No, You Won’t Have A Heart Attack While Exercising, Probably

The next time your spouse warns you not to push too hard while exercising because you might have a heart attack, remind him or her of the findings of this recent study by the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute study. Researchers at the institute studied the 1,247 people aged 35-65 from the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area who had a sudden cardiac arrest between 2002 and 2013. The envelope please… they found that just 5 percent, or 63 people, had a sudden cardiac arrest during sports activities.  Eighty-seven percent of those who had a sudden cardiac arrest while engaged in sports received cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Fifty-three percent of patients who had a sudden cardiac arrest while not playing sports received cardiopulmonary resuscitation.  Science Daily reports that the survival rate of 23 percent was markedly higher for those who had a sudden cardiac arrest while exercising compared to just 13 percent for those who had a sudden cardiac arrest during other activities.  Men were seven times more likely than women to have a sports-related sudden cardiac arrest. Translation, you probably won’t have a heart attack while exercising, but if you do, you’ve got a much better chance of survival than someone who had a heart attack doing something other than exercising.