Athletic heart is a physiological condition in which heart enlarges through (extreme) physical training such as aerobic exercise most especially through endurance sports, and the resting pulse lowers.

Oregon RB suffers heart attack after TD run

In the US, one athlete named David Heller a former Central Catholic athlete who died in his sleep five years ago following a basketball game was later diagnosed with an enlarged heart. On Friday night, running back Hayward Demison, also a Central Catholic athlete, made a heart-stopping run – literally and figuratively. After racing 45 yards to the end zone, it gave a come-from-behind win over Canby High, but moments later leaned against an assistant coach and collapsed.

Luckily, Demison recovered after Central Catholic’s statistician, Linda Lyver, performed emergency CPR, that needed 60 chest compressions and two breaths.

Not all athletes will be as lucky as Demison. So activists say some changes are needed and that  mandatory heart screenings should be part of the physical exam so they get their heart checked, too.

According to wrongdiagnosis.com, the extrapolated prevalence rate for heart attack in the Philippines is 2,377,987. Of course, that could be wrong. But given the estimated figure, many still don’t know signs of heart attack.

Digging further, an Italian study suggested an incidence of 1.6 – 2.3 per 100000 athletes per year (2.1 per 100000 per year due to cardiovascular causes) and 0.8. This clearly reflects an increased incidence in athletes.

So, are you in favor for mandatory heart screenings for student athletes?

Now, the fierce rivalry between Ateneo de Manila University and De la Salle University has spilled over into A(H1N1) arena. Sort of.

According to the data from the World Health Organization (WHO), swine flu has spread to 66 countries with 19,273 people known to have been infected since the disease was first uncovered in Mexico in April.

Spread it is.

Last week, CHED moved school opening to June 15 when a foreign student of La Salle was confirmed positive of A(H1N1). A few days later, a second foreign student from La Salle was tested positive for A(H1N1). And on June 10, Ateneo de Manila University suspended its class for ten (10) days when three high school students tested positive for swine flu.

If you’re counting, Ateneo leads La Salle three to two.

(The students responded well to treatments and is reportedly feeling better. I hope this swine flue flies out of our country already.)

There’s a good news for you and for every sports enthusiasts!

The SPARC Sports Performance Center opened its doors last January 20, 2009. The SPARC  houses internationally trained orthopedists from The Medical City’s Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and Sports and Arthroscopy Unit of the Department of Orthopedics who treat a variety of conditions and rehabilitation medicine consultants who complement them. They treat sports-related injuries with the help of professionally-trained rehabilitation therapists.

Sports enthusiasts are tired of the usual Fitness Center. I’m glad that the people behind SPARC realized how much a place like this is looooooooooonged for by athletes.

SPARC Sports Performance Center is located at the Ground Floor of the Technology Building of Far Eastern University along Nicanor Reyes Street, Sampaloc, Manila.

I’ve been doing the push-up routine everyday in the morning after I wake up for at least two (2) years now, but I just barred myself to do ten to twenty (10-20) a day.

The site actually does nothing else but to challenge it’s readers and followers to do a consecutive hundred push-ups. Easy? Not!

It’s a three (3)  days  in a week in six (6) weeks program that starts with the initial test. If you ask how I did in the test? I got  38. And now that I’m taking the site’s challenge, my mind is pretty set to reach the hundred and I won’t stop until I do.

It’s a good thing after all. Since I do it every morning after I wake up, I don’t forgo nothing importnant.

If you’re a person that cannot even manage to do one (1) or ten (10) push up, fret not. You can do it! That’s if you are serious enough. Follow this six (6) week training program and you’ll soon be on your way to completing 100 consecutive push ups!

If you’ve taken the challenge, let us know below! Good luck!

Athletic heart syndrome, also knows as athlete’s heart, is a medical syndrome in which the human heart is enlarged due to excessive amounts of exercise. Common in athletes who exercise more than an hour almost every day and occasionally in heavy weight trainers, this syndrome is believed to be a benign condition but may be hard to distinguish from other serious medical conditions. Just like other muscles; the heart responds to exercise with increased efficiency.

During intensive, prolonged endurance- and strength-training, the body signals the heart to pump more blood through the body to counteract the oxygen deficit building in the skeletal muscles. Enlargement of the heart is a natural physical adaptation of the body to deal with the high pressures and large amounts of blood that can affect the heart during these periods of time. After time, these pressures cause the muscle mass, wall thickness, and chamber size of the left ventricle of the heart to increase.

Cardiac output, the amount of blood that leaves the heart, is proportional to both the chamber sizes of the heart and the rate at which the heart beats. With a larger left ventricle, the heart rate can decrease and still maintain a level of cardiac output necessary for the body. Therefore, it is very common for athletes to have lower resting heart rates than non athletes.

There are no symptoms for people with athletic heart syndrome, although an indicator would be a consistently low resting heart rate. AHS is usually diagnosed during a routine screening or during tests for other medical issues. An enlarged heart can be seen on an echocardiogram or sometimes a chest X-ray. Due to the similarities between AHS and more serious cardiac problems, an electrocardiogram (EKG) and exercise stress tests are sometimes performed.

The EKG can detect sinus bradycardia, a resting heart rate of fewer than 60 beats per minute. This is often accompanied by sinus arrhythmia. The heartbeat of a person with AHS can sometimes be irregular while at rest, but usually returns to normal after exercise begins.

One common cardiovascular disease that has similar EKG reads is hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which is characterized by the thickening of the heart’s walls. This genetic disorder is found in 1 out of 500 Americans and is responsible for thousands of sudden death cases every year. Of all sudden death cases, only about 8% are exercise related.

Although the heart experiences structural changes (i.e. wall thickening) that are common with some cardiac disease, no unfavorable effects are evident. 80% of people affected by this syndrome show a decrease in such structural changes and in bradycardia with detraining. Unfortunately, the lack of long-term data limits our ability to determine whether or not the remaining 20% of people who do indeed have residual chamber enlargement have experienced any negative side effects.

How is it treated?
Since athletic heart syndrome is harmless, there’s no reason to treat it. If you really want a “normal” heart again, all you have to do is stop exercising. Soon, your heart, along with the rest of your body, will sag back into its former shape. But why not keep everything extra strong and healthy for a while? You should be proud of your athletic body, heart included.

Guys!

Thank you for all the prayers. I’m enlightened and doing almost well now.

Credits to Chris Woolston and Carol L. Otis