Exercise can cause heart attack

Last Updated on Wednesday, 23 March 2011 13:27 Wednesday, 23 March 2011 13:24

Tired of slouching around, you hop of the couch, knock the bowl of chips on the floor, jump over the half eaten pizza box and after a quick rummage at the back of the wardrobe for a tracksuit pants that are too short, resolve that this is a new day. You're gonna run. It's not like you've never run before. You did the same routine three weeks ago, but then got distracted and revered to Old You. Not today. Today is New You.

Stop!

You could be about to give yourself a massive heart attack. Sit down, pick up a few crisps and drool over the pizza. Researchers have said that intermittent exercise nearly triples the risk of a heart attack in the hours after exercise. The study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study also said Sex can also bring on the heart attack.

"Definitely, one should not interpret our findings as meaning that physical activity or sexual activity are dangerous or harmful," said one of the study's authors, Issa Dahabreh, perhaps worried that couch potatoes would use the study in defence of their lethargy.

Heart attack risk increased 3.5 times in the hours after exercising while the risk increased 2.7 times in the two hours after having sex. The chance of dying jumped fourfold after physical activity due to cardiac arrest.

But if people continued regular physical exercise, the risk of heart attack and cardiac death was reduced by 45 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

Dahabreh and fellow co-author Jessica Paulus compiled the results of 14 studies that examined physical and sexual activity and their connection to heart attacks.