According to a recent study, even the fittest middle-aged athletes cannot outrun cardiovascular risk factors.A University of British Columbia study highlights how important it is for middle-aged athletes to have doctors check their cardiovascular risk factors, especially if they have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or a family history of cardiovascular disease.”We all know that exercise is good for us–it can help prevent a range of health problems and diseases, from cancer to depression,” said Barbara Morrison, the study’s lead author. “However, even if you are really active, our findings suggest that you still can’t outrun your risk factors.”For the study, researchers followed 798 “masters athletes”–adults aged 35 and older who engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity at least three days a week. The participants included a range of athletes, from runners to cyclists, triathletes, rowers and hockey players.Of the 798 athletes, 94 (11 per cent) were found to have significant cardiovascular disease. Ten participants were found to have severe coronary artery disease (a blockage in their artery of 70 per cent or greater) despite not having any symptoms.While the findings may seem alarming, Morrison emphasised that it doesn’t mean masters athletes should stop exercising.She, instead, recommends people see their doctor for regular check-ups, including blood pressure and cholesterol monitoring, especially if they have a family history of heart attack or stroke.”The good news is that cardiovascular disease is treatable,” she said. “Medication has been proven to reduce mortality risk, and even more so in people who are active.”When performing cardio, blood flow is directed toward working muscles and away from areas that aren’t doing much (such as your arms during running, or the digestive tract). There is increased blood flow, and blood volume returning to the heart.As the heart registers a larger blood volume, over time the left ventricle adapts and enlarges. This larger cavity can hold more blood, and ejects more blood per beat, even at rest.Over time, with chronic cardio training, our resting heart rate drops because each beat delivers a bigger burst of blood, and fewer beats are needed. This takes work off your heart and is why cardio exercise is recommended for heart health.However, cardiovascular exercise can also produce stress. If we get into over-training, we may hit a point where we are drowning in cortisol. This eventually leads to immune-suppression and fat gain around the abdomen and face.People who spend a significant part of their day in stress, who have poor digestion or other sources of physiological stress, should not further their stress levels by overtraining. Always think of your goals, moderate your exercise if necessary, and work to reduce your stress levels.Strength training exercise works the heart in a completely different way. At any given moment, certain muscles are contracting and relying predominantly on type two muscle fibers, which are responsible for giving us a great looking body and making us stronger.As the muscles contract—say the arm muscles during a bicep curl—they press and close the blood vessels that flow through them. This leads to increased blood pressure in the rest of the body and the heart has to fight against a stronger force to push blood out.The heart adapts to this by increasing the thickness of the left ventricle wall. This thickness derived from chronic weight training is healthy, whereas the thickness from chronic high blood pressure is not.What’s the difference? The healthy heart only has to work under pressure for two to three hours of strength training per week, whereas the heart with high blood pressure has to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The second heart may exhaust, whereas the healthy heart becomes stronger with a lower resting heart rate.Cardiovascular exercise increases the number of new blood vessels while resistance training increases the size of those blood vessels.
