echocardiogram, ekg

[NGL34]

Although blood work is very important for aas uses, its also important to get at least an EKG once year or with your yearly physical. Blood work will be able to determine kidney/liver functions, hemocrit/hemoglobin, clotting factors, and cholesterol etc... But equally important we must consider the risk for myocardiopathy, enlargement/restructuring of heart muscle. This is not just due to aas use, possible gh use, but also just being bigger and heavier person.

A couple easy ways to do that.. EKG, a quick easy non-invasive procedure that could identify any etopic (abnormal) beats or arythmias. Taking one step further one could get an echocardiogram, which Is also non-invasive procedure that can look at how blood flows/determine an malformations and determine your cardiac ejection fraction rate (amt of blood push out of left ventricle into body) which could indicate a failing heart.

Just something for everyone to consider, since I've noticed most members just focusing on blood work. Without a good pump everything else is meaningless.

 

[nothuman]

Although blood work is very important for aas uses, its also important to get at least an EKG once year or with your yearly physical. Blood work will be able to determine kidney/liver functions, hemocrit/hemoglobin, clotting factors, and cholesterol etc... But equally important we must consider the risk for myocardiopathy, enlargement/restructuring of heart muscle. This is not just due to aas use, possible gh use, but also just being bigger and heavier person.

A couple easy ways to do that.. EKG, a quick easy non-invasive procedure that could identify any etopic (abnormal) beats or arythmias. Taking one step further one could get an echocardiogram, which Is also non-invasive procedure that can look at how blood flows/determine an malformations and determine your cardiac ejection fraction rate (amt of blood push out of left ventricle into body) which could indicate a failing heart.

Just something for everyone to consider, since I've noticed most members just focusing on blood work. Without a good pump everything else is meaningless.

I have been preaching this on here anytime I get a chance. Good post.

The only potential issue is some doctors won't do an echo cardiogram if ekg is fine. Or they will but insurance won't cover it.

 

[gotgame]

For the older guys ( 45+) I would suggest getting a cardiac CTA. With a family history or other risk factors you can probably get your insurance to pay for it. Out of pocket its about $600 but its one of the best things you can do for prognostic value. You get about a 5 year coronary warranty with that. Make sure its done on either a 320 slice or dual source CT. The 64 slice used to be standard but they give terrible artifacts and ive missed stuff before because of that.

 

[nothuman]

For the older guys ( 45+) I would suggest getting a cardiac CTA. With a family history or other risk factors you can probably get your insurance to pay for it. Out of pocket its about $600 but its one of the best things you can do for prognostic value. You get about a 5 year coronary warranty with that. Make sure its done on either a 320 slice or dual source CT. The 64 slice used to be standard but they give terrible artifacts and ive missed stuff before because of that.

I've had one of these. It's the most accurate one. Sucks they have to give you the contrast/dye though

 

[gotgame]

I've had one of these. It's the most accurate one. Sucks they have to give you the contrast/dye though

Yea thats the only way to do it. A calcium score isnt enough as your not concerned really with the calcified plaque its the non calcified. A MRA while it would provide good contrast resolution the spatial resolution isnt enough to really look at the coronaries and it would take too long. The 320 or dual source CT have a single beat acquistion these days to limit motion.

Ive read a few cardiac CTs for a few members of the boards and found some bad stuff in a lot of them and 3 of those guys were in their early 40's. 1 guys was perfect though ( age 47) but he was a trt only guy with a family history but otherwise he was very healthy.

 

[muscledoc1]

If there is no history of heart disease in the family, if your'e HDL and LDL and total Cholesterol are in range, i wouldn't go as far as CTA, start with those labs, if you have any symptoms (like Chest pain, Shortness of breath and such) then get an EKG and an Echo, i would get those two regardless every 3-years if you're heart is normal.

 

[nothuman]

Have either of you seen significant reduction/reversal in heart size in anyone before?

 

[muscledoc1]

Have either of you seen significant reduction/reversal in heart size in anyone before?

Only if you change your'e lifestyles(training and such), then you're heart adjusts to you're body again, given the fact there is no cardiomyopathy involved(heart muscle genetic issue).

 

[nothuman]

Only if you change your'e lifestyles(training and such), then you're heart adjusts to you're body again, given the fact there is no cardiomyopathy involved(heart muscle genetic issue).

Yea it happened to me when I had to stop training and was wondering how common it was. Hopefully it didn't regrow as I regained the size

 

[gotgame]

If there is no history of heart disease in the family, if your'e HDL and LDL and total Cholesterol are in range, i wouldn't go as far as CTA, start with those labs, if you have any symptoms (like Chest pain, Shortness of breath and such) then get an EKG and an Echo, i would get those two regardless every 3-years if you're heart is normal.

For the specific patient population that we have here I would have to disagree. What your saying is for the general public and is true for them but your mentioning things like family history lipids etc which are all general risk factors. Im sure you have seen the threads recently of people on here having cardiovascular issues and ridiculously bad blood work to go with it and hypertension. Even if at the the present time there labs are ok after years of AAS use ( for some abuse) there risk just went up big time.

About 90% of the patients i see from the ED for cardiac CTA have a TIMI risk score of 2 or less with a normal EKG and normal troponins at least at 1 set yet many of them have significant underlying disease with about 3-5% going onto cardiac cath.

The guys on here ( not ProM but online) whose cardiac ctas i read with them werent having symptoms but 2 of them had moderate stenosis of the LAD and diag and 1 having about 20% stenosis of the left main. There only major risk factors were AAS use and likely bad lipids and htn while on but everything else was mostly normal while off.


I do agree that you should at the very least start with the basic labs however each person needs to not kid themself as labs can be normal but the underlying damage can be done by having years of screwed up lipids while on. If they only did a few 8 week cycles over the last 15 years then I would consider them to have risk similar to normal population. If they have been using heavily for years at a time then id place them into a higher risk category and they need to be vigilant as their physicians might not know about that risk factor and is only going by the snapshot which is there current blood work.

 

[muscledoc1]

Yeah I can see you're point I was just trying to be very basic in regards to the general bodybuilding population (ages 25-40+) obviously you sound like a professional (cardiologist or cardiology fellow if you read CTAs) as I am also(cardiac Sonographer at Duke university) would love to get more insight in regards to hormone effects if you have any kind of info on(such as estrogen and DHT) in regards to body composition (body fat muscle ratio) thanks for the info!

 

[John_Rambo]

I am in my twenties and have recently been diagnosed with left ventricular hypertrophy coupled with a low ejection fraction (~40% instead of 60-70%).

How did I find that out? I did an atrial fibrillation (AF) and had to get a cardioversion to get back to normal. So after doing multiples tests, they found that out.

It took a while to accept that steroid use most likely caused this. I couldn't believe this was the cause because of what I read on the forums, people running steroids for decades without side effects.

I had been cruising and blasting moderate dosages for approx. 4-5 years prior to this.

I immediately went off everything and they also gave my a few drugs to slow down my heart to give it a break and help it recover. I will be doing EKG's every three months to see if my heart goes back to normal (it will).

All this happened this year. This, along with other challenges that I had to face in 2015 really changed my perspective on life.

Live life to its fullest guys but stay healthy.

 

[muscledoc1]

Hey Rambo, what thickness was you're LVH?(I wouldn't worry about it it's common with any kind of heavy weight lifting), as far as you're EF if that was calculated while you were in A fib it's not accurate it's always higher when you're in normal rhythm due to the filling time of the left ventricle , I had 2-A fib ablations, many cardioversions(shocks) but since my last ablation two years ago I'm good no A fib, main reason for A fib is sleep apnea man look into that, if you're EF was calculated when you're in rhythm 40% is low(55% and over is normal)

 

[nothuman]

Question for gotgame or/and muscledoc:

Like I mentioned above, I reduced my heart size in a period of 4 months between echo cardiograms when I lost 35lbs. Since then, I have regained the weight (all muscle) that I lost. I have yet to get another echo cardiogram. I am a little worried whether the heart went back to it's slightly larger size as a result of regaining muscle. What are your thoughts?

Thanks

 

[muscledoc1]

There is no telling nothuman I'm not sure what were the measurements when you did the echo but I can promise you from a known fact they are NEVER the exact same(different techs performing, small habits of measuring things different) most cardiologists will tell you you're heart might be enlarged question is if it matches you're body surface area and also what is you're function(Ejection fraction) go get another echo if you want a piece of mind man I wouldn't worry too much unless there is a change in you're heart muscle function my guess if you gained a lot of muscle it might have got a LITTLE thicker not bigger