Does your heart actually grow while on AAS?

[Mavy]

My roomate's doctor told him that he has the biggest heart that he has ever seen. He is an endurance athlete and football player and trains high intensity all the time, usually doing sprints, interval training and plyos. He has a condition know as athletes heart. I found this kinda intersting and looked it up. Here is the defintion...

common term for an enlarged heart associated with repeated strenuous exercise. As a result of the increased workload required of it, the heart will increase physiologically by enlarging chambers and muscle mass, or hypertrophy by enlarging the size of the chambers and increasing the volume of blood pumped per stroke. Consequently, the heart has to contract less frequently and at rest will beat as few as 40 times per minute as compared with an average number of 70 beats in a normal heart. The condition is not pathological, and there is generally no danger of cardiac disability arising from it.

I am wondering if taking gear while doing high intensity training would make your heart grow EXTRA big? I mean it is a muscle ... well muscular organ I guess, but I am wondering if aas is strenghening your heart at all?

 

[argent]

I think that the left ventricle is the part that increases in size.

 

[Mavy]

Cool read on athletes heart.

During the first few weeks of endurance training or any high intensity training, the heart starts to increase in size as the myocytes (heart muscle cells) enlarge and improve their contractility. The rate of increase in mass is largest over the first 3 months of training in both the left and right ventricles but continues for up to a year, or longer and is directly related to the level of stimulus (training). The heart volume also increases and it becomes more compliant (distensible) with a larger stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat). The response is less in women despite similar training patterns (they likewise have smaller skeletal muscle mass as a consequence of lower circulating androgens). The pericardium (sac around heart) may limit further increases in cardiac size but over years this may become more distensible allowing further expansion of heart diameter. The thickness of the heart muscle wall may exceed the normal dimensions of the sedentary population and therefore be reported as abnormal on an ECG or echocardiogram.



The variety and level of training will affect ultimate cardiac size with rowers having the biggest hearts, but then they are big chaps anyway. Cyclists tend to have larger hearts than endurance runners, but remember that elite endurance runners are usually of low body mass. Prolonged endurance runs will stimulate heart size as will high intensity interval training.

Bed rest will lead to a reversal of these changes with a reduction in volume occurring in two weeks and by 6 weeks a 50% loss of muscle mass. ‘Use or lose it’ as they say – the same would occur to your leg muscle if put in plaster for 6 weeks.

 

[Mavy]

I think that the left ventricle is the part that increases in size.

That make sense since that is the part that actually pumps the oxegenated blood out to the rest of your body (through the aorta).

I remember reading somewhere a while back that Shaquille O Neil's heart was like 4 times the size of a regular humans heart. Mind you keeping things proportionate, he is much larger in general than the average joe.

 

[GoldenDelicious]

overall growth like that outlined above is all well and good, because for the most part its reversible

its irreversible stretching that gets dangerous later in life (and even not so later)

 

[silver_shadow]

yes, the left ventricle does enlarge while on gear but it is temporary by and large. if ur on GH and gear i believe it is more lasting (though i cannot remember this properly).

 

[Mavy]

Bump for hairlossguru.

 

[stingray]

The heart is a muscle so I dont see why not.

 

[sh4dowf4lcon]

So to check for an enlarged heart do you have an MRI or what?

just curious.

 

[IronMind-]

does this in any way shorten your life span?
j/w

 

[tiger88]

any more info here

?

 

[megaman900lbs]

The heart will grow, I am a MD and it too is a muscle

 

[oubeta]

bump

 

[GoldenDelicious]

lol how old is this thread

look cut a long story short theres 2 sorts of growth youll get

1) the muscle tissue itself will grow
2) the walls of the heart will stretch

its not like your heart is going to just increase in size by 15% across teh board and look like a 15% magnified version of a normal heart - it will have thicker ventricular walls (as they are muscle) and the chamber walls themselves will ahve stretched. valves etc will remain the same.

using aas will cause the heart muscle to grow, sure. that will happen anytime you increase the amount of work the heart must do. when youre on aas, you generally have more tissue, more fluid, higher blood pressure and therefore more work for the heart to do, and so yeah, it will grow muscle. this growth is reversible, and isnt a drama

when your chamer walls stretch, it can be irreversible. they will shrink down a bit, but at the end, youll ahve slightly ballooned out chamber walls.

while youre young and loaded down with muscle (and therefore have lots of work for the heart to do) this isnt a problem. when you lose all your muscel mass as you get older and stop training, you end up with a stretched heart with big chambers- which is very inefficient in an older person who has much less tissue to push blood through, and less blood overall. im not going to get into the why of it, (because itll take forever) but your heart is made to handle certain volumes of blood per pump- if over or underfilled, it is very inefficient. an aged bodybuilder with a stretched heart more suited to an athlete will, in effect, have an underfilling heart, which as i said earlier, is less efficient, and may lead to some dramas.

thats the cheap nasty version of what happens.

my info is from back in my uni days, i was very interested in this and had a chat with my anatomy/physiology lecturer, who was also a sports physiotherapist, and im quite sure he knew what he was on about. he was also a total wanker, but that doesnt matter

cheers

 

[gregory]

So in other words, just workout till the day you die. And frankly why ever stop being active.

 

[ViperHMS]

So your telling me that using steroids will cause my heart to explode, right?








J/K
I have a friend that is twice my age and keeps telling me that use of steroids is going to make my heart explode.

Viper