Runners Not in Top Shape Should Sit Out Marathons

For three years now, health researchers from Mass General Hospital have been studying a sample of runners from the Boston Marathon, taking their blood and doing some noninvasive stress tests after the runners cross the finish line. What they have found is not happy news. As Judy Foreman reports in the Boston Globe, the tests show that cardiac troponin, a chemical that shows up in
blood tests only when heart muscle is damaged, rises in 60 percent of
runners, and in some, it rises so high that, as one MGH researcher says: ”if you had just looked at
these scores, these people would have been admitted to the hospital for
heart attacks." They also found that
BNP, or brain natriuretic peptide, another red flag for cardiac
dysfunction, goes up after a marathon in 60 percent of runners.
Other research, Foreman tells us, has indicated that the heart’s ability to relax
after each beat remains impaired for at least several weeks in most
marathoners.
What to do? Run safe. Dr. Malissa Wood, a cardiologist, four-time marathoner, and codirector
of the Massachusetts General Hospital Women’s Cardiovascular Health
Center, says that means making sure you’re in top shape on race day. Wood tells us that people who worked up to a marathon by running at least 45 miles a week
for at least three to four months ”were golden. They didn’t get into
any trouble at all. But if they trained less than 35 miles a
week, they were in big trouble."
Read more in the Boston Globe.