Going to the gym will kill you

[The people in the above photo were found dead moments after this picture were taken]

My two main reasons for canceling my gym membership were that I was broke and I got tired of being a straight guy surrounded by naked men in the locker room. Plus, I'm lazy.

Thankfully, people in White Coats (working for people in running shorts) have given me a better reason: gyms are covered in nasty germs.

As the staid "Gray Lady" herself, the New York Times, soberly put it:

When you go to the gym, do you wash your hands before and after using the equipment? Bring your own regularly cleaned mat for floor exercises? Shower with antibacterial soap and put on clean clothes immediately after your workout? Use only your own towels, razors, bar soap, water bottles?

If you answered "no" to any of the above, you could wind up with one of the many skin infections that can spread like wildfire in athletic settings.

Well, sure, you say, that's why they call it athlete's foot, after all. What's the big deal? Well, that's what some guy you've never heard of thought, pal:

And if you think skin problems are minor, consider what happened to Kyle Frey, a 21-year-old junior and competitive wrestler at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Mr. Frey noticed a pimple on his arm last winter but thought little of it. He competed in a match on a Saturday, but by the next morning the pimple had grown to the size of his biceps and had become very painful.

His athletic trainer sent him straight to the emergency room, where the lesion was lanced and cultured. Two days later, he learned he had MRSA, the potentially deadly staphylococcus infection that is resistant to most antibiotics.

Mr. Frey spent five days in the hospital, where the lesion was surgically cleaned and stitched and treated with antibiotics that cleared the infection. He said in an interview that he does not know how he acquired MRSA: "The wrestling mat might have been contaminated, or I wrestled with someone who had the infection."

If it could happen to Mr. Frey, who said he has always been health-conscious in the gym and careful about not sharing his belongings, it could happen to you.

According to the CDC, if you insist on going to the gym, you are advised to wear a full body protective suit, refrain from touching anything, and keep a bottle of alcohol-based disinfectant to spray at anyone who comes within ten feet of you.

Drug-Resistant Bacteria Can Kill You

Staph infections are on the rise. Antibiotics don't work on it. According to a very
worry-inducing article in Parents Magazine

In some cases, the germ can turn a tiny skin wound into a potentially life-threatening boil or abscess. In others, it morphs into a systemic infection that causes deadly forms of pneumonia, as well as muscle, bone, and joint disease. What's most alarming is the fact that this form of staph doesn't respond to commonly used antibiotics -- and it seems to be growing ever more virulent.

In a few years, MRSA has turned into the single most common identifiable cause of skin and soft-tissue infections in emergency rooms, reports the New England Journal of Medicine. One recent study, conducted in 11 cities, found that MRSA caused nearly 60 percent of skin infections treated in hospital emergency rooms.

Although the subhead at the top of the article claims that it will tell you how to "protect your child from this potentially deadly germ," it basically says that we're all doomed.

Beyond washing your hands a lot,

there's not much parents can do -- except get used to the many unanswered questions that still surround MRSA. Alyson Martin closely watches over baby Heather -- now 14 months old -- but she has come to terms with the fact that she'll probably never know how or why her infant contracted MRSA: "It's a mystery I'm just going to have to live with."