Athletes who swim or run: Who has a healthier heart?

Will the heart of Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt be healthier? We don't know for sure, but scientists have actually done a study to compare the hearts of top swimmers with top runners.

The results show that their hearts are different, although at a slight level, this difference can happen to you. So are you the type to go swimming or run more? That will partly determine your heart's shape and function.

Regular exercise can change the shape and operation of the human heart.

For a long time, cardiologists have known that regular exercise can change the shape and operation of the human heart . In it, the left ventricle is the heart area that is particularly sensitive to exercise.

This heart chamber receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and injects it to all the rest of the body. When the left ventricle works, it uses a very strong and strenuous twisting motion, as if the heart chamber is a sponge squeezed out of the water, before it resists its original shape.

Exercise, especially aerobic aerobic forms, requires a large amount of oxygen to be supplied to the muscles to work. Therefore, aerobic exercises will definitely make your left ventricle work.

As an adaptation to that need, athletes' left ventricles often become larger and healthier than normal sedentary people. It also has more blood reserves, faster filling and expansion rates, and faster twisting. This allows the heart to pump blood more effectively when the athlete is active.

Even for normal people, any type of exercise can help you develop your left ventricle over time. But it is true that different types of exercises will cause different effects on the heart, in a very subtle way.

For example, a 2015 study found that athletes rowing, sports combined strength and strength, had large left ventricular muscle mass compared to joggers. The hearts of rowing athletes are both agile and persistent in the process of twisting to pump oxygen-rich blood.

Both swimming and running will make your heart healthy.

Many previous studies have also compared the hearts of athletes, but few studies have examined this in swimmers.

To be honest, swimming is a very special activity , requiring you to lie on the water, hold your breath to float. All of these activities are not common in terrestrial athletics, and it affects the heart in a very different direction.

To understand the difference, a team of researchers from Guelph University, Canada, recruited 16 of their national swimmers to compare with 16 other track and field athletes, in one study. new research published in Frontiers in Physiology magazine.

The goal is to understand their heart's structure and function after training and competition, to see where the different points occur. Scientists asked athletes to take a break for 12 hours, before visiting their lab.

Here, they continue to be rested, while heart rate and pressure pump blood from the heart are recorded. Researchers use an ultrasound machine to look at the heart's structure and function.

Initial results show that both joggers or swimmers have a very healthy heart. Their heart rate fluctuates around 50 beats per minute. The jumper's heart rate will be slightly lower than the swimmer.

But 50 beats per minute is a much lower number than the heart rate of the sedentary people - a low heart rate is a sign of a very strong heart.

Next, echocardiography revealed all athletes had large left ventricles and worked very effectively. But it is true that there is an interesting difference in the left ventricle of swimmers and runners.

While all athletes pumped blood into the left ventricle earlier and had a faster twitch than average, this phenomenon was amplified at the jogging athlete. Their ventricles fill the blood faster and decisively deflect than the swimmer's heart.

In theory, those differences will allow blood to move away and return to the heart of the joggers faster than the swimmers.

The swimmer leans on the water, so their hearts are advantageous in terms of gravity compared to the runners.

" But this difference does not necessarily show that the runners' hearts work better than swimmers, " said Jamie Burr, a professor at the University of Guelph and lead author of the study.

" Because swimmers practice in a horizontal position, their hearts are not against gravity to suck blood to the heart, unlike joggers in an upright position. The posture has the advantage. and helping a part of the swimmers, and therefore, their hearts only meet their sports needs. "

Not only does answering an interesting question for us, Professor Burr's research highlights the sensitivity of the human body, when we exercise different types of exercise or exercise.

This is also useful for sports science, because it proves that athletes who swim if they want to develop their hearts more should combine the jog on the training schedule. This can help strengthen their hearts, and create decisive advantages when they return to the water.

For most ordinary people like us, Professor Burr's research emphasizes that exercise, regardless of type, improves both heart shape and function. He hopes that future experiments can tell us which kind of training will produce any subtle reactions, thereby helping individuals choose a form of exercise that is suitable for themselves. me