Dr. Larry Creswell, of the Athlete’s heart blog, just posted an interesting debate from the Journal of Physiology. The question of whether longterm endurance exercise leads to heart damage is a hotly contested issue in cardiology. For those who are curious about this intriguing topic, his links lead to very readable prose.
Larry suggests paying attention and staying informed as this story unfolds. That’s good advice.
With the explosion of middle-aged people who insist on hanging their self-esteem on how much inflammation they can endure, we will surely be learning more on this topic.
Here is the link to the excellent post on the Athlete’s heart blog.
JMM
5 replies on “Prolonged exercise leads to heart damage — pro/con debate”
“With the explosion of middle-aged people who insist on hanging their self-esteem on how much inflammation they can endure, we will surely be learning more on this topic.” Oh myyyy–you just made my day!
So I guess I should not have pushed myself into those 100 pool lengths I did the day before the pool closed for the summer.
Gee, I thought I was doing myself a favor, too . . . . . .
Nobody told me that five years of swim team and 35 years of cycling would cause AF. My hope is that, as cardiologists and PCPs gain insight into the causes of arrhyhmia, those of us (especially youngish women) with lone AF, will not have to experience years of dis-ease while being told our symtoms are all psychosomatic.
Dr John,
I’m sure that you, as one who has exercised himself to an Afib episode, are not impartial in this debate. It’s interesting that the pro/con arguments bring up inflammation only peripherally and only the con side at that.
Perhaps you’ll lay out your views concerning inflammation in detail sometime.
F’rinstance, I asked – back in “Inflamed endurance athletes should take no comfort in Tour de France cycling study” – what determines transiency of inflammation. That would be good to know.
(BTW, your links to those theheart.org articles no longer work since that site has, sadly, been absorbed.)
Dr. John,
Thanks for the ‘pro/con’ articles: presently two of my undergraduate students are writing on this very debate (Sophomores; General Ed. course on Research, etc.). They were struggling a bit with synthesizing the findings from both sides; this resource was very timely for all three of my students.