Endurance Exercise Linked To Damage In The Right Ventricle Of The Heart

And you foolishly thought endurance exercise was good for your heart.

Researchers have found the first evidence that some athletes who take part in extreme endurance exercise such as marathons, endurance triathlons, alpine cycling or ultra triathlons may incur damage to the right ventricles of their hearts - one of the four chambers in the heart involved in pumping blood around the body.

The research, published online in the European Heart Journal [1], found that although the damage was reversed within a week of a competitive event in most of the 40 athletes studied, five of them (13%) showed evidence of more permanent damage, with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) showing scarring of the heart muscle (known as fibrosis). These five had been competing in endurance sports for longer than those who did not show the same damage.

Dr André La Gerche (MD, PhD), a postdoctoral research fellow at St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Australia, but who is currently based at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, said: "It is most important that our findings are not over-extrapolated to infer that endurance exercise is unhealthy. Our data do not support this premise."

Perhaps not, but you can bet that some data will in order to create yet another excuse for fat people.