7
ISSUES: Fitness & Health
Chapter 1: About fitness
High intensity exercise could cause an
abnormal heart beat, sports cardiologist
suggests
Fitness fanatics who overdo it at the gym could be more likely to suffer from an
abnormal heart rhythm, an independent review has suggested.
T
he sports cardiologist behind
the review, Dr André La Gerche,
believes that high levels of
intense exercise are “cardiotoxic”
and could increase the likelihood
of suffering permanent structural
changes in the heart, leading to
arrhythmias (an abnormal heart beat).
He said that it is important to do
exercise to stay healthy. But added
that there is compelling evidence
supporting the association between
carrying out long-term high intensity
training and the development of heart
problems.
Sports cardiologist Dr André La
Gerche, head of sports cardiology
at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes
Institute in Australia, said that the
question of whether too much
exercise is bad for a person’s health is
often “hijacked by definitive media-
grabbing statements”.
This, he said, has “fuelled” an
environment in which a person might
be criticised for even questioning the
benefits of exercise.
“This paper discusses the often
questionable,
incomplete,
and
controversial science behind the
emerging concern that high levels of
intense exercisemay be associated with
some adverse health effects,” he said.
Dr Gerche’s review looked at existing
data surrounding high intensity
exercise and how it could cause adverse
cardiac changes in some athletes.
He said that all therapies – whether
that’s medication or fitness – have a
“dose-response relationship”. In other
words, if you take too many pills or
complete too much exercise, it has a
negative impact on health.
According to Dr Gerche, there is
a commonly held view that heart
problems which develop in athletes
are often blamed on an underlying
abnormality, which is then triggered
by exercise.
But he believes that exercise could
actually be the cause for these issues.
In his study, he questioned whether
there was a “non-linear dose-
response relationship with exercise”
and whether “endurance exercise
in athletes was associated with
arrhythmias”.
He said that there was a lot of
conflicting evidence between studies,
especially as larger population studies
supporting the health benefits of
exercise often dwarfed smaller cross-
sectional studies that examined
whether intense exercise could be bad
for health.
“The answers regarding thehealthfulness
of ‘extreme’ exercise are not complete
and there are valid questions being
raised,” he said in his review.
“Given that this is a concern that affects
such a large proportion of society, it is
something that deserves investment.
“The lack of large prospective studies
of persons engaged in high-volume
and high-intensity exercise represents
the biggest deficiency in the literature
to date, and, although such work
presents a logistical and financial
challenge, many questions will remain
controversies until such data emerge.”
He said further investigation, with
large-scale studies, is needed to
establish the effect of intense exercise
on heart structure and function.
The review was published in the
Canadian Journal of Cardiology
.
26 February 2016
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