Your Heart in Exercise |
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| Wonder why animals
have hearts while trees do not?
At certain size of body, all animals develop the heart organ. Worms do not need one as they can afford the slow diffusion process through their soft loose tissue. Bigger animals are neither so soft nor so loose. Therefore a heart is needed to force fluid circulation through our tissue. But trees are also neither soft nor loose. Trees have rigid tubes to circulate their fluids. Motion is the only explanation that animals need heart. They cannot survive with rigid tubes in the place of their blood vessels. Thus heart is unique to moving creatures. So is exercise. Blood vessels have to kink, open, dilate, pulsate, and close with movement. When we neglect exercise and default on healthy feeding our blood vessels become rigid as the tree tubes. Rigid blood vessels are called atherosclerotic (due to development of sclerosis and atheroma in their walls). Hardened blood vessels are incompatible with healthy living. They cause stroke, cardiac infarction, and many organ failures.
Heart valves: Understanding the consequences of exercise on the heart is of utmost importance to all sports. The heart is the engine of life. In particular, the heart valves are the most sensitive structures in the heart. Heart valves are as thin as a sheet of paper and as small as the pulp of the finger, are four in number, and control the flow of blood. Thus the heart valves are our windows on life. The difference between a top Olympic athlete and a common person might lay in the conditions of the heart valves. Any abnormality in the electric regulation or the structure of the valves would result in poor general health. This will manifest in the need for long hours of sleep, easy fatigue ability, malabsorption, distended abdomen, gray complexion, and motor and sensory symptoms. Both the electric regulation of the valves dynamics and the structural abnormalities can result from unwisely planned exercise. Blood gases are disturbed when exercise frequency or intensity exceeds the level of conditioning of an individual. Altered blood gases results in disturbances in cellular to intracellular exchange of ions and alter the polarization process of action potential. Cardiac arrhythmia are either slow or high heart rate of irregular beating. Arrhythmias can be fetal due to blockage of the blood flow to the brain and coronary system. Both chronic and acute arrhythmias can cause structural damages to the heart valves. Valvular tears, rupture, inflammation, chordeae tendinea rupture may result. Traumatizing the heart valves by poorly planned exercise is not uncommon occurrence in all sports. A traumatized mitral, or aortic valve may result in a life long handicap to few months of generalized poor health.
Mitral regurgitation: The heart valves act like the carborater needles or fuel injection regulator in combustion engines. A mighty powerful vehicle or an airplane would be sitting like a duck if a tiny fuel regulator malfunction. A leaky mitral valve would cause an Olympic champion not to be able to lift his own hand. Such mitral leak occurs when the mitral valve tries to shut close during the systole to allow the left ventricle to pump the blood into the entire body. Instead of pumping blood to the brain, muscles, and vital organs, the mitral leak regurges the blood backward into the lungs. The lungs become congested, the blood to gas exchange is hindered and the oxygen delivery system malfunction. Do not think that it would not happen to you. It happened to me so many times each time I tried to push hard and caused me very frightening weeks and months. How does mitral regurgitation happen with exercise? Overtraining extensively leads to fatigue of the entire body, due to accumulation of metabolic byproducts faster than the rate of their elimination. A fatigued mitral valve would not have the same vigor to close the back flow of the systolic blood to the lungs. The mitral valves are pulled by cords attached in inner muscles inside the left ventricle, cordae tendinea. When does it happen? When trying to achieve far reaching goals in unduly short time. 1) After long interruption of training many athlete want to hurry by training vigorously to for long hours. Most are unaware of the difference between ordinary fatigue signs and organic trauma to the heart. Ordinary fatigue should not linger for days or weeks and gets better as days pass by. It is related to the exercise that is overdone in intensity. Organic trauma to the heart valves would worsen as days pass by, are generalized from shortness in breath, generalized weakness, palpitation on any minor exertion, ballootening, general feeling of ill health. That is because heart injuries affect the entire oxygen delivery to the entire body while ordinary exercise fatigue affects the trained muscles more often than the rest of the body. 2) Lack of professional supervision. It is more often than not that strength trainees are self-motivated athletes, few have access to professional guidance, many are trained by peers of older athletes who relay on what they have been taught. The fact that fitness industry and strength training is not financially rewarding has led many seek more prestigious professions where they gain recognition and benefits. Those who stuck with dead end jobs in training are inclined towards the mucho attitude of manly tough squeezing. |
