16 replies to this topic

[zorba990]

Clogged arteries at age 26?
What's at work here -- terrible genetics? Drugs? Bad diet? Seems bizarre. I've heard of sudden athletic heart related deaths before, but it's usually blamed on a heart defect not clogged artery.

http://www.foxnews.c...sease-official/

[kevinseven11]

Murderer

[zorba990]

Murderer

Seems unlikely. Any special reason you think that?

[nowayout]

Clogged arteries at age 26?
What's at work here -- terrible genetics? Drugs? Bad diet?

Well, if you read the article, it basically says terrible genetics.

[niner]

Wow, that's some pretty bad genetics. ApoE 99? It's kind of surprising that he could be athletic with that degree of coronary artery occlusion and not have any symptoms. Maybe he did have symptoms and just ignored them. Clogged arteries wouldn't be the first thing you'd think of in an athletic 26 year old.

His diet was probably all wrong for whatever his genetics were.

[kevinseven11]

Im wondering why the first autopsy was inconclusive. Thats why I said murder, but i retake that. That was just stupid of me
Long distance runners are known to have scars on their hearth tissue and such. Perhaps he over did the training (shows up when he performs tho).

[The Immortalist]

Well it's a good thing he wasn't given a chance to reproduce so he could spread his crappy genetics.

In before massive downvoting of this post.

[yoyo]

Also, overtraining stress.

[zorba990]

The 'terrible genetics' argument in the article is just conjecture. They cite one (1) relative who died in early 40's. The rest of the family has not been tested yet according to the article. It would be interesting to see other elite swimmers arteries in comparison...

[nowayout]

These elite swimmers tend to have horrible diets. I remember reading somewhere about how many pizzas Phelps eats every day. It was a lot of pizza. Add to that the deleterious cardiovascular effects of the intense training they do that has been mentioned above, as well as the possibility of a certain amount of doping. These days it would be surprising if an athlete of this calibre had no history of any kind of doping.

Edited by viveutvivas, 14 June 2012 - 04:41 PM.

[Snoopy]

Just remember these are outliers... ie. very rare incidents

[nowayout]

It is actually not so rare. In the U.S., many young athletes suddenly collapse and die every year. It only seems so rare because they are not famous, so we don't hear about every incident.

[niner]

It is actually not so rare. In the U.S., many young athletes suddenly collapse and die every year. It only seems so rare because they are not famous, so we don't hear about every incident.

Yup. It happened to a really great guy that I once knew. He was 27. And then there's the whole endurance athlete / heart attack phenomenon. If someone tells me they're a marathoner, I'll probably step away a bit so they don't land on me in the event that they keel over.

[maxwatt]

I know it's Science Daily, but:
http://www.scienceda...01025005836.htm

Dr. Eric Larose reported at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in 2010

on a study he'd performed, MRI scans of runners' hearts before and after marathons. What he found was that some hearts showed injury following a marathon, others did not. But the likelihood and degree of injury was correlated with a runner's VO2 max, the maximum amount of oxygen the cardiovascular system can supply. This can be improved with training, but a good portion of it is genetic. Elite cyclists and other athletes could have a VO2 in the 80's or even 90's, while a good club racer might have a VO2 of only 56 ... still much higher than a couch potato. What's unfair is someone like Lance Armstrong could have a VO2 of 56 without training, while the average athlete needs to train like mad to reach that level.

So yes, extreme aerobic running might damage the heart of someone who is not properly conditioned, or genetically disadvantaged. Those are the ones you hear about. Extreme aerobic sports aren't for everyone, but properly done are probably beneficial for most people, if it doesn;t kill you. But so can inactivity.

Clogging of the arteries is another case. It is possible that the 26-year old swimmer's heart wasn't clogged, but that deposits somewhere else broke free and traveled to the heart, blocking its blood supply. No symptoms but sudden death. An aortal aneurism can be undetected and symptomless untill it bursts, as happened to a college baskeball player. A meteor could burst through you roof and kill you in your bed as you slept, or worse while making love. That doesn't make love-making dangerous. Many heart attacks happen while sleeping. Should sleep then be avoided?

Consider the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico, who routinely run ultra-marathons just to get to a neighboring village. They typically live into their 80's and 90's (if they don't die in infancy), still running though maybe a bit more slowly. They do this on a high-carb diet, consisting mostly of corn mash, pine nuts and an occasional mouse or other piece of meat, and lots of beer. Heart disease is unknown. Maybe it's generations of breeding, maybe not. Some outsiders have adopted their running lifestyle with some marathoning success. Maybe it's the beer.

Edited by maxwatt, 17 June 2012 - 04:14 AM.

[Snoopy]

Some ideas which I welcome your response on:

As he was at a very high level - that usually requires a 'type a personality' to get there.
With all the training requires a lot of extra calories. I remember a British swimmer explained he took in some ludicrous amount of calories. The more food he is taking in, the more opportunity there is to 'screw up' the right balance of what goes in or sacrifice quality from peer pressure.
Too many bad carbs like wheat proven to be atherogenic? In effort to prepare muscles/ glycogen stores for each training session.
Too much dairy/ cassein? Maybe he was raised on it from young.
Overtraining/ in a constant state of inflammation
Imbalance between quality omega 6/ omega 3's - maybe he hated fish and loved margerine
A gene which force multiplies the negative effects of one of these variables... Enter the world of nutrigenomics
All these things continually compounded over a decade or two.

More chilled athlete personalities might at least take a break or balance out life, but maybe he was continually hardcore on all these things for a long time...

Nevertheless, I think these are good cases to learn since there must be strong forces at play somewhere to affect someone so young especially 90% constriction of some of his ateries at that age?

[Galaxyshock]

Drugs and overtraining. Too much stress even for a young body.

[TheKidInside]

lol @ "genetics" argument (in the article)....

I work with a good amount of athletes and it's shocking to me how stubborn they are to eat the crap they eat (some even as far as fast food junk and explains why so many former athletes are so ridiculously out of shape). A majority of those also buy into "calories in/calories out" model so they've nothing to worry about, not even micro-nutrient and/or trace mineral deficiencies haha