out for the danger signs: excessive sweating, fatigue, 3rd degree burns, and instantaneous hydrolysis of all body proteins.

2. Avoid the urge to snack during your workout as MRSA may take it as a sign of weakness. Avoid looking directly into MRSA's eyes as well as any sudden movements. MRSA, like the mighty and equally antibiotic resistant tyrannosaurus rex before it, hunts based on movement.

3. Use industrial strength disinfectant, reapplying frequently throughout your workout. And instead of water, shower with an undiluted bleach solution when you're done. The searing pain you are feeling means that it's working and that you are safe.

4.Change your clothes several times during each workout. This may confuse infectious organisms, buying you enough time to get in and get out alive. And if you are cornered, don't be ashamed to use nearby women and children as human shields.

5. Use Zicam at the first sign of illness.