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A study based in the U.S. looks at what the heart tells us
Many middle-aged marathon runners and other endurance athletes are familiar with concerns from their loved ones — and occasionally their physicians — that they might be exercising too much and straining or harming their hearts. For all of them, a large-scale study published recently in JAMA Cardiology should be mollifying. It finds that middle-aged men who work out often and vigorously do tend to develop worrisome plaques in their cardiac arteries. But those men also are less likely than more sedentary people to die prematurely from a heart attack or other cause. The findings raise the interesting possibility, in other words, that strenuous exercise may protect the heart against the very problems to which it also contributes. No one doubts, of course, that our hearts benefit from exercise. Study after study shows that people who meet the standard exercise guidelines, which call for about 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise, have a reduced risk of developing heart disease. There have been some hints, however, that people can exercise too much, especially if the exercise is intense. In past studies, researchers scanning the hearts of long-time endurance athletes, such as marathon runners, have found scarring in those athletes’ heart muscles and also hefty deposits of coronary plaques, which can break free and block arteries, causing a heart attack. But most of those earlier studies were small and provided a single snapshot of the athletes’ hearts; they did not follow people for years to see whether their heavy exercise and any subsequent build-up of plaques was linked to heightened risks for heart attacks and shorter lives. The researchers also looked at the scans of each man’s heart. The degree of plaque accumulation can generally be assessed using a coronary artery calcium score. Someone with a score higher than 100 is considered to have worrisome plaque build-up. Comparing the groups, the researchers determined that the men in the highest-exercise group were prone to developing plaques. They were, in fact, about 11% more likely to have a calcium score higher than 100, compared to men who moved less. Some of the extreme exercisers had scores above 800. Finally, the researchers checked death records for a decade or so after each man’s latest exam, to see if any had died. In essence, these results suggest that large amounts of exercise can up someone’s risk of developing plaques, while also lessening the likelihood that he will die from a heart attack precipitated by those plaques, says Dr. Laura DeFina, the chief science officer for the Cooper Institute, who led the study.NY TIMES
Source : https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/can-you-get-too-much-exercise/article26227706.ece
