Cross nation skiers competition over the solidified lake Sils during the Engadin Ski Marathon nearby Sils Mar 11, 2007.
Credit: Reuters/Pascal Lauener
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Like most alternative tip athletes, Harald Sjoelshagen, a 66-year-old Norwegian, has an lengthened heart. When doctors beheld it in the early 1960s, he was already precision hard, skiing or using roughly each day. He didn"t need to worry, they told him, given he showed no pointer of underlying disease.
So for the subsequent 45 years, he strapped on his Fischer cross-country skis roughly each Mar to contest in Norway"s Birkebeiner ski marathon, somewhat longer than the 31 miles confronting contestants on Sunday in this year"s Winter Olympics.
Then in 2004, researchers investigate heart health in maestro Birkebeiner skiers told Sjoelshagen he had a heart-rhythm reeling called atrial fibrillation, that can means tired and strokes.
"I feel it rught away when I have it," Sjoelshagen said. "You don"t have any energy at all. An old lady can pass you."
Sjoelshagen is only one e.g. of what competence volume to a incomparable health complaint for aging sportsmen and sportswomen.
For the past couple of decades, box reports of continuation athletes with atrial fibrillation have trickled out of physicians" offices around the globe. Of those complicated so far, the Birkebeiner interpretation show that skiers have the top risk.
"One man"s mental high from cross-country skiing could be an additional man"s cardiac venom," sports cardiologist Dr. Sanjay Sharma, who was not endangered in the study, told Reuters Health.
Although he calls himself an "exercise enthusiast," Sharma pronounced impassioned continuation precision had turn increasingly usual and was approaching to take a fee on the heart.
"There comes a extent in a little people where exhausting practice only becomes as well much," pronounced Sharma, of St. George"s Healthcare NHS Trust in London.
A substantial series of the 78 skiers in the Birkebeiner study, published this Feb in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention Rehabilitation, appear to have strike that limit: thirteen of them had atrial fibrillation.
This is about what would have been approaching from alternative studies display that as most as fifteen percent of Norwegian men comparison than 75 competence humour from atrial fibrillation. But the skiers, who had been followed by scientists given 1976, grown the condition at an normal age of 58 - and the condition is most rarer in younger people.
Even some-more unexpectedly, 10 of the skiers -- thirteen percent -- had nothing of the risk factors that customarily go palm in palm with atrial fibrillation, such as high red red red red red blood pressure, heart disease or complicated drinking. That creates it the top rate of supposed "lone" atrial fibrillation ever reported in continuation athletes.
"We were astounded by the high incidence," pronounced Dr. Jostein Grimsmo of The Feiring Heart Clinic in Norway, who led the research. "We knew that a little cross-country skiers had grown atrial fibrillation, but we didn"t know how many."
EXERCISE TAKES ITS TOLL
At 5 feet 9 and 165 pounds, Harald Sjoelshagen is fit and full of health detached from his heart condition. He functions out regularly. And on weekends, he mostly dons skis to span the thirty sleet white miles to his lodge outward Oslo. This year will be the fortieth time he participates in the Birkebeiner race.
But a little days his heart gives him trouble, forcing him to delayed down -- approach down.
"When you"re going up the steps you feel similar to you don"t have any energy at all," he said. "I feel in great figure but I"m additionally really concerned."
During atrial fibrillation, the small chambers of the heart -- well well known as the atria -- go in to overdrive. They kick so fast they can"t get sufficient red red red red red blood in to the bigger chambers -- the ventricles -- that yield red red red red red blood to the total body.
This causes fatigue. In singular cases, the red red red red red blood left sitting in the atria competence proceed to clot. Such clots competence afterwards transport to the brain, where they can retard the not as big arteries and means strokes.
The couple in between continuation precision and atrial fibrillation is still murky. Doctors have enlarged well well known that intense, enlarged practice causes the heart to grow, jump out some-more red red red red red blood and kick slower during rest -- a materialisation aptly called athlete"s heart.
Traditionally, athlete"s heart has been deliberate harmless, pronounced cardiologist J. Jason West of the University of Texas in Houston. But the Birkebeiner investigate hints otherwise.
"What these folks are suggesting is that may be athlete"s heart is not that benign," pronounced West, who was not endangered in the study. "Maybe it does have implications in the enlarged term."
As the heart stretches to conform to tough exercise, it forms small scars, that in element could insist because the cells proceed to kick out of sync. In the Birkebeiner study, the researchers found that both a incomparable heart and a slower heart kick were related to atrial fibrillation, bolstering the theory.
HEALTHY WITH A BAD RHYTHM
The investigate was comparatively small, and needs to be confirmed. If the commentary pass muster, it could meant that a substantial suit of old continuation athletes should design to rise atrial fibrillation, pronounced West.
Still, West pronounced less than one percent of people with atrial fibrillation go on to have a stroke. In fact, athletes in all lend towards to live longer than the normal citizen. Sjoelshagen "is probably the healthiest 66-year-old in his region," he chuckled.
But Sjoelshagen is pained by his condition. He doesn"t know what triggers the episodes, and doctors are demure to give organisation advice.
"We don"t have clever sufficient justification nonetheless to suggest a specific age," Grimsmo, who carefully thought about Sjoelshagen, told Reuters Health. He hasn"t suggested the skier to cut behind on exercise, nonetheless he pronounced that "perhaps you shouldn"t contest really tough when you reach 55."
Sharma of St. George"s is not in doubt, though. "Anyone who practice atrial fibrillation should cut behind on the exercise," he said.
For comparison athletes in general, he added, "I think what we should be you do is checking their hearts each dual years to see if their hearts are removing worse."
For the subsequent couple of days, prior to he hits the sleet himself, Sjoelshagen will be glued to his television, available the men"s 31-mile ski marathon on Sunday. And a little hearts will really be intense after the race, as the aphorism for the 2010 Games goes.
"I will really watch that," he said. "I"m really penetrating on sports, you know."
SOURCE: The European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation, February, 2010.
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