Here are some facts. If you know anything about health, fitness, heart disease etc., I’m reaching out to you. Can you help me, and tell me what you think?
I was never much into fitness and sports as a kid. In my late 20s I decided to take better care of myself. I changed my diet and starting going to the gym. I thought that regular exercise was A GOOD THING.
But some facts don’t fit. Recently, Douglas Adams died of a heart attack while exercising in the gym. So did the brother of a well-known British athelete. Flo-Jo, surely one of the most impressive women who ever lived, also went before her time, also heart attack. Ditto Jim Fixx. I was talking to a friend who said he knew some cardiologists and similar experts. According to my friend, they said sure, it’s good for people in their 20s and 30s to be working out down the gym, but when you get into your 40s it’s time to cool it and take things more easy. Who’s right? Who do I believe?
I’m 40. I go to the gym 3 times a week, sometimes 4. I really enjoy my workouts. I have a good programme, roughly 40 minutes cardio-vascular (running and rowing) and 40 minutes weights/resistance to tone all the major muscle groups. I’m not a body builder, or an exercise nut. I push myself just a little, to slowly improve my times / pace / resistance as the months go by, but I try to be sensible and never stray too far outside my comfort zone. I feel much better for doing all this. But I worry in case my good intentions are actually putting me in GREATER risk, not less, of a heart attack or similar.
Who’s right? Should I be working out 3 times a week, or taking life easy? Which option takes me closer to a wooden box? I expect you’ll say, “It’s a question of balance”. OK, so how in heaven’s name do I know where that ‘balance’ lies?
You should work out at least 3 times a week, preferably more.
We read about all the runners who died of a myocardial infarction (heart attack), but what about all the sedentary people who die in their sleep? Not newsworthy. The latter are much more numerous.
Jim Fixx had a congenital heart defect, as did a lot of others who died young. Their exercise regimen prevented an earlier death. Case in point, the basketball player with the floppy socks, whose name eludes me. He was missing a coronary artery!
If you are out of shape and shovel snow furiously, or do something strenuous, you are liable to suffer a MI. Sure, the exercise killed you, but the real cause was that you were not fit. Fit people do not die from exercising unless they have a congenital problem. The basketball player did not die while he was playing professional basketball, but after a long lay-off, was playing in a pick-up game.
I don’t claim to be an expert, but there’s an important piece of advice attached to almost every exercise program you run across that you should be paying attention to:
It seems only prudent to me to always consult your physician before undertaking any weight-loss, shaping-up, getting-fit kind of program.
On the other hand, you’re gonna die when you die and there’s really not a damn thing you can do about it. I’m losing weight not because I’m afraid of dying. I made it clear to my doctor when I weighed 309 that if I died I was OK with that, I was ready to meet whatever lay beyond. He pointed out to me, though, that I might not die. I might just have a crippling coronary and spend the next 60 years unable to wipe my own ass.
That sounds like a Catch-22. If you’re obese and out of shape, you’ll die young. So lose weight and get in shape, but suffer an incapacitating stroke.
Obviously, if you have never exercised you are not going to go out and run a marathon. You have to use common sense. Sure, get your doctor’s OK, but not Knead to Know’s doctor, who obviously does not exercise. Go at it slowly at first.
There is this local person who was obese and a chain smoker. He fell into running and is now one of the area’s top triathletes. Not everyone has those genes, but I guess that quite a few obese people who never exercised can be good, or even excellent athletes, once they start and work, gradually, into a program.
I guarantee you if you weigh 305 pounds and choose to continue a sedentary life, old age will be no picnic, if you live that long.
ianzin, there are several factors that contribute to the risk of heart attack (MI). If you are sedentary, have a family history of heart disease, smoke, have diabetes, have high cholesterol, and/or are overweight, you are vastly increasing your risk of heart disease. (Obviously, some of these factors can be changed, but others cannot.)
Keep exercising. It lowers your cholesterol, strengthens your heart, and keeps your bones strong. Being active is a very, very important factor in reducing your risk.
Anecdote. My mother has always had low cholesterol, good blood pressure, and has always been physically active. She has always taken very good care of her health, in other words. Still, her genes work against her: everyone in her entire family is dead from heart disease, many in their thirties. My mom has had two MI’s and two coronary artery bypass surgeries, plus she’s had her mitral valve repaired. She walks at few miles each day and is extremely careful about her diet/cholesterol level, maintains the ideal weight, etc. If she did not take such good care of herself, she would have died twenty years ago, when she had her first MI at age 45.
I’m thirty, and I frequently have chest pain, I have poor endurance, and I have a bad mitral valve. (I have four siblings, and every last one of us has a bad mitral valve.) I’m quite certain that I’ve inherited my mother’s bad-heart-genes. That’s okay with me; I’d much rather die of an MI at age thirty than die the slow, painful death of cancer that everyone on my dad’s side of the family endured in their early 50’s and 60’s.
I am not trying to be argumentative, but there’s a problem with your reasoning and “hope”. In particular, many people do not die from their MI. Rather, they lose a portion of their heart function. And, repeated MI’s lead to repeated and further loss of heart function. The bottom line is that you can be left with a very poorly functioning heart and so-called congestive heart failure (CHF). It may not be cancer, but CHF sure seems like a rotten thing to have - shortness of breath brought on by daily activities like eating, combing your hair,etc., and other symptoms like bloating, swelling, fatigue, nausea, and a zillion medicines (and their side effects) to endure.
It’s also worth pointing out that the survival rate for people with CHF is similar to the survival rate of having cancer, around fifty percent at two to three years. For severe CHF (which unfortunately is rather common), the survival rate is about fifty percent at one year - far worse than most cancers.
So, given its horrible symptoms and equally dismal prognosis, CHF is very much like cancer. I pray I develop neither.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by barbitu8 *
Fit people do not die from exercising unless they have a congenital problem.
[QUOTE]
UNTRUE UNTRUE UNTRUE
You can be perfectly fit and still have a critical coronary artery lesion, and infarct, even fatally with exercise. I’ve seen it in my stress lab, and it’s well-documented in the literature. Unless you redefine “fitness” to exclude anyone with coronary artery disease, which is hardly fair.
Get a cardiac risk assessment if you’re wondering. Get a fasting glucose and cholesterol, and have the lipids broken down into relative fractions of HDL and LDL, along with triglycerides. If you’ve got a bad cardiac risk profile (male gender, smoking history, diabetes, bad lipid profile, family history of premature cardiac disease, obesity, hypertension, sedentary life style are all risk factors for heart disease) then consider getting a cardiac stress test, either regular or nuclear, and see how your heart performs under exercise stress. Then work with your doc or other professional to put together an exercise program for you.
Qadgop, MD
stressing people’s hearts for over a decade, and loving it!
<hijack> Hi KarlGauss how ya doin? Good to read your words of wisdom again! My panhypopit lady vanished into the woodwork! Didn’t get her MRI! Doesn’t return my calls! Feels sooooo good on the hydrocortisone she didn’t want to bother! Arrrggghhh!
Qadgop is a physician and I yield to his words of wisdom. I misspoke.
Nonetheless, I maintain, and perhaps Qadgop will correct me if I’m wrong, that anybody can start an exercise program as follows: go out and walk for 20 minutes. Do this every day. When you feel like jogging a little, jog a little. Keep this up until you are able to jog the whole 20’ without strain. Now you’re on your way.
If you do have clogged arteries, running (and other aerobic exercise) will help build collaterals or even clear the arteries.
True; however, people in my family simply drop dead. None of those little piddly CHF-inducing MI’s here! My brother does have CHF because he has congenital cardiomyopathy (in addition to the bad mitral valve he’s had repaired twice). My mom also has some CHF; after her second MI and stent placement, she went into anaphylactic shock- she was allergic to the Lovenox. (Then, she developed drug-induced lupus.) Once she grew a few platelets, they sent her home without Coumadin, her stents clotted, and she had a very bad MI. That caused enough damage to give her CHF, plus she had to have another CABG and a mitral valve repair one year later. She’s doing much, much better now, though.
Not much a person can do about family history, in any case.
As for the OP, yes, it’s possible to die from a major coronary event during exercise. Nevertheless, regular exercise is much more likely to prevent death from heart disease than to cause it.
I generally agree. But if you’re really out of shape with the aforementioned risk factors, consider seeing your doc and starting real slow. While aerobic exercise will help build collaterals, it will not clear the arteries. You need very great reductions in LDL to do that, at least as it’s currently understood. And if you have critical coronary lesions (>85%), pushing too hard can lead to death. But I too am an advocate of aerobic exercise (30 minutes 5 times a week). Not only do I advocate it, I do it, too.
Ianzin, what kind of history of health problems does your family have, if any? If, like some of the above posters, your ancestors have a history of dropping dead, you’ve got a legitimate concern and should follow Qadgop’s advice regardless of your exercise regimen. OTOH, if your great-grampa was breaking horses at age 80, you could be made of sterner stuff.
My dad had a heart attack and died young, despite running three times a week, having a sensible diet, and being skinny.
But then again, he had a crappy job, got little sleep, put up with hell from his kids, etc., etc.
He also had some genetic things, too.
I think a lot more goes into longevity than just exercise and diet. Just look at George Burns.
It’s a mixed picture. My paternal grandparents both died of cancer, him late forties and her mid fifties. My maternal grandparents were both strong as oak trees and lasted well into their 80s. My parents are both still alive, him mid 70s her late 60s, and in fine health. Neither have had any heart probs, but Dad had a bad illness (ulcerative colitis) in his late 40s and has had to take great care over his diet, plus a strict regime of drugs, ever since. My brother is 6 years older than me, never exercises, very sedentary, loads of stress, terrible diet, very overweight, drinks too much… seems absolutely fine with no health probs at all.
All of which provides a corollary to my original post. What the hell are people like me to believe?
But thanks for all responses to date, especially those of you with medic qualifications. Any cardiologists around?
What adds to my worries is that I’m a Brit. As you may know, we have an apalling 19th century health service. If I do get a heart attack, that’s it… lights out. The ambulance (a donkey pulling a cart with one wheel missing) might get to me within 7 working days if I’m lucky, and if the drivers aren’t on strike that week. For this we pay the highest taxes in the world.