Should you ride a bike after a heart attack?

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1. What are the causes of myocardial infarction
2. Symptoms and diagnosis of a heart attack
3. Cycling after a heart attack: a ban cannot be allowed

Massive myocardial infarction is a serious cardiovascular pathology with one of the highest rates of death: according to the World Health Organization, more than a third of such attacks end in death. People who survived this serious illness will have a long period of rehabilitation, often they become disabled. They have to radically change their lifestyle, for a long time refusing many of the usual activities that involve physical activity. Many are interested in the question: can I ride a bike after a heart attack or not? There is no universal answer to this question, it all depends on the specific circumstances.

What are the causes of myocardial infarction

There is only one reason for a heart attack: atherosclerosis, that is, a violation of the elasticity of the walls of the coronary (responsible for the blood supply to the heart) vessels, which occurs due to the deposition of excess cholesterol on them in the form of plaques. Being covered from the inside with such a “shell”, the vessels reduce their “throughput”, and the heart begins to experience a shortage of nutrients and oxygen supplied to it with blood. Due to the loss of elasticity of the vessels, there is a risk of their rupture during changes in blood pressure. The blood flow in the region of the heart slows down, the blood becomes viscous and settles on the vascular walls rough from cholesterol, causing the formation of blood clots. This situation is fraught with thromboembolism - blockage of the coronary vessels, leading to acute circulatory disorders. This is what causes myocardial infarction.

If earlier this deadly disease affected mainly the elderly, now people who are not even forty years old are increasingly becoming its victims. A significant part of the “heart attacks” are men who are in their prime, from 35 to 45 years old.

According to statistics, the most common cause of a heart attack at a young age is:

Hereditary predisposition - factors such as high blood pressure and metabolic rate, which directly affect the state of the heart and blood vessels, are often inherited.
Bad habits: Smoking, abuse of alcoholic and tonic drinks, such as coffee, leads to a change in the composition of the blood and an increased level of adrenaline in it, causing a violation of cardiac activity.
Concomitant diseases - type I diabetes mellitus, rheumatic pathologies with heart complications.
Irregular meals with a predominance of fried, fatty and spicy foods in its composition.
As a result of this, there are problems with being overweight, which creates an increased load on the heart.
stress overload.
Hypodynamia, which leads to weakness not only of the skeletal muscles, but also of the cardiac muscle tissue. For an untrained heart, even relatively small physical exertion can be the impetus for a heart attack.

Often, a whole complex of negative factors acts as the reason for its development. It is difficult to guess which of them is capable of playing a fatal role.

Symptoms and diagnosis of a heart attack

Pain in the region of the heart is one of the classic symptoms of a heart attack, but this does not happen in all cases: sometimes a heart attack “masquerades” as osteochondrosis, giving off pain in the spine, sometimes its symptoms resemble a cold (a debilitating cough, fever, chills) or even food poisoning (nausea and vomiting).

It is not immediately possible for the person himself or his relatives to figure out what is the reason for such a state, and the loss of time can play a fatal role.

Therefore, with a sharp deterioration in the condition, which is not affected by the use of familiar remedies such as Corvalol and Validol, one should not guess what it can be caused by - it is better to provide first aid to a sick person as soon as possible:

put him to bed, not allowing him to get up - the slightest physical effort during a heart attack or a pre-infarction state can have the most sad consequences;
take off his shoes, unfasten the collar and belt on the clothes;

cover with a blanket;
put a cold compress on the heart area;
open a window in the room to provide fresh air;
in case of an attack of vomiting, help him turn his head to one side to avoid getting vomit into the respiratory tract.

Sometimes the free ambulance team is very delayed, unable to cope with the abundance of incoming calls. Therefore, if the doctors did not arrive in 15-20 minutes, you can try to call a commercial "ambulance" - now in many cities there is this type of paid medical services.

The first thing a doctor who comes to a patient with cardiosymptomatics will do is take an electrocardiogram. This long-known diagnostic method, based on the fixation of electrical impulses caused by the contraction of the heart muscles, makes it possible with one hundred percent probability to establish both a heart attack and a pre-infarction state by their nature.

If the electrocardiograph shows alarming symptoms, and the doctor suggests urgent hospitalization, you should not refuse in any case. Intensive care for a heart attack should be carried out immediately, but this can only be done in a specialized hospital, equipped with all the necessary equipment and provided with medications.

In addition to drug therapy, in the treatment of a heart attack, modern surgical techniques are used that give high efficiency - bypass and stenting of coronary vessels. The first means the removal of the affected area of the coronary vessel and its replacement with a healthy graft taken from the patient himself; in the second method, a stent is inserted into the vessel - a synthetic frame that expands the vascular lumen. Both operations are performed under general anesthesia.

Cycling after a heart attack: a ban cannot be allowed

The human body has wide adaptive abilities, and even after serious illnesses, including myocardial infarction, a person is able to restore his working capacity to an acceptable level. In this, he is helped by the observance of a sparing regimen, the intake of supporting medications and the constant supervision of doctors. A cardiac patient has to give up many activities that are normal for a healthy person. This also applies to sports training - the possibility of intensive sports after a heart attack is excluded forever. However, physical activity in any form should not be avoided.

Moderate and controlled physical activity plays a positive role in the prevention of recurrent heart attacks, as they:

train the heart muscle;
improve blood flow to the heart;
reduce cholesterol levels.

After a heart attack, most sports should be completely abandoned - when lifting weights, running and jumping, the load on the heart increases. Useful are those sports exercises that are characterized by rhythmic movements of the limbs and the ability to regulate the pace of the load, arbitrarily slowing it down or increasing it. This includes swimming, walking and cycling. Of course, we are not talking about cycling, but about calm riding. A bicycle is a good simulator for all muscle groups, but the muscles of the legs work most intensively, which improves blood flow in the main vessels that supply the heart muscle.

A person who has had a myocardial infarction must be under the constant supervision of doctors for life. He can start cycling no earlier than a year after the illness, provided that the examination does not show a deterioration in the condition of the heart.