Disease Information for Athletic heart

What is athletic heart syndrome? The first thing you should know is that athletic heart syndrome isn"t necessarily bad for you -- if you"re an athlete; And it"s not what makes young athletes expire in midcourt; Like any other muscle, the heart gets stronger with exercise; Endurance exercises such as jogging, swimming, and cycling can make the organ bigger, allowing it to pump more blood with every beat; Short, intense workouts such as weight lifting further increase the pumping power by thickening the walls of the heart; Just as body builders sculpt their abs and biceps into highly unusual shapes, many hard-core, competitive athletes develop extraordinary hearts; Not only is the heart extra large and thick, it also may produce some irregular rhythms (arrhythmia); A person with athletic heart syndrome may also have a markedly slow resting heart rate, in the range of 35 to 50 beats a minute; In addition, electrical impulses can take strange routes across the heart, causing abnormal readings on an electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG); Together, these changes produced by exercise are called athletic heart syndrome. Why isn"t athletic heart syndrome dangerous? An enlarged heart, arrhythmia, and unusual ECG readings would all be signs of serious trouble for the average person; In fact, the rhythms and ECG readings associated with athletic heart syndrome often mimic life-threatening disorders; But athletic heart syndrome itself is harmless; If an athlete has symptoms of chest pain, reports irregular beats, or has passed out, he or she should probably get a medical exam to pinpoint the problem; How is athletic heart syndrome treated? Since athletic heart syndrome is harmless, there"s no reason to treat it-------[A HealthyME website 2007]----------------

One of the problems with screening athletes is that "abnormalities" detected during examinations may merely be normal variants; The changes that occur in the heart in response to athletic training are known as "the athletic heart syndrome;"21 The well-trained athlete often demonstrates electrocardiographic, radiographic and echocardiographic changes of cardiac enlargement and enhanced vagal tone; In addition, the clinical examination may demonstrate bradycardia, S3 and S4 heart sounds, and innocent flow murmurs; While clinical criteria have been developed to assist in distinguishing athletic heart syndrome from pathologic conditions, differentiation of normal from abnormal changes may be extremely difficult

--------------[AAFP website/journal 2007]----------------

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