Atrial fibrillation, or commonly called AFib, is an irregular heartbeat that can cause blood clots and increase the risk of stroke.
This new science doesn’t mean you should panic and stop training, especially if your exercise routine is relatively mild. But it suggests that no one is immune to heart worries, no matter how healthy we feel.
Exercise changes minds, often for the better
A wealth of research has shown that physically active people are significantly less likely to develop or die from heart disease than those who do little exercise.
Exercise requires a lot of heart. As soon as we start running or otherwise exerting force, the heart doubles or triples the rate of pumping blood to the working muscles.
Over time, this exercise strengthens the heart like any other muscle and rebuilds organs, including the heart’s upper chambers, the atria. The atria send blood to the lower chambers, the ventricles, and push the blood forward. In general, these changes are desirable and welcome.
But the reasons remain a mystery, with several new studies showing that years of intense training and racing can take a toll on your heart.
in much debate 2019 surveyFor example, Swedish scientists collected a Swedish record of 208,654 finishers in Vasalopette, a series of exhausting cross-country ski races up to 90 kilometers (56 miles), and 527,448. It was compared with the record of a Swedish man. Women who did not participate in the race.
The Swedes tend to be active, but researchers found that some who completed the Vasalopette showed tension in their hearts. Overall, skiers were not at greater risk of atrial fibrillation than other Swedes. However, the male skiers who competed in the most races, finished the fastest, or trained the hardest, whether skiers or not, were more likely to develop atrial fibrillation in the following years. sex was higher than anyone else. (Female skiers had the lowest rate of atrial fibrillation of any group studied.)
Maximum risk comes with maximum exercise
Essentially, the study found that “highly trained athletes had a higher risk of atrial fibrillation” than those who exercised less, although the overall risk remained low, said Uppsala University in Sweden. said Kaspar Andersen, a doctor and epidemiologist in skier study.
The idea is based on a study published in April in the Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine that sought medical and training data from 942 male and female long-term endurance athletes in 2021 and atrial biopsy. Enhanced with the latest research on movement. All have competed at least once at the local or national level, and most are still racing today.
About 20 percent of these athletes, almost all middle-aged men, said they had been diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. 3% of them had suffered a stroke.
Similar to skiers, the most trained athletes in terms of years of competition and hours of exercise per week, especially for men and, more surprisingly, for swimmers (including triathletes), have atrial fibrillation. were at highest risk.
“When compared with the general population, the most avid athletes had higher rates of atrial fibrillation,” said Sushil Parikadavas, a cardiology clinical researcher at the University of Leicester, UK, who led the study. However, he added that the incidence was likely to be highly skewed, as this was not a random sample and athletes with atrial fibrillation probably responded in disproportionate numbers. It’s also unclear why swimming increases risk in his study, although prone sports may play a role. (There is no evidence that COVID-19 has affected results. Most athletes with atrial fibrillation were diagnosed long before the pandemic began.)
pay attention to your heart
What does this research mean for those of us who exercise and compete frequently?
First, don’t overreact, says Megan Wafi, a sports cardiologist at Massachusetts General Brigham Hospital in Boston who has studied and treated atrial fibrillation in athletes. Moderate exercise, walking or jogging a few hours a week, protects us from: any kind of heart conditionwhich includes atrial fibrillation, but also coronary artery disease, which means plaque in arteries, the most deadly cardiovascular disease.
“Please keep exercising,” she said.
But on the other hand, don’t underreact or ignore new symptoms just because you’re exercising. Spending hours training each week can increase your risk of developing atrial fibrillation “three to five times over your lifetime,” she said.
So watch out for sudden heart palpitations and shortness of breath, especially during exercise, she said. The same goes for unexplained performance degradation. If you wear a smartwatch with a heart rate monitor, watch out for heart rate spikes.
These precautions apply to women as well as men, Parikadabas said. So far, there has been little indication that female athletes are at risk of atrial fibrillation for many years, but few female athletes have been studied. “We really need to look at the risks for female athletes,” he says.
Still, he wants athletes to feel safe. “The benefits of exercise far outweigh the risks,” he said. “I can’t say enough about this message.”
Have a fitness question? Email [email protected] I may answer your question in a future column.
