My inbox lit up this week with links to mainstream media reports that extreme exercise causes heart damage. Sure enough, a group of US researchers published an exhaustively complete review article on the Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects from Excessive Endurance Exercise. (Full text available.) Though published in the modestly circulated journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, this […]
Category: Exercise
There are a few things that endurance sports enthusiasts understand well: the importance of hard work, dedication and the need to push through discomfort. In fact, I would submit that these requirements act not as deterrents but as draws. Take triathlon as a case and point: if it was easy and safe, and perhaps less […]
When a news source as powerful as The NY Times publishes an article about sudden cardiac death in young people, one expects accurate information. It’s far too important a topic to write about imprecisely. This piece, entitled Should Young Athletes Be Screened for Heart Risk, included numerous inaccuracies and failed to tell important facts about […]
I am hoping for some input with this case because I really don’t know the right answer. The case: A 52 year-old male endurance athlete seeks my opinion about whether to continue taking statins. His primary care doctor says yes. He is not so sure. Neither am I. He exercises regularly, maintains both a high […]
‘Good,’ I say. Let’s spread the word that pills do not hold the answer to preventing heart disease. And while we are shouting, let’s add this one: There’s no such thing as a free lunch! Medicines come with more than just a dollar cost. When an obscure AF doctor blogs about the limitations of statins […]
“I felt amazing…It was one of those days on a bike you dream of.†There’s one thing about cyclists; we like to recall memorable performances. It’s as if retelling—and I say re-telling because any good performance has no doubt been told at least once—jolts our feel-good centers. I bet it’s the same chemicals that get […]
Yesterday, I wrote about how stem cells might some day offer heart patients a mulligan. But even the most optimistic optimist would agree that realizing this dream is futuristic. For now, and the near future, we have to play them where they lie. In real-life, do-overs for heart attacks and strokes happen only on rare […]
Imagine. Imagine the inflammation that the endurance-athletic community would have been spared? If only Pheidippides had lived. I mean, what was the rush? The battle had already been won. Athenians could have waited another few hours (or days) for the good word on the battle of Marathon. It’s not like someone was tweeting in 490 […]
Do you own a car? A TV? If so, you may be at risk of a heart attack? Or at least so says this most recent study of many thousands of patients, across 52 countries. (You can breathe now; they didn’t look at the risk of iProducts.) The INTERHEART study, published this week in the […]
As a heart doctor, I frequently counsel patients on the importance of regular exercise. The problem with this discussion is that it often devolves from heart physiology to life coaching. And most heart doctors have not been trained in life coaching. Heck, many of us have trouble coaching ourselves. But maybe this blog affords an […]
As the calendar arbitrarily marks the New Year, it’s normal for those who seek better health to make promises. Good ones like: I will exercise more. I will exercise smarter. Or, for many of the yet to be turned: I will start exercising. This is because most everyone understands the benefits of exercise. Specifically, it’s […]