Professional body builders may look fit, but their cardiac health tells another story.
Your Back page scribbler has never quite understood the attraction of body building.
While totally accepting the proven health benefits of a moderate amount of resistance training, the desire to achieve a body shape resembling “a condom full of walnuts”* we find baffling.
As it transpires, there’s another good reason for blokes to think twice about investing in a posing pouch and a super-sized bottle of baby oil: sudden cardiac death.
According to research from the University of Padova in Italy, sudden cardiac death is responsible for an unusually high proportion of deaths in male bodybuilders worldwide with the highest risk among professional bodybuilders.
The team looked for reports of deaths among more than 20,000 male bodybuilders who had competed in at least one bodybuilding event between 2005 and 2020.
Of those men, 121 had died, at an average age of 45, with sudden cardiac death accounting for two in five of the deaths.
Moreover, the researchers found professional bodybuilders were five times as likely to die from sudden cardiac death as amateur iron pumpers.
Although only a small number of autopsies were available for study, those that were suggested thickening or enlargement of the heart and coronary artery disease were common.
In some cases, toxicological analyses and publicly available reports revealed abuse of anabolic substances.
According to our researchers, it’s this combination of “extreme strength training, rapid weight loss strategies including severe dietary restrictions and dehydration, as well as the widespread use of different performance-enhancing substances’’, that could be increasing the sudden cardiac death risk.
“These approaches can place significant strain on the cardiovascular system, increase the risk of irregular heart rhythm, and may lead to structural heart changes over time,” study lead Dr Marco Vecchiato told media.
“The risk may be greater for professional bodybuilders because they are more likely to engage intensively in these practices over prolonged periods and may experience higher competitive pressure to achieve extreme physiques.’’
Looking more broadly, the team suggested their study challenged the idea that “appearance alone is an indicator of health and highlights the hidden risks that can exist behind even the most sculpted physiques”.
“These findings underline the need to address the psychological impact of bodybuilding culture,” Dr Vecchiato said.
And what of the risk to female bodybuilders, I hear you ask? That’s still a work in progress for our Italian boffins, who focused firstly on male participants due to more data being available on men doing competitive bodybuilding.
The team also plan to study deaths among bodybuilders over time, to see whether health risks have altered as practices have changed.
In the meantime, we flabby weaklings can relax in the knowledge while we may not resemble Michelangelo’s statue of David, we are also still alive enough to acknowledge the fact.
*Simile courtesy of the late, and truly great, Clive James.
Send steroid-enhanced story tips to cate@medicalrepublic.com.au
