Breathing cold air during exercise ups heart attack risk
A new study suggests that breathing cold air during physical activities raises the body’s demand for oxygen and thus increase the risk of heart attack.
Researchers at the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine found that people with cardiovascular risks are more likely to have a deadly heart attack during physical activities in cold weather.
During the study, scientists used a hand-grip test (which involves participants squeezing a handgrip, a move known to increase blood pressure) to study the heart and lung function of a group of healthy adults while exposed to cold and normal air temperatures.
The team found that breathing cold air during isometric activities such as shoveling can cause uneven oxygen distribution throughout the heart.
In people with a cardiovascular problem such as coronary artery disease the heart fails to pump sufficient oxygen to organs.
The problem leads to insufficient blood and oxygen supply to the heart muscles causing an infraction, researchers wrote in their report published in the Journal of Applied Physiology and The American Journal of Physiology, Heart and Circulatory Physiology.
“This study can help us understand why cold air is such a trigger for coronary events,” said co-author Lawrence I. Sinoway. “If you are doing some type of isometric work and you’re breathing cold air, your heart is doing more work-it’s consuming more oxygen.”
“There are two different things going on here - demand and supply,” said postdoctoral fellow at Penn State's Heart and Vascular Institute, Matthew D Muller. “We thought that oxygen demand in the heart would be higher with cold-air breathing and we also thought that oxygen supply would be a little bit impaired. And that’s generally what we found.”
Source: presstv.ir
