24th March, 2011
Sudden bursts of moderate to intense physical activity, such as jogging or having sex, significantly increase the risk of having a heart attack, especially in people who do not get regular exercise, a health study has shown.
This report may become the solution to the puzzle caused by several reports in the past of men or women dying while having sex.
The study carried out by U.S. researchers on Tuesday, was made available by Reuters, an international news agency yesterday evening.
Though doctors have long known that physical activity can cause serious heart problems, the new study helps to quantify that risk, says Dr. Issa Dahabreh of Tufts Medical Center in Boston, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The team reportedly analysed data from 14 studies looking at the link between exercise, sex and the risk of heart attacks or sudden cardiac death, a lethal heart rhythm that causes the heart to stop circulating blood.
The report said the researchers found people are 3.5 times more likely to get a heart attack or have sudden cardiac death when they are exercising compared to when they are not.
They are also 2.7 times more likely to get a heart attack when they are having sex or immediately afterwards compared with when they are not.
Jessica Paulus, another Tufts researcher who worked on the study, noted that the risk is fairly high, but the period of increased risk is brief.
“These elevated risks are only for a short period of time (which is between one and two hours) during and after the physical or sexual activity,†Paulus said.
Because of that, the risk to individuals over the course of a year is still quite small, she said.
“If you take 10,000 people, each individual session of physical or sexual activity per week can be associated with an increase of one to two cases of heart attack or sudden cardiac death per year.
“What we really don’t want to do is for the public to walk away from this and think exercise is bad,†she said while saying the report was not meant to discourage people from exercising themselves.
“What it does mean is that people who do not exercise regularly need to start any exercise program slowly, gradually increasing the intensity of the workout over time,†she added.
—Eromosele Ebhomele