Originally posted by Lab_Rat
Well, this posting is actually a result of Less'go's (New Thread Anybody) post.
As an avid cycling fan (funny that), I find it amazing that there are so many young pro's suffering heart attacks. What is more amazing, is that so often, the cause of death is stated as "Natural". So how many people do you know, below the age of 40, with excellent fitness, that die of heart attacks. So the question that I always have in my head, that I now put to you, is. . .
1.) Is the strain put on the heart during cycling actually harmful to the heart due to the extremes and frequency of going to the max; or
2.) Is there almost a blanket usage of performance enhancers such as EPO across the peloton and practically everyone is using them, but only those who are less scientific and overdo the dosage get caught.
What do you think?
It's a baffling situation. I do wonder though, if there isn't some confusion brought about by the terms "heart attack", "heart failure", "cardiac event", etc.
It seems that whenever the heart is mentioned in the cause of death, most people assume that means a heart attack. From what I can find, and I'm sure there are exceptions, the term "heart attack" refers to a specific condition usually the result of a blockage to a vessel that feeds the heart, (coronary artery).
Doctors seem to love to have special, complex terms for every medical condition and whoever makes those decisions decided to use the term "myocardial infarction", often shortened to "M.I." to describe a heart attack. "Myocardium" is heart muscle and "infarction" is from some Latin term, "infarcire", which means death. Perhaps they get extra points for more syllables?
Anyway, all the term means is death of the heart muscle but it seems that in medical lingo, the death must come about from a restriction of blood supply to the heart muscle. Not the blood that fills the cavities of the heart which it then squirts about when it beats but the blood in the arteries that feed the heart itself.
I have heard that severe coronary artery spasms can actually restrict blood enough to cause a heart attack but I'm not sure if exercise or over-training can cause such a spasm.
Without knowing more about it, the only things I can think of that might cause an apparently healthy, very active, young adult to suddenly die of a heart attack would be a diet tremendously rich in fats and cholesterol, an acute sensitivity to the plaques that these compounds can form or an emboli (air bubble) or thrombus (solid object that blocks a blood vessel), such as a blood clot.
EPO thickens the blood by causing the body to produce extra red blood cells which carry oxygen through the circulatory system. This can certainly put a strain on the heart. Strained muscles tend to lose their ability to produce power if not allowed to recover which might lead to a reduction in blood flow to the heart itself which would, of course, compound the already strained condition. My best guess is that this would be termed "heart failure". The thicker blood might also be more inclined to form clots which could block coronary ateries so it, among other drugs could cause the problem but I wouldn't expect the fatal event to occur while resting in a motel room as happened in one recent situation.
It seems the pro cycling community is fairly tight-lipped about the specifics of such deaths which kind of raises suspicions about drug use.
