How can fit and healthy people die from heart-related problems? How can it be prevented?

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I am an athlete and I am curious to know how this happens and how we can prevent it

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2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Young athletes-it’s often arrhythmia and or genetic causes of cardiac hypertrophy. Hard to tell by physical exam, this needs an echocardiogram and electrical studies (ekg, or a version you wear)

Mid 30s and on, mostly men: High cholesterol doesn’t scale 1:1 with weight gain, and they have severe blockages of the arteries of the heart. There are many families where men die by 55. I once did an autopsy of a teenage male of normal weight, in a family where his grandfather was already dead at 55ish, and this teenager already had 70% of the cross sectional area of a major coronary vessel occluded. That wasn’t why he died (accident), but if you added 25 lbs of extra weight and mild diabetes, or moderate hypertension that could’ve killed him before age 40. 

Prevent this? Blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugars are normal or medicated till they are. 

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