Does your heart actually grow while on AAS?

[Mavy]

My roomate's doctor told him that he has the biggest heart that he has ever seen. He is an endurance athlete and football player and trains high intensity all the time, usually doing sprints, interval training and plyos. He has a condition know as athletes heart. I found this kinda intersting and looked it up. Here is the defintion...

common term for an enlarged heart associated with repeated strenuous exercise. As a result of the increased workload required of it, the heart will increase physiologically by enlarging chambers and muscle mass, or hypertrophy by enlarging the size of the chambers and increasing the volume of blood pumped per stroke. Consequently, the heart has to contract less frequently and at rest will beat as few as 40 times per minute as compared with an average number of 70 beats in a normal heart. The condition is not pathological, and there is generally no danger of cardiac disability arising from it.

I am wondering if taking gear while doing high intensity training would make your heart grow EXTRA big? I mean it is a muscle ... well muscular organ I guess, but I am wondering if aas is strenghening your heart at all?

 

[argent]

I think that the left ventricle is the part that increases in size.

 

[Mavy]

Cool read on athletes heart.

During the first few weeks of endurance training or any high intensity training, the heart starts to increase in size as the myocytes (heart muscle cells) enlarge and improve their contractility. The rate of increase in mass is largest over the first 3 months of training in both the left and right ventricles but continues for up to a year, or longer and is directly related to the level of stimulus (training). The heart volume also increases and it becomes more compliant (distensible) with a larger stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat). The response is less in women despite similar training patterns (they likewise have smaller skeletal muscle mass as a consequence of lower circulating androgens). The pericardium (sac around heart) may limit further increases in cardiac size but over years this may become more distensible allowing further expansion of heart diameter. The thickness of the heart muscle wall may exceed the normal dimensions of the sedentary population and therefore be reported as abnormal on an ECG or echocardiogram.



The variety and level of training will affect ultimate cardiac size with rowers having the biggest hearts, but then they are big chaps anyway. Cyclists tend to have larger hearts than endurance runners, but remember that elite endurance runners are usually of low body mass. Prolonged endurance runs will stimulate heart size as will high intensity interval training.

Bed rest will lead to a reversal of these changes with a reduction in volume occurring in two weeks and by 6 weeks a 50% loss of muscle mass. ‘Use or lose it’ as they say – the same would occur to your leg muscle if put in plaster for 6 weeks.

 

[Mavy]

I think that the left ventricle is the part that increases in size.

That make sense since that is the part that actually pumps the oxegenated blood out to the rest of your body (through the aorta).

I remember reading somewhere a while back that Shaquille O Neil's heart was like 4 times the size of a regular humans heart. Mind you keeping things proportionate, he is much larger in general than the average joe.

 

[GoldenDelicious]

overall growth like that outlined above is all well and good, because for the most part its reversible

its irreversible stretching that gets dangerous later in life (and even not so later)

 

[silver_shadow]

yes, the left ventricle does enlarge while on gear but it is temporary by and large. if ur on GH and gear i believe it is more lasting (though i cannot remember this properly).

 

[Mavy]

Bump for hairlossguru.

 

[BigDmone]

Iv acually read before that its not the aas that makes your heart grow but more the hard workouts........But while on aas you work out that much harder making your heart grow....Im not a dr its just what Iv heard bro

 

[The Terminator]

I was diagnosed with an enlarged heart last year (via an emergency visit to the ER)...The doctors told me it was fairly common for an athlete like myself....And they said the same thing you had outlined here....That an increased workload beyond what most do illicits growth to compensate for taht increased work (seemed simple enough to me )