[kannan666]

Forget the 40's, I recently lost my ex colleague to a cardiac arrest, he would have turned 33 this June. I do not want to mention where he was employed here in public domain but as a software professional he was highly stressed most of the time due to project deadlines and he used to work well into the night not getting enough sleep, there are days when he used to sleep only for two to three hours.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by navin

Moral: Gyms will kill ya.

I suspect stress and taking oneself too seriously might be the difference.
I sleep when my body asks for rest, I eat when I am hungry (which does not mean the same time every day) and am normally chilled and for the longest time, have always seen the funny side of things.

It's either my attitude or maybe I was adopted and no one told me or maybe my mom had an affair or maybe as some friends believe, I am a mutant.

Uoy rea yletinifed a tnatum. Your dellihc edutitta sah ylniatrec depleh

Navin, I am not as advanced as you but I'm close. In my business years I almost each day had a power nap in the afternoon whether in my office or on the road. Being the sethji helped. Nappers unite.

[SS-Traveller]

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

And here I was thinking of the adage "it's not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog...."

Let sleeping dogs lie ought to be changed to Let sleeping humans live.

Originally Posted by navin

Moral: Gyms will kill ya.

I suspect stress and taking oneself too seriously might be the difference.

I sleep when my body asks for rest, I eat when I am hungry (which does not mean the same time every day) and am normally chilled and for the longest time, have always seen the funny side of things.

You hit the nail on the head - the rest of them hit their head on the nail and lose their lives.

Originally Posted by kannan666

I recently lost my ex colleague to a cardiac arrest, he would have turned 33 this June.
...there are days when he used to sleep only for two to three hours.

I lost my best friend from school when he was that old - over-achiever, Ivy League-educated, worked a high pressure job with Coke (IIRC), posted to Japan (had an elaborate health check before moving there from the US), was married 6 months before going to Japan. Returned to his hotel room after a dinner with friends, and dropped dead while shaving.

Funny thing is, he could do without substantial sleep for days, and he would use that ability to really study hard before our school exams. I could stay awake all night too, but I found I didn't really need to (I scored better than almost everyone else! ) I still like my 8 hours of sleep daily.

My take on sudden death due to cardiac failure: lack of sleep, stress, undetected tachycardia and uncontrolled hypertension (probably in that order) kill. My resting heart rate is 60-68 bpm, BP is 112-118/70-80 mm of Hg. After one overnight driving stint (I do this 3-4 times a year) and being awake for 24 hours at a stretch, that can go up to 100-110 bpm & 160/95 mm of Hg. So occasional overnight stints of being awake are probably less harmful than doing it day in and day out.

[VKumar]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Uoy rea yletinifed a tnatum. Your dellihc edutitta sah ylniatrec depleh

OT but important:

The BHPians who have tried to copy paste these lines in Google for a translation, you won't find anything (How I know that?). All you need to do is, read it in reverse, word by word, not the statement!

And it will relieve some stress too!

[navin]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Uoy rea yletinifed a tnatum. Your dellihc edutitta sah ylniatrec depleh

In my business years I almost each day had a power nap in the afternoon

1. Warning: poser dyslexic

2. At my first job, I used to sleep at my desk and had a sign that said "Genius at Work". Now I sleep on a sofa in the conference room and have a sign that says "Gone Sleeping" (play on the popular bumper sticker "Gone Fishing").

As far as my chilled attitude, my motto has always been "We Plan, God Laughs". As adults and parents we stress ourselves out too much. Nothing goes to plan anyway. So why this stress?

OT rant
At school I was labelled all sorts of things from "difficult" to "mentally disabled" and worse. They did not have proper testing for ADD and Dyslexia so just assumed I was incapable of learning. This left me with a lot of free time as no teacher would want to teach me...until 1976 (when I was 13).

Physics teacher: So what are you boys going to do in summer
Me: I am going to build an amplifier (the audio bug had already bitten me a couple of years before).

The Physics teacher rolled his eyes, some classmates sniggered, others just ignored me. Until, I came back after the break with a LM382/1879 based working amplifier that put out 5W/8W at 8ohm/4ohms and a pair of 3 way loudspeakers I built using Philips drivers.

8 floors above me lived 2 sisters who were 5-8 years older than me, my dad was friends with their dad. One afternoon, the same summer, while we were visiting I found Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" and borrowed it. After that day, the teachers continued to leave me alone, but for wholly different reasons.

This experience led me to believe that children are perfectly capable of teaching themselves, if school and "education" would just leave them alone.

I know several kids who have taught themselves chess, keyboards/drums/guitar, gourmet baking/cooking, and a myriad of other skills that fortunately "education" hasn't yet got it's grubby hands on.

In 2018, while my wife and I were on holiday in Scotland, I left my son (then 16) alone in Mumbai with my Physics (Resnick and Halliday) and Calculus (Howard Anton 2nd Edition) books for company. Between the books and the internet, he managed to teach himself mechanics and integration (albeit partially). Roger Waters was right "Hey teachers, leave them kids alone".
End of rant

One Monday (I clearly remember it was a Monday) in October 1987, the DJIA crashed 25% (some 500 points). Bankers were jumping out of buildings (I didn't see any myself) and all sorts of madness. I came to work and my colleagues were all in panic. One asked me what to do. I said "wait". Then I went and made myself a coffee and started studying the (XXI champion) NY Giants roster for the 87-88 football season and wondering if the player's strike would end soon. Turns out waiting was a good thing. The DJIA fell to around 1,700 on that day and is 34,000 today. 20x in 34 years. And the Giants even beat the favoured Bills in 1991 for Super Bowl XXV. I cant control the Giant's fortunes as much as I can control Wall Street, so why worry.

Originally Posted by VKumar

The BHPians who have tried to copy paste these lines in Google for a translation, you won't find anything (How I know that?).

Funny, but I can read backwards with ease. It did not bother me at all, in fact the one word typed correctly was what stood out.

[Shreyans_Jain]

Heart trouble is something that can hit anyone at anytime without warning. Sharing a personal incident.

One fine evening, after a solid session at the gym, cardio + weights, I sat down at the bench by the water cooler with a small cup of water. The moment I sat down, suddenly, my pulse rate shot up alarmingly. I started sweating and feeling very uneasy. I was alone, willed myself down to the car. I drove back home which was 2 minutes away and called my dad to come down outside. Dad then rushed me to the ER. When they took me in, my pulse rate was 210, and by then it had been that high for a good 30 minutes. The doctor gave me two shots of something. After the second shot, my heart beat stabilised. Instantaneously I was perfectly normal again. The doctors kept me overnight and ran a battery of tests. Everything turned out fine.

There is no explanation as to why I had that episode. I was 24, a regular at the gym and in excellent health. I had done a proper cool down after the workout. I didn’t have any underlying condition. The doctor could only say that I was very lucky and my good conditioning helped my heart withstand the ordeal. I have not had another such incident till date.

[Hayek]

Interesting thread.

Guess I am in the category of those who had never exercised till 40 - and then turned to running with a vengeance, having completed 3 marathons so far. But the fact is at least per my doctors, the running has only been beneficial to my heart - my resting heart rate has fallen to 57 from the 70s, while my blood pressure has declined too. Of course, one can never tell what will happen tomorrow - but am clear that taking up physical activity is better than not doing so.

I don’t really think we can generalise when it comes to heart attacks - or say based on anecdotal evidence what really causes them in one person and not in another. Have seen people who sleep 3-4 hours a day, have every parameter awry, but still are fine in their mid 70s (and I certainly hope they stay that way for a further 20 years or more), and others who had exercised from childhood, were seemingly very calm, got enough sleep, and passed away with a heart attack at 40. But the macro stats are clear - those who exercise, have blood pressure and cholesterol under control, and avoid diabetes live longer as a cohort than those who don’t do the above things. One suggestion for all - do rush to a hospital (and the nearest one) if you are feeling uneasy - even if it means you look stupid. It is better to look stupid than to be dead.

[Axe77]

I have a very similar running profile and views as well to Hayek on this one. I started endurance sports with a vengeance when I was around 37 (I’m 43 now). Since then I’ve done a number of half marathons, full marathons, half Ironman and some long distance open water swims. I also read up a lot on general health and endurance sports so am used to a lot of misgivings around such incidents. And I can’t help but find similarity to some posts here which I generally disagree with.

Far too often, when people who exercise have heart attacks people first connect their exercising with the incident. To my mind, health of the heart is linked to far too many criteria - physical, physiological and mental. How much stress was the person carrying, was he sleeping enough, was there physical blockages he had, was he overtraining. Mind you, pursuing high endurance feats does not mean overtraining. But a bad training strategy / approach could relate to harmful overtraining.

A middle aged athlete could be running 80 - 100 kms a week and still approaching it sensibly if he’s ensuring he’s getting enough sleep and recovery, 70-80% of that mileage is low intensity (low heart rate zone 2 type running) and only 20-30% is high intensity.

On the other hand another athlete could be running 50 kms a week, all of it at high intensity - the chances of such a person injuring himself or burning out are far higher.

Similarly, I find some hobby endurance athletes take a strange pride in certain aspects of training which they shouldn’t. Things I’ve heard all too frequently:

1. I was on a hectic day trip to delhi yesterday; got back home at 2 am but I still didn’t miss my 12 km run at 6 o clock on the back of just 3 hours sleep. That’s how disciplined I am. BEEEEEP. Wrong! (You should have caught up on your sleep)

2. I am at the tail end of my one week bout of flu, my fever is now reduced, and I’m back on the road already. I won’t let a fever derail my training for long. BEEEEEP. Wrong! (You need to recover!)

3. I’ve recovered from Covid last week, back in full training already. BEEEEEP. Wrong! Your body and lungs need to recover. Get a full medical check up

4. I eat whatever I want, sweets, Wada pav, sugar. After all I run 5 days a week so I’m burning it off. BEEEEEP. Wrong! (Buddy, please check your cholestrol. Also, there is no training substitute to make up for a bad diet).

5. It’s ok if I’m fat. After all I need all that fat to fuel my marathon. BEEEEEP. Wrong! (Even the leanest athlete has unending stores of fat which they can burn for a long session)

6. I just “raced” a hard full marathon / half or full ironman. I just took two days off and I’m back in training already. BEEEEP. WRONG! Give your body a week off to recover and then resume base work for a while.

Pursuing fitness through running or going to the gym doesn’t necessarily mean you are leading a healthy life. A healthy life means you consistently as a way of life actively pursue mental calm, you eat clean, you have good physical activity whether high volume or low and you get regular health check ups. Even after all this if you are genetically pre-disposed, you could STILL suffer a heart attack.

To me, the runner or gym rat who does only that but doesn’t look after the other aspects is as prone to a heart attack as a couch potato. It’s just that people tend to unfairly connect the two when its a runner / gym rat who suffers a heart attack.

[locusjag]

So very little is known about the human body that we can't put a finger on what causes many of our health issues. To compound issues, we have environmental unknowns (Do we really know how 4G, 5G, electromagnetic fields from electric wires and Wi-fi affect us - stress on 'really'? Artificial sweeteners? Food preservatives? What about all the rubber from vehicles that seem to disappear with usage - do you really think all of that rubber really disappears? How do cosmic rays affect us, because duh, we live on the surface of the planet, exposed to the universe? I can go on and on...).

This one takes the cake - the human genome is not entirely mapped and furthermore, 99.9% of us do not get our genes studied, to check for genetic predispositions (the way Angeline Jolie did and got rid of her breasts to avoid breast cancer).

We don't live in a world of absolutes, so don't take any remedies too seriously - be it dieting, exercise or whatever.

Regarding dietary efforts: I was driving my dad to the airport at 4 AM once and we saw a herd of cows eating away atop a gigantic, smouldering pile of garbage by the road and dad remarked that these cows are shortly going to yield A1 grade organic milk So much for those who buy organic milk locally in my area!

[aditya79india]

I recently recovered from Covid (Lung Pneumonia) and spent considerable time at hospital. At discharge the doctor clearly advised me to take it easy for atleast 3 months, avoid outside exposure and maybe do a little bit of walking inside own premises. Strict no to any physical exertion. I'm an ordinary fellow with normal health and 42 yrs of age. Don't know why these distinguished gentlemen with access to superlative medical care, indulged in such misadventures. If you are a Covid recovery case, pls take extreme precaution. This is a nasty disease if it gets to your lungs and the internal damage done is still unknown to the medical fraternity. Preserve yourself. Gym can wait (for a long time).

[BLACKRiVAL]

Originally Posted by androdev

Can someone shed more light on "coronary calcium scoring" in the context of Indian doctors and hospitals? I am interested in real-world experience in Indian healthcare field. A lot of recent research indicates that the usual "annual health checkup" with cholesterol and ECG reports are not very useful for young people when it comes to assessing this risk.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=RcD2a6DNE6g

CT calcium score is a type of HRCT chest, where the radiologist instead of focussing on the lungs, looks for calcium deposits in the main arteries supplying the heart. As you can see from the video, plaque (which contains calcium) buildup in the coronary arteries is the major cause of reduction of blood flow to the heart. Unfortunately some people are prone to plaque formation because of there genes.

Calcium score is given on a scale of 0-400, lower the better. If you get a high score, the cardiologist usually does an angiography to confirm and angioplasty i.e. stent insertion is done if need arises.

Those who have family history of coronary heart disease, high cholesterol levels particularly high LDL cholesterol, diabetes, smokers, stressful life should get it does as preventive checkup. Another test to detect abnormal heart function is cardiac stress test/ TMT.

[TorqMaster]

May your Soul Rest In Peace Ankur.

Hope His family is doing okay. No matter how good they are with their plan B nothing can replace loss of a loved one or parent or spouse or child.

Accidents happen . It the family who suffers after that.

[Cyborg]

Main issue (most of the time) stems from lack of sleep, with stress, bad eating and drinking habits helping it along. Respecting ones age is also very, very important. What you can do in your twenties is just not possible in your forties or fifties; period.

In earlier days there used to be regular articles about big businessmen boasting about not needing more than four hours of sleep. This is where it begins, when you are young the body compensates but as you start getting older (read 40’s and above) it eventually breaks down, leading to various issues, if not sudden death.

With regular exercise, moderation in eating, drinking, you can shave around maybe ten years not more. Chasing the elixir of youth beyond reason is a recipe for disaster.

Cheers

[pandabear]

I am NOT a doctor, but I found something that may help you all, as much as it has helped me.

As strange as it may sound, were we live in a land where with abundant sunshine, we are all chronically Vitamin D deficient. I have done my own sample survey on this. Most of us are not even aware that we are deficient and is the most widespread lifestyle disease. Lack of Vitamin D means you don't get your calcium zinc and magnesium. All these are very important for muscle health and heart is another piece of muscle that works endlessly. Also now there are studies that talk about liver disorders (hepatic inflammation) leading to insulin resistance. Even COVID hits people hard who are low on Vit-D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q_mhJRFtxg

Suffering from low immunity to a host of unrelated symptoms, used to injure myself with the slightest exertion at the gym, with longer recovery times, chronic back pain, acidity bloating, lack of sleep,... you name it. None of the docs could catch it, but yeah got hints on the internet and got myself tested, turned out I was chronically low.

You now know the magic supplement, get yourself tested and take the Vitamin D pill (doctor prescribed dose) if you are low on it. Thank me later, it will improve your life if you are Vit-D deficient. Sorry again if there are any factual errors, this comes with a disclaimer that it is purely based on personal experiences just to spread the message. Again I am not a doctor :-)

Coming back to the topic, this may be one of the many factors. Being an automobile forum, the 3M and Huper Optik sun films don't do any good for sun exposure.

[anjan_c2007]

Most of them are stressed out with overwork, excess of office hours coupled with zealous and very erratic deadlines. Some bring work to their homes too from the office.

And under the ostentatious show of fitness and good health, they engage in strenuous workouts during their scarce, free hours. The fitness escapades are solely meant for their self satisfaction and to shout out to the world that they are the fittest, despite the tremendous stress and workload.

Their bodies give up all of a sudden, just the providing the ultimate fatal response, even without a warning in most cases.