Older male endurance athletes may be at higher risk of heart scarring and related complications, according to a new study.<\/p>\n
Sudden cardiac death is a \u201cleading cause of mortality\u201d in athletes, experts said as they set out to investigate whether endurance athletes had heart scarring and linked heart rhythm problems.<\/p>\n
Academics studied 106 former competitive cyclists and triathletes who exercise for more than 10 hours a week for at least 15 years.<\/p>\n
Experts from the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, scanned their hearts and had an implantable loop recorder fitted to assess their heart rhythms.<\/p>\n
They found that 50 of the 106 athletes (47%) had scarring on their hearts, particularly in the left ventricle \u2013 the main pumping chamber of the heart.<\/p>\n
This compares to 11% of 27 non-endurance athletes studied for comparison.<\/p>\n
During a two-year follow up period they found that 22% of the athletes had an abnormal heart rhythm, according to the study which was funded by the the British Heart Foundation and published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging.<\/p>\n
They concluded that the athletes who had heart scarring were over 4.5 times more likely to experience an abnormal heart rhythm episode \u2013 which is linked with an increased risk of sudden cardiac arrest \u2013 compared to those without scarring.<\/p>\n
It is thought that among endurance athletes scarring could be caused by levels of exercise when the heart has to work even harder to pump blood.<\/p>\n
Dr Sonya Babu-Narayan, clinical director at the British Heart Foundation and consultant cardiologist, said: \u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that exercise is good for our hearts \u2013 it helps to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, manage our weight, and it boosts our mental health.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut in some veteran male athletes, this early research suggests that intense exercise over many years may have affected their heart health.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore research in veteran endurance athletes \u2013 both in men and women \u2013 will be needed to identify the small number of people who have the kind of heart scarring, together with other risk factors, that mean their life could be saved by having an implantable defibrillator.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t push yourself<\/strong><\/p>\n One of the athletes who took part in the trial was Brian Cookson, keen cyclist and former president of British Cycling and Union Cycliste Internationale \u2013 cycling\u2019s world governing body.<\/p>\n The 74-year-old grandfather from Whalley, Lancashire, said the trial could have saved his life.<\/p>\n While training at the Manchester Velodrome he started feeling unwell and his sports watch recorded his heart rate had reached 238 beats per minute (bpm), and stayed that way for around 15 minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cI was pushing it a little bit on the track, but not absolutely full gas, as we say in cycling,\u201d Cookson said.<\/p>\n He contacted the team involved with the study who reviewed data from his implanted device to record his heart rhythm.<\/p>\n They were able to see he had suffered an episode of ventricular tachycardia \u2013 an abnormally fast heartbeat where the heart\u2019s ventricles contract too quickly and do not pump blood around the body effectively.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next day, I got a call.<\/p>\n \u201cThey said, \u2018Stop riding your bike, don\u2019t do anything more strenuous than walking until we can get you in here because we think you need an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD)\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He was fitted with one of the devices last August, which shocks the heart if it goes into an abnormal rhythm.<\/p>\n Cookson, who is still cycling, said: \u201cI keep a closer eye on my heart rate now and if I\u2019m getting to 150bpm I\u2019ll start backing off.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m so grateful to have been part of this study. It might well have saved my life.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout it, I might have carried on pushing myself until something more serious happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr Peter Swoboda, associate professor in cardiology and consultant cardiologist at the University of Leeds, who led the study, said: \u201cIn our study, the athletes who experienced dangerous heart rhythms often had symptoms first.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d encourage anyone who experiences blackouts, dizziness, chest pain or breathlessness, whether during sport or at rest, to speak to their doctor and get it checked out.<\/p>\n \u201cThese results shouldn\u2019t put people off regular exercise.<\/p>\n \u201cOur study focused on a very select group, and not all the athletes involved were found to have scarring in their hearts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can all benefit from being more active, and this study is an important step towards helping people take part in sport as safely as possible.\u201d \u2013 PA Media\/dpa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Older male endurance athletes may be at higher risk of heart scarring and related complications, according to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4322],"tags":[20535,113272,1630,105,113271,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-309563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-arrhythmia","9":"tag-endurance-athletes","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-heart-scarring","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114954181578475834","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}