Some of you call yourself fishes because you believe you can swim well and it is with this that you would always assume that you can swim from one country to the other, in fact some of you believe you can swim round the world. Before you begin your imaginary journey of going round the world, let us discuss a few things about swimming for long and what it does to the body.
Marathon swimmers usually go through a lot especially when they swim long distance, like the marathon swimmers in the 2024 olympics who fell ill one after the other after various events and even the Belgium team later pulled out because a member of their team suffered fell ill due to E.coli infection which could be as a result of waste deposit in the river.
When it comes to the US triathlon, there have been over 130 death and cardiac arrest during swimming from 1985 and 2016. Athletes like Diana Nyad who swam long distance suffered different things as a result of swimming that far. During her attempt to break world records of 178.6km swim, she fell ill due to pollution and there were times she was pulled out as a result of exhaustion. At the time she completed the marathon there was a lot going on with her. Her lips and tongue were swollen, she puked continuously, and suffered from hallucination.
From all indications, it looks like women usually outperform men when it comes to marathon but then, a lot of things can happen to the body when swimming a marathon. Unlike pools, when people swim in open river, there is a lot of risk to it such as microbes, with E.coli being the predominant one which occurs as a result of human and rat waste. People ingesting the water mistakenly can lead to diarrhea and they can even suffer UTIs. If it gets into the body through a cut, it can pead to sepsis.
Endurance swimmers face a whole lot of things including attack from animals such as jellyfish sting, risk of shark attacks, weather condition that comes with wind which can create serious waves. A lot of marathon swimming is done in salt water and that itself is not good for the body. Swimmers also do not get the nutrient they need when swimming unlike when they are outside. Swimming for too lon go can cause abbration to the soft tissues of the mouth and the throat which leads to sore in the mouth and throat for weeks. They can also have sores in tongue and wound on other parts of their body that wouldn’t heal up easily.
Swimmers can suffer hypothemia due to the temperature of the water, they can suffer cardiac arrest, and atrial fibrillation arrhythmia which could lead to strokes. The lungs is also not spared as peoppe can suffer swimming induced pulmonary edema which occurs because fluid accumulates in the lungs. Also, it could lead to shortness of breath brcause the muscles for breathing would have to work against the pressure in the water leading to fatigue in the thorax which could be resporatory and locomotor muscle fatigue.
Continuous swimming for long distance can also increase the amount of white blood cell count in the body, thereby increasing inflammation in the body. Why this happens is still yet to be known, but the body increases leukocytes because it believes the body is sick which could be as a result of long term cell breakdown and tissue damage from the swimming.
So when next you see that river behind your house that leads to your village, before you think of travellinng by water through swimming, consider all that could happen to your body both in the short and long term so you do not come and say you were not warned.
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4111134
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6962351
https://sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40798-018-0158-8
https://www.outsideonline.com/health/training-performance
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4663/9/1/7
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4495100/
https://loneswimmer.com/2013/04/10
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710093
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4126302