Sudden death in sports: statistics and prevention

06.09.2019
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According to statistics from the American National Sudden Death Register, a young athlete dies every 3 days in the United States. In Russia, there is no similar data in the public domain, but on the Internet you can find information about dozens of tragic cases among amateurs and professionals.

The next one took place on August 19, 2019 in the Tambov region. The prize-winner of the Central Federal District championship, 25-year-old runner Maria Plavunova, died while jogging. Two months earlier, Artemy Khasankaev, a biathlete of the Russian youth national team, died at a training session in Crimea, and in October 2018, a 15-year-old athlete from Ryazan, Dmitry Martynushkin, died during training.

Why do athletes “leave”?
The most common cause of sudden deaths among athletic, physically developed young people is cardiac arrest [1]. With moderate physical exertion or at rest, a trained or, as they say, "sports heart" works in an economical mode. His pulse is up to 60-40 beats per minute. Accordingly, blood flow velocity and blood pressure decrease, while energy consumption and oxygen demand in the myocardium decrease. At high loads, energy consumption and the need of cells for oxygen increases many times. The heart rate can reach 200-230 beats, and the heart sometimes pumps up to 30-40 liters of blood per minute.

In this mode, the regulation mechanisms "turn on" in the body, and its successful adaptation to external conditions occurs due to the intensive combined work of the nervous, endocrine and immune systems. But their activity cannot be endless, so the load must be feasible, the body must be prepared, and its recovery after stress is full, otherwise the physiological processes will fail. In some cases, fatal.

Trying to prevent 
To eliminate the risk of sudden death among athletes, the rules for admission to performance have been changed in professional sports. Now each participant is required to undergo both an ECG and an echocardiographic study before the start to assess the health of the heart.

Another question is that during training, coaches do not always monitor the condition of athletes using hardware diagnostics - it is much more important that athletes follow a pre-planned training program (it turns out that at any cost). If they do additional work themselves, as in the case of Maria Plavunova, who went for a jog while resting in the village, it is technically impossible to monitor their well-being from the outside. This should be done by the athletes themselves. So, you need to have such an opportunity. 

Chief Controller
In high-performance sports, systemic monitoring of fatigue and the recovery process of an athlete's body is carried out using an analysis of heart rate variability (HRV). An increase in the interval between heartbeats at rest indicates a positive adaptation to the effects of stress and the success of rehabilitation, while a decrease in HRV, on the contrary, reflects an overstrain of the body and a slowdown in recovery. [2].

Application of HRV analysis in sports:

  • allows you to determine the optimal training period;
  • accurately determines the state of recovery;
  • helps to identify the athlete's overstrain;
  • assesses the athlete's ability to adapt to training, which is important for drawing up a personal program;
  • allows you to predict the probability of better or worse results based on the general condition of the body;
  • analyzes the likelihood of being more susceptible to illness and injury.

Modern technologies enable maximum visualization of health status. For example, the energy level or Total Power (in international notation) can be demonstrated very clearly. This is an indicator that reflects the reserve of strength, warning of possible exhaustion or overtraining. 

0-300

The vital energy is very small. The body's performance is low. You are in the borderline zone between health and the onset of illness.

300-1000

You are on the verge of exhaustion, as after physical or mental stress. There is very little vitality. With increasing load, the likelihood of health deterioration is high.

1000-2000

The condition is optimal, you are at the lower limit of the norm. There is enough energy to perform everyday tasks, but with a significant increase in the load, the state of health may deteriorate.

2000-3500

Your body easily and successfully copes with any tasks, all systems are working properly, tension and relaxation are in balance. You have excellent vitality and high productivity!

3500-10000

Your regulatory systems begin to overextend. Check the quality of the recording - it should only be made in a calm, waking state.

10000-20000

You have critical indicators - we advise you to repeat the measurement to check its correctness, taking into account all the recommendations.

Diagnosis with comfort
Today, research on heart rate variability is available not only to professional athletes. You can learn it yourself, at any time and in any place - for example, in the morning, before training and after. To do this, you need to use the Engy Health service. The portable device Engy Beat counts the readings in 5 minutes and sends the data to the server, where health indicators are calculated using special algorithms. You will see the results of the self-test immediately after the end of the measurement in the mobile application. They will remain in the history of the device, moreover, at any time you can also get an individual consultation with a physiologist on your indicators. 

The service, developed with the participation of representatives of Russian space medicine, will show in numbers and graphs:


Your possibilities
All of these are dynamic values ​​that reflect the state of the body at the time of measurement. They change rapidly depending on external conditions. You will see, for example, how much energy is consumed by a strenuous workout and whether you have time to recover overnight. You can evaluate and track the influence of any external factor on your athletic performance: nutrition, sleep, activity, stressful situations. With the help of Engy Health, you will find out how different in intensity loads, emotional stress before a competition or adherence to a sports diet affect you.

Based on the listed values, a phase diagram is calculated, which reflects the general condition of the body. The service calls it Health space , or the Baevsky diagram, named after the developer, founder of space cardiology, professor R.M. Baevsky. 

Ideal for an athlete when your result is in the green box. This means that you have a good resource for continuing to practice at the same volume and pace. By taking regular measurements and tracking your performance, you can prevent overtraining.  


 

1. According to statistics from scientists from the United States, 79% of cases of sudden death of athletes are caused by heart disease. Of them: hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) - 36% of cases; hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) - 36% of cases coronary causes: congenital anomalies of the coronary arteries and coronary atherosclerosis - 23%; myocarditis - 6% of cases; the diagnosis has not been established - 6% of cases.

2.Higher is not always better, and lower is not always worse.




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