I saw a story on one of the morning shows stating that athletes participating in marathons were at increased risk for heart attacks for some period of time after the race. The story was reporting on a study that a Stanford doctor began at the Silicon Valley Marathon this past weekend. I found some articles that explained that past studies showed that athletes who trained less than 40 miles a week (I guess that would be 5-7 hours) were at increased risk for several weeks following the marathon. Another one said that it was people who trained more that were at a higher risk. All were looking at athletes over 40. Has anyone seen anything on this before?
IIRC years ago there was a study, perhaps of IM athletes, and it was found that levels of cortisol were elevated to the point of “heart attack” levels…
The physios here will likely add much more to this question…and yes, I saw that someone had a heart attack at MCM yesterday. Tragic…but I guess those things happen.
According to your link - which is all I read - you misrepresented the purpose of the study. Where is heart attack mentioned?
They are looking at the blood to see if the heart leaked any proteins which they will use to determine “damage”. They will ultrasound hearts and check function.
The heart is a muscle - if you lift weights or run hard intervals - do a muscle biopsy of the muscles in your arm/leg - what will you find? Muscle damage! You race a marathon - does it affect the heart? Sure it does. What does that have to do with a heart attack?
They should follow marathon runners for 12 months after the race - compare to control non-marathon runners. See who has more heart attacks…its only observational but I can promise you that it will show that the marathon runners have an exceedingly low rate - close to zero.
Most “heart attacks” in athletes are not heart attacks. If you review the autopsy - you will find that the coronary arteries are wide open.
Actually, I don’t think that I misrepresented the purpose of the study. I quoted what I saw on TV which referenced the beginning of this study. I was just curious if anyone had seen anything related to this subject that was interesting. I don’t really plan on doing anything different - I’m sure that any increase in risk is lower than the increase in risk of not exercising.
I’m a musician, not a physician: but I’m pretty sure that the elevated markers for heart damage found after a marathon (I took part in such a study a couple of years ago) are not nearly as alarming, taken in the context of endurance athletes as they would be in couch potatoes. And if the heart muscle can be built up, does it not follow that - as in the case of other muscles - it must first be stressed and damaged somewhat to rebuild at a higher level? j
There is all sorts of information available on this subject. If an athlete does not have a congenital problem, he/she must still spend as much time cooling down as warming up. Unfortunately, athletes no matter what age have a tendency when the competition is over to just stop. Some examples of people who have died because of this are Jim Fixx (running guru), Jack Kelly (president of the US Olympic Committee and Olympic Gold Medallist rower), Chris Meerman (National Cycling Champion), Dave Staub (Pan-American medallist), Dr. Ed Burke (legendary sports scientist), to name a few. There was a 20-year study in Europe where they have found the correlation between certain people and athletic death. Several countries in Europe including Germany now test children for this gene and they are not allowed to participate in sports if they are posetive for it. Knowing the United States, it will take another 20 years before they consider it here.
Mike Fraysse