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The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner
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Hello All,

https://www.nytimes.com/...unning-exercise.html

Regular exercise changes the look and workings of the human heart. And researchers are discovering that different sports affect the heart differently.



Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nealhe] [ In reply to ]
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old news, been known for decades...
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [dtoce] [ In reply to ]
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But thanks for posting, interesting and I have not seen it before.
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nealhe] [ In reply to ]
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But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes’ left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers’ hearts did.

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Since swimmers exercise in a horizontal position, he says, their hearts do not have to fight gravity to get blood back to the heart, unlike in upright runners. Posture does some of the work for swimmers, and so their hearts reshape themselves only as much as needed for the demands of their sport.

Pretty interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [dtoce] [ In reply to ]
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dtoce wrote:
old news, been known for decades...

Then you should take it up with the NYT author who is writing about a study published this past November.


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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nickwhite] [ In reply to ]
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nickwhite wrote:
dtoce wrote:
old news, been known for decades...


Then you should take it up with the NYT author who is writing about a study published this past November.

"Old News" is the new WJW

808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nickwhite] [ In reply to ]
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nickwhite wrote:
dtoce wrote:
old news, been known for decades...


Then you should take it up with the NYT author who is writing about a study published this past November.


I don't need to 'take it up' with any author of an article targeted by the lay press to the layman. I've been studying this since my cardiology fellowship 20 years ago. This study ends with a tag-line asking if swimmers hearts function differently than elite runners=click bait. All they did was recruit people and then did VS and an echo on 32 elite athletes and showed that elites have cardiac changes that are quite different than a 'normal' person and very subtle differences between each other.

In fact, swimming and running are both 'endurance' sports and are far more similar than different. There are notable differences between 'strength' sports and the changes on the heart there are very different than 'endurance' sports. Now that our echo capabilities have improved, we can look at diastolic function (basically how the heart relaxes) much better and the authors expected similar LV function but were more curious about diastology, a less clear and less well studied phenomenon. That's because it's, well, still incompletely understood.

They used modern echo testing and looked at usual and newer parameters; like E/E prime,filling times/velocities, strain and other fancy measurements of diastolic function. What it all means is still largely unknown.


This particular study showed that these elite athletes had the expected changes of an 'athlete's heart-compensatory dilation and increased stroke volume and lowering of the resting HR. Not new. There also was marginal 'enhanced' diastolic function in runners over swimmers. They offered several theories as to why this is: body position/blood volume, breathing pattern and training stimulus etc. But again, why? Not known. And it wasn't specifically stated what the actual training stimuli were-ie what were they doing for training-hours per day; and effort (easy; tempo; sprint etc).


But to return to the original comment-
nealhe wrote:
Hello All,
https://www.nytimes.com/...unning-exercise.html
Regular exercise changes the look and workings of the human heart. And researchers are discovering that different sports affect the heart differently.

It is very old news that exercise changes the 'look and workings of the human heart'. I remember reading about so many studies done in the late 70's and 80's comparing the different sports and changes that were noted. Check out the references in this article-most are from that time period.

https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/...xrqa&type=client


nickwhite wrote:
Quote:
But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes’ left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers’ hearts did.


Quote:
Since swimmers exercise in a horizontal position, he says, their hearts do not have to fight gravity to get blood back to the heart, unlike in upright runners. Posture does some of the work for swimmers, and so their hearts reshape themselves only as much as needed for the demands of their sport.


Pretty interesting stuff, thanks for sharing.

This is what they theorize. It is not fact at all.
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nickwhite] [ In reply to ]
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nickwhite wrote:
dtoce wrote:
old news, been known for decades...

Then you should take it up with the NYT author who is writing about a study published this past November.


Well, journalists certainly shouldn’t be assumed to be experts on the topics of which they write.
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [dtoce] [ In reply to ]
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Hello dtoce and All,

Thanks for your updates and additional comments .... more knowledge is usually a good thing

It is an old story ..... 'what's old is new again'

and more evidence that physical training models the body .... inside and outside ...

to the training tasks.

Some of the information in the article seemed novel .... though perhaps published elsewhere previously ie ...

"But there were interesting if small differences between the swimmers and runners, the researchers found. While all of the athletes’ left ventricles filled with blood earlier than average and untwisted more quickly during each heartbeat, those desirable changes were amplified in the runners. Their ventricles filled even earlier and untwisted more emphatically than the swimmers’ hearts did.


In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners’ hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers’."

The upshot is that this information might be useful to a triathlete's training plans .... emphazing the role of specificity of training .... perhaps for optimum heart performance (and discounting skill training) swimming cannot be substitued for running and vice versa.





Also sometimes the literature can get very time consuming to digest ....

https://www.physiology.org/...jappl.1997.82.5.1685

What do you think?

Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [nealhe] [ In reply to ]
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nealhe wrote:
In theory, those differences should allow blood to move from and back to the runners’ hearts more rapidly than would happen inside the swimmers’."

1-The upshot is that this information might be useful to a triathlete's training plans .... emphazing the role of specificity of training .... perhaps for optimum heart performance (and discounting skill training) swimming cannot be substitued for running and vice versa.


2-Also sometimes the literature can get very time consuming to digest ....

https://www.physiology.org/...jappl.1997.82.5.1685

3-What do you think?



1-No. The information in this study is not useful at all to a triathlete's training plans.

2-The literature is often time consuming but critical readers of the literature must do this to understand the information being conveyed.

3-I think that study shows a lot of math, graphs and has very lengthy discussion-too much for a study which has an N=2.
And I also think that I spend too much time on ST (*something I will remedy going forward...)
;)
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Re: The Heart of a Swimmer vs. the Heart of a Runner [dtoce] [ In reply to ]
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Since you are a cardiologist, do you think the fact that swimmers (and cyclists, rowers, cross country skiers, triathletes, and prob a few other types) put in many more hrs of training than pure runners, implies that in theory their hearts should be stronger than runners??? Just curious about your thoughts on this. :)


"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."
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