Anyone lifting with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy?

[kx250rider]

I just got the bad news yesterday, and my cardiologist says "NO lifting of anything greater than your body weight", and NO exertion whatsoever as to make me hold my breath, or bear down as to starting a rep on the bench, etc.

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this is the end of my sport, my livelihood and my life. I'm 44, and was (until yesterday) in perfect health. This came out of nowhere, but it is true that my family has it. Evidently, this is the condition that has been known to kill athletes, such as Jim Fixx, and so many high school football players lately in the news. So I'm lucky and blessed in that I'm here writing this, but I'm angry, frustrated, and depressed. I'm thinking of what life would be like, if I let my body go to hell, and I'm just another old guy with handicapped plates, and need the bagger to carry my groceries out for me, at age 45.

I don't want this lifestyle, and if it weren't for my love for my wife, and my feeling of responsibilities, I'd probably just ignore the diagnosis and die suddenly some day sooner or later, happy and with a good body. I didn't spend decades working out, eating right while friends ate at Fatburger, and I was drinking water at parties where the other bros were having a Corona, just to wind up being told to let it all go.

I'm going back to the cardiologist on the 5th, and will get a 24-hr monitor put on, and I'm on a cocktail of new meds, and hopefully there will be more facts after that.

I don't know where to go with this, and I'm hoping that maybe someone else here has been in a similar spot, and maybe figured a way to stay in the sport of lifting, without totally worsening the heart problem.

Charles

 

[bignickel]

I have read up on this disease. Did the doc do a echo to diagnose you? My septum is a little thick at like 1.3 they say normal is 1.1 max, mine was from having uncontrolled high bp. What was your septum measurement?

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[jjtt]

I just got the bad news yesterday, and my cardiologist says "NO lifting of anything greater than your body weight", and NO exertion whatsoever as to make me hold my breath, or bear down as to starting a rep on the bench, etc.

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling like this is the end of my sport, my livelihood and my life. I'm 44, and was (until yesterday) in perfect health. This came out of nowhere, but it is true that my family has it. Evidently, this is the condition that has been known to kill athletes, such as Jim Fixx, and so many high school football players lately in the news. So I'm lucky and blessed in that I'm here writing this, but I'm angry, frustrated, and depressed. I'm thinking of what life would be like, if I let my body go to hell, and I'm just another old guy with handicapped plates, and need the bagger to carry my groceries out for me, at age 45.

I don't want this lifestyle, and if it weren't for my love for my wife, and my feeling of responsibilities, I'd probably just ignore the diagnosis and die suddenly some day sooner or later, happy and with a good body. I didn't spend decades working out, eating right while friends ate at Fatburger, and I was drinking water at parties where the other bros were having a Corona, just to wind up being told to let it all go.

I'm going back to the cardiologist on the 5th, and will get a 24-hr monitor put on, and I'm on a cocktail of new meds, and hopefully there will be more facts after that.

I don't know where to go with this, and I'm hoping that maybe someone else here has been in a similar spot, and maybe figured a way to stay in the sport of lifting, without totally worsening the heart problem.

Charles

Check your pms

 

[kx250rider]

I have read up on this disease. Did the doc do a echo to diagnose you? My septum is a little thick at like 1.3 they say normal is 1.1 max, mine was from having uncontrolled high bp. What was your septum measurement?

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I'll have the report Wednesday. The tech did the echo at 5:00 (end of day), and the cardiologist came in the room and just took a quick look, so I'm not sure of "how thick" as of now. All I know, is she's supposed to have one of the best reps in SoCal, and she said it looks NOT GOOD. Evidently, the whole heart muscle is thickened, and two of the valves won't close correctly anymore (two murmurs). I'm hoping (and praying) that she's being conservative, and that maybe she's erring on the side of caution, and might moderate her findings when she has all the rest of the facts, and knows me and my lifestyle better.

Charles

 

[brittneyleigh79]

Good luck with everything!! I am actually getting and echo done on Monday testing for the same thing. Just keeping my fingers crossed!! Did you have any symptoms?

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[stevesmi]

I wouldn't care what any doctor said. I would continue the lifestyle.. if I am gonna die then so be it. there is no way i will get reduced to be a beer drinking couch potato for the rest of my life.. nope, i would rather die doing what i love then spend my life looking like Homer Simpson.

but then again i have no wife or kids so i can choose to be selfish.

and looking at the brightside okay so you cannot lift your bodyweight.. but can't you just do light reps and not go hard and work around this problem?

and I will tell you this, I was a competitive endurance athlete for 3 years and have a room full of awards and trophies.. i was good. then the injury bug hit me hard. i developed shin splints which became chronic, it felt like i was getting stabbed in my legs with a 150 degree knife.. so i had to quit running. it ended up being the best thing though cause now I am bodybuilding and loving it.

 

[kx250rider]

Good luck with everything!! I am actually getting and echo done on Monday testing for the same thing. Just keeping my fingers crossed!! Did you have any symptoms?

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Good luck and God bless, with your echo.

The scary part is that I didn't have any symptoms of the enlarged heart developing, but I had been told in the past, to watch it, and I have always had bad high blood pressure due to the underlying hormonal condition of hypoaldosteronism. The only real symptom of the HCM, was the arrhythmia which began with a bad flu bug/high fever 4 weeks ago. I blamed the whole thing on the lung congestion, and assumed that my body was doing something to recover from the injured lung tissue. But when it continued long after the bug was gone, I finally got scared and went to the regular doctor a week ago today, and he ordered me to go to the cardiologist immediately. He didn't hear the two murmurs at the time, so that goes to show how important it is to see a specialist and have the echocardiogram done. The EKG I had done last Friday night, only showed that there was an electrical problem going on, and absolutely no further information.

If you have a family history of enlarged heart, that seems to be the #1 thing leading to the cause. What really frightens me most, is that all the reading I've done in the past 40 hours, says that "sudden death" is most often the first symptom of this. . It also said that the younger the patient, the more likely that is. So I guess this is one case where being mid-40s is a plus.

I wouldn't care what any doctor said. I would continue the lifestyle.. if I am gonna die then so be it. there is no way i will get reduced to be a beer drinking couch potato for the rest of my life.. nope, i would rather die doing what i love then spend my life looking like Homer Simpson.

but then again i have no wife or kids so i can choose to be selfish.

and looking at the brightside okay so you cannot lift your bodyweight.. but can't you just do light reps and not go hard and work around this problem?

and I will tell you this, I was a competitive endurance athlete for 3 years and have a room full of awards and trophies.. i was good. then the injury bug hit me hard. i developed shin splints which became chronic, it felt like i was getting stabbed in my legs with a 150 degree knife.. so i had to quit running. it ended up being the best thing though cause now I am bodybuilding and loving it.

I hear you... I've had my share of injuries (worst being a damaged and persistently inflamed tendon in my shoulder, which kept me out of the gym for a year). And I have degenerative disk disease, which is a constant back pain preventing me from doing any squats, true deadlifts, or other lifts involving stooping while bearing weight. But this heart crap is a whole different ballgame. I'm a big guy, and very emotionally stable as a rule, and honestly I had to hide tears when I got a phone call from an old friend that his garage door springs were busted, and he hoped I'd come by and help him lift the door open to put new springs. And last night, my wife and I brought home a big CRT TV, and I realized that it's going to sit in the truck 'til I can get two people over here to help lift it, when I used to pop those in & out of the truck all day everyday for a living as a TV repairman in the 90s. And I just got a personalized license place for my motorcycle that says "I LIFFT". I don't want to be a big liar, so I probably should take it off if I can't get around this problem soon.

My instinct is to ignore the problem, and maybe I owe it to my mother that I don't ignore it. She ignored diabetes, and I wound up being an orphaned teenager.

Charles

 

[brittneyleigh79]

Thanks so much I need it!! I will keep you posted and make sure you let me know how your doing!! At this point if they give me bad news I think I would still continue doing all of my normal activities, but all that could change in a second for me. Being a woman that is pretty emotionally stable, I know I wouldn't do good with this information. God bless!!

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[kx250rider]

I'm counting the minutes 'til Wednesday, when I have my next appt with the cardiologist, and get some test results. My BP is still very high with the new meds, but the skipped beats/arrhythmia seem to have subsided and either aren't there anymore, or are too small for me to feel. I didn't want to wait a week for the 24-hr monitor, so I did it by hand yesterday (BP, pulse, and blood o2 levels). I kept a log starting at 6AM, and ending when I went to bed, and including repeated checks during my light-lifting workout. I didn't see any spiking of BP after any sets, or after the whole workout was finished, and I checked every few minutes for the hour after. I hope this is a good sign, because the main threat to my heart, as I understood, is that my BP could spike and blow something out AFTER a hard, heavy workout. The only bad spike I had, was when I had mental stress thinking about a business issue, but no spikes on any physical stress.

Charles

 

[stevesmi]

^^^just a wild theory.. but is this doctor aware that since you are on HRT that testosterone can speed up the HR and raise bp?

i wonder if you lowered your hrt dose if that would help your heart issues. if you've been at too high a dose for a while that can strain the organs over time obviously, but a lot of docs are incompetent when it comes to TRT