How To Stop Exercise From Killing You
It seems like something you'd see on Unsolved Mysteries: a man
, seemingly in perfect health, drops dead while running. For Ryan Shay, though, this was the sad truth of his demise.
Shay died in 2007 during the US Olympic marathon trials in New York City. He got five and a half miles into the race before collapsing from a massive heart attack.
Exactly 40 minutes from his time of collapse, Shay was pronounced dead at the age of 28. This raises the question of how a professional athlete could die from an activity that is meant to increase health.
The idea that exercise, supposedly one of the best ways to prevent illness, could kill you is one of the great paradoxes of medicine.
Medical professionals in the past have assumed wild theories about exercise. Physicians in the late 1800s believed that the heart was limited to a certain number of heartbeats and therefore urged patients to avoid activities that would increase their heart rate and theoretically shorten their lifespan.
Aerobic exercise has often proven the most fatal. At health clubs, sudden deaths from endurance activities are reported once for every 1.5 million work out sessions as opposed to deaths from weight training, which are reported once for every 2.5 million sessions.
The body is designed to protect the heart while strength training, making this form of exercise inherently safer.However, aerobic exercise is still relevant in a work out regimen--the trick is to approaching activities with the proper moderation.
Those who exercise aerobically from 20 to 139 minutes a week have the least chance of dying from overexertion. This allows for about 30 minutes of running or a similar activity, three days a week.
"The person who's at greatest risk of an exercise death is the person with known or hidden coronary artery disease who is habitually sedentary--a couch potato, all year round," says Barry Franklin, Ph.D., director of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at the Beaumont hospital.
A Rhode Island study conducted by P.D. Thompson determined that "a middle-aged jogger with no known cardiac disease who decides to continue running for one more year is at considerably lower risk of sudden death than is a middle-aged non-runner who continues to ride in his car during that year."
In short, those who regularly exercise are at a lower risk than those who don't.
If you're still concerned about sudden death from exercising, look into your family's health history. Cases of sudden cardiac death in the past act as a warning from relatives to avoid overly-strenuous activities.
It is also important to note that most cases of fatal exercising stem from heart conditions. In this case, proper diagnosis from a doctor could act as the best means of prevention.
Among the middle-aged and older, coronary artery disease is a leading cause of exercise-related death. This was the case in running legend Jim Fixx's death in 1984.
Athletes who die younger than 40, however, have a wide variety of causes. Some can look to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy as an explanation, while others (like Shay) have an enlarged heart to blame.
Education in medical conditions is the best method of prevention. In 21% of the cases where hypertrophic cardiomyopahy was the cause of death, there were indications of a problem before the fatal exercise session.
Coronary artery abnormalities tell a similar tale. Warning signs were not heeded in 30% of the cases where the affected athlete died from exercise.
The benefits of exercise still far outweigh any concerns about health risks.
A study conducted by D.S. Siscovick concluded that health risk of sudden death due to heart failure would increase three-fold if an intense marathoner were to stop exercising. In this way, exercising reduces the risk of sudden death, rather than increasing it.
On a more scientific level, exercise safeguards the heart. With increased HDL (good cholesterol) and enhanced cardiac function, regular exercise extends life expectancy and increases the quality of life.
So, even with the reports of sudden athlete deaths don't be afraid to engage in aerobic activities. Just become familiar with your medical well-being and remember that the risk of death is vastly overshadowed by the positive aspects of exercise.
by: Ronald Pedactor
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