Honey Bees
Long story short I knew I was in cardiac shock by the time I got home, nothing was bringing my heart rate down. So got to the phone called 911, firefighters came first and got my EKG started; 268 BPM and Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). Paramedic came (a cute one at that) and got to me the ER. My SVT broke just in time to avoid being cardioverted. Heart rate had dropped to 180 by then.Luckily I got seen by a good ER doc, and an excellent cardiologist. Once they ruled out drugs of course. Fast forward to the diagnoses and surgery. I had Atrioventricular Nodal Reentrant Tachycardia (AVRNT) caused by extra nervous tissue (Purkinje fibers) in my left ventricle which had to be removed surgically. It was the worst case the Cardiologist had seen.Now in my case it never showed up on an EKG and was only triggered in a very small heart rate range, during surgery it took some drugs and a lot of prodding to get it to trigger on the table. So if I didn't workout as hard it most likely would never have been an issue.There are other conditions that can be fatal (AVRNT is rarely fatal) to athletes that most people won't be as "at risk" for because they don't push their bodies that hard.
Every corner of the world that I have been even the uneducated people say that fats cause heart disease. Lot of people run , exercise and diet yet their cholesterol remains high. A heavy built man came to me and said Doc I eat beef all the time and use a lot of fats, eggs and my cholesterol always comes out normal. He went on to say his brother who is skinny, diets and exercises, does not eat beef or eggs is on a lot of medication because his cholesterol is high. You do not have to do a study to figure out that by taking natural fats our body will automatically stop the production of cholesterol which is made by our liver in the absence of essential fatty acids.
I saw a patient who was heavy and wanted to lose weight and improve his heart condition. I advised him to use olive oil three tea spoons twice a day. He took it three times a day and when he used to take this in his office, . He came to see me again after a year, he looked considerably younger, had lost weight and no signs of any heart disease his cholesterol checked out as normal.
Cholesterol is very important for our body and we need essential fatty acids for a proper heart rhythm if we do not have proper fatty acids that's when sudden death happens in young athletes. So the cidpusa foundation has written a full chapter on how to prevent athletes death by simply increasing the EFA or essential fatty acids in the diet. It is that simple to protect young women and men from an early death , they usually die while running or playing, one young army colonel died after he delivered a high power speech and the resulting excitement heart disease in the absence of fats the cardiac arrhythmias or abnormal cardiac activity.Return to Prevent Athlete death page