WASHINGTON — The tragic death of a tech executive has some wondering about the safety of exercising on treadmills.
Mexican authorities say Dave Goldberg — the CEO of SurveyMonkey and the husband of Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg — died last Friday from a head trauma he suffered when he fell from a treadmill while on vacation.
He is one of a handful of people who die each year as a result of accidents involving exercise equipment. Much more common is the kind of injury that will land someone in the emergency room or a doctor’s office with a problem that is easily treatable.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says 62,700 people ended up in emergency rooms in 2014 with injuries linked to exercise equipment in general and treadmills in particular.
Dr. Evan Argintar, a sports medicine orthopedic surgeon at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, says these were “not the death and the brain bleeds, but the twists and the strains and the sprains which I see on a regular basis.”
A large part of the problem may be distracted exercising, which is not all that different from distracted driving.
Treadmill users often try to block the tedium by watching TV, listening to music or even using their smartphones while working out.
Argintar says it is great that they are getting cardiovascular training, but the flip side is “often times you miss a step, twist an ankle, fall, even get a bit of a burn from the belt on the treadmill.”
He says the key is to “pay attention, know where your feet are going, and be safe.”
And that message is intended for exercisers of all ages. Argintar says injuries from exercise equipment seem to span generations — although they tend to be more common in people in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
Children have also been known to get hurt on this equipment, but that usually happens when they wander into a home gym without adult supervision. That was the case in 2009, when the 4-year-old daughter of former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was strangled by a cord connected to a treadmill.
“If you have a home gym, especially around little kids, it is always prudent to keep it fenced off or behind closed doors,” Argintar says.
