Medical Advice On Muscle?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

I recently had my nurse tell me that even though I am 275 lbs. with around 14% bodyfat that this places just as much of a negative demand on my heart as someone that is 275 lbs. of blubber! I do my reading on medical issues, training, etc., and I have never heard this.

I tried not to laugh because this equates heavy bodybuilders on the same plane as obese fat people and supposedly the human heart doesn’t know the difference.

I was also told by the good nurse that I need to quit lifting heavy weights because this is hard on my heart too!

Anyone else ever heard of this? I figured this more of a personal opinion by a medical moron rather than medical fact.

2

I bet the nurse was fat.

3

BMI calculators prove this theory is crap. If body weight not body composition was the only important factor, those calculators would not have to disclaim that they cannot accurately assess the health of people with higher than average muscle mass.

4

I don’t see how that can be correct. When you build muscle, you train your body to operate under stress and that improves (or should) cardiovascular thresholds. You can’t get over 250lbs of muscle from not busting your ass in and out of the gym on a regular basis.

Your heart and other organs should be able to keep up with the damands and muscle gains you make. Now, I don’t know how anabolics can skew this relationship, but if you put in the work to get built, your body should be able to operate at that weight.

For an obese person, one’s cardiovasular system is taxed from not enough exercise and poor diet. Sedentary lifestyles coupled with excessive calorie intake spells disaster for heart and artery health, not to mention lipid levels and hormone leves.

An obese person’s body has gained weight without having the whole body to work and adapt to get to that weight, thus the heart isn’t trained to operate under that condition.

I’d really like to get a solid answer to this too.

5

Nutshelled: muscle contractions help blood circulate.

Interesting fact: according to my A&P book, every additional kg of fat added to your frame equals approximately 400 extra miles worth of blood vessels to your body.

No wonder being fat takes it’s toll on an unconditioned heart over time, huh.

6

What a crock. Muscle is living tissue that positively affects your metabolism, fat is dead weight.

I had a dr. tell me I had to stop lifting weights before. Don’t listen to that b.s.

8

I don’t mean to say anything against what you guys have said, but too much muscle can be bad for your heart. According to my cardiologist, it would cause your heart to swell via left ventricular hypertrophy. The heart does adapt to increase its capacity to circulate blood, but if it gets too big, its own blood vessels will be cramped into less space, and if that space becomes too little, you know what’s gonna happen.

But that was according to her and my mom who is also a doctor. In fact, my mom’s colleague’s husband had a heart attack for that reason. However, I think it was an isolated case, and until I see more cases of people getting heart attacks because they had a lot of muscle, I won’t be convinced that this is true.

9

It sounds like you’d have to very, very large and very, very unlucky for that to happen. You have to be in the 0.0001% of people with the genetics to get that big…and in the 0.0001% of people with a heart that’d react like that.

10

I doubt 275lbs of muscle = 275 lbs of fat to the heart. However I do agree it will have a major effect on your heart. Regardless of how much training you do a 275lb endurance athlete won’t have the same endurance as a 150lbs endurance athlete. Most likely though unless you haven’t taken care of your heart. Your heart can handle it.

I’ve noticed once people hit the upper 50’s extremely large people tend to lose weight, to where there body can handle it. So if your heart is Ok then don’t worry about it and let nature take its course. If it’s not ok, do what you ahve to do.

11

Not taking away what any one has said.

The heart IS a muscle all be it a highly specialized one.
One thing to keep in mind is that regardless of the size of your heart or the amount of fat and or muscle there is a finite amount of blood…

As for me if your at 14% which is not half bad and work out with cardio & weights your should be okey dokey…

Me I am trying to get to around 10% fat and get as muscled as I can naturally weelllll with the help of whey and test boosters (close to 40 now)

Solid

13

What about the “bad” cholestorol? Won’t that increase, when you eat so much a day (red meat etc) and hence get so much fat daily? Or would it only raise alot, if your diet consists of lots of chocolate and other “unhealthy” things. Just wondering :slight_smile:

14

Cholesterol is mostly dietary.

15

she is right if your heart is as small and weak as the heart of a 140lbs person - WHICH IT IS NOT

you know what, climbing Everest puts a strain on your heart that will kill you. Unless your resting bpm is 45 and you’ve trained for it for years

stupid nurse

nevertheless, it is important to do GPP and keep your whole fitness strong

16

Just for sake of argument, what about the type that has no cardio strength whatsoever, the self-professed “pavement pythons”. They can lift huge but still be really, dangerously, out of shape. Will their strength training protect their hearts or serve to increase the risk?

17

[quote]Scotacus wrote:
Just for sake of argument, what about the type that has no cardio strength whatsoever, the self-professed “pavement pythons”. They can lift huge but still be really, dangerously, out of shape. Will their strength training protect their hearts or serve to increase the risk?[/quote]

Thats why I think you need to do both weight training and some type of ESW.

18

[quote]Raw Power wrote:
I recently had my nurse tell me that even though I am 275 lbs. with around 14% bodyfat that this places just as much of a negative demand on my heart as someone that is 275 lbs. of blubber! I do my reading on medical issues, training, etc., and I have never heard this.

I tried not to laugh because this equates heavy bodybuilders on the same plane as obese fat people and supposedly the human heart doesn’t know the difference.

I was also told by the good nurse that I need to quit lifting heavy weights because this is hard on my heart too!

Anyone else ever heard of this? I figured this more of a personal opinion by a medical moron rather than medical fact. [/quote]

As a medical professional a can tell you that what these nurses were stating was misapplied medical information.

Being 275 pounds of fat means that your heart has to push the blood through miles of extra capillaries (the more fat you have the more capillaries develop to support the added fat cells). This is extremely taxing on your heart because there is no other mechanism, like muscle contraction, to move the blood though. So blood gets backed up on the vein side of the heart (right side) and this causes congestive heart failure, among other things.

Now with 275 pounds of muscle, you will not have these miles of added capillaries that have no other means of moving blood besides the heart. Most all the blood movement will be aided by muscle contraction (veins have one-way valves that only allow the blood to travel in one direction - so when your muscle contracts it squeezes the veins and the blood moves back to the heart and the valves stop it from going the other direction).

Also, anaerobic training (weight training) has been shown to increase the size of the heart and strength of contractions, while aerobic training has only been shown to increase the strength of contractions. The jury is still out as to the effect of the heart size increase on heart function and health.

In any case, aside from the increase in heart size, none of the other factors that are problems with obesity apply to having a lot of muscle. And overall, having a lot of muscle has been shown to substantially increase/improve your endocrine functions.

So don’t worry, most medical people do not understand sports medicine or exercise physiology so they misapply medical conditions inappropriately to people/conditions they assume are the same, when they are not even close.

19

[quote]Scotacus wrote:
Just for sake of argument, what about the type that has no cardio strength whatsoever, the self-professed “pavement pythons”. They can lift huge but still be really, dangerously, out of shape. Will their strength training protect their hearts or serve to increase the risk?[/quote]

If they do energy system work like circuit training or multiple sets with little rest between sets, then yes, it will be heart protective. However, some form of cardio work is preferable to ensure that your heart can manage the strain placed on it by increasing muscle demands.

20

Lorisco, beautifully put.

Also 275lbs fat is a bigger person than 275lbs muscle since muscle is much denser. Also the weight of blood in a fat person is more than the weight of blood in a muscular person. Plus, lots of fat floating around stuffing things up.

The moral is of course, train everything.