Deaths of young & fit athletes apparently rising page 2

[js290]

A1c and High Post-Meal Blood Sugars Predict Heart Attack

[sroelofs]

I thought these cases were related to defective heart valves (a genetic condition). It will usually only cause a problem in a person when they get older (40-50+). But these athletes are pushing themselves to limits most people don't get to, so the heart fails earlier.

The Australian Olympic team are scanning every athletes heart before the London Olympics just to be safe.

[paleo-bunny]

Screening for heart conditions in babies only became routine relatively recently, thus some athletes who do have minor genetic heart defects are blissfully unaware of them.

A regular screening programme for professional athletes sounds like a good idea to me.

[wiltondeportes]

I don't believe high carb, low fat would do it unless they ate almost zero fat.
I don't believe high fat, low carb would necessarily do it either.
I think consumption of fat and carb at the same time in high enough amounts leads to things that damage the blood circulatory system. That's the only thing new about nutrition nowadays. People eat a lot of carbs AND fat, and they eat them at the same time. I think, given time for the body to digest, you can eat both high carb and high fat meals healthily. You just need to separate them. For example, carbs during the day, protein/fat for dinner, carbs for dessert. Or go high fat for a couple weeks, then switch over to carbs and leaner meats.

Honestly, who knows. We're speculating about rare events, and we don't even know all the details of a single one of them. There could be many, many factors unrelated to diet.

In some cases, like ex-NFL player Gaines Adams, it was an enlarged heart. This could be hormones from milk and factory meat. This could be from stuff in the water. This could be from anything affecting the hormones. By the same token, it could just be a genetic defect. We are not perfect.

[allison223]

Recently a 12 year old in my hometown collapsed and died while running bases at a baseball practice. I don't think it is likely that he was doing drugs or taking steroids nor following any sort of high carb, low fat diet. They found the cause of death to be an enlarged heart. As the parent of an adolescent athlete, this concerns me greatly. I know there a lot of variables in life, but it would be nice if there were some sort os screening in place...if my son is at risk due to a genetic defect, there are many other things he could do besides sports as I wouldn't want to take that risk.

[paleo-bunny]

It's probably worth paying for your son to have a screening, to put your mind at rest.

Damn, my post above is incorrect. For some reason I was sure that scans for heart defects on neonates had been routine for a while now in the UK. Perhaps that applies to the NHS trust where I used to work.

Screening all newborns for heart defects could save hundreds of lives a year | Mail Online

[allison223]

It's probably worth paying for your son to have a screening, to put your mind at rest.

Damn, my post above is incorrect. For some reason I was sure that scans for heart defects on neonates had been routine for a while now in the UK. Perhaps that applies to the NHS trust where I used to work.

Screening all newborns for heart defects could save hundreds of lives a year | Mail Online

I agree. He actually has a physical scheduled tomorrow for sports and for entering high school in the Fall. I am going to ask about it, I've read that some of the problems that occur can't be screened for though.

[Analog6]

I thought these cases were related to defective heart valves (a genetic condition). It will usually only cause a problem in a person when they get older (40-50+). But these athletes are pushing themselves to limits most people don't get to, so the heart fails earlier.

The Australian Olympic team are scanning every athletes heart before the London Olympics just to be safe.

My point was could accumulated generational poor eating (& CW high carb/low fat has been going for a while now) cause genetic defects? Would we know? As more & more is researched about eating 'non-primally' - and I use the term to cover the diets of agricultual socitis in the last 10,000 years - we have seen that man has shrunk, brain size has shrunk etc. Is it byoned the realms of possibility that hearts are being affected too?

Anyway, it is all interesting to me, my idea was to get discussions going & see wher they went..

[allison223]

My point in my post was that it is not just happening in Professional and college sports, but also in athletes at much younger ages. I am wondering too if there is a diet component, whether it be a genetic defect caused by poor maternal diet or something causing inflammation (etc) in a person's current diet. My concern is just more for a personal reason than out of pure curiosity.

[tfarny]

Bored to death from playing soccer or competitive swimming? Kidding, of course. A few deaths does not prove or show anything meaningful. Do you have a study, an actual piece of research? Don't trust newspapers for science.