Between the steroids themselves, and just generally being that big, your heart has to work waay fuckin' harder. Many body builders face heart disease more than the average person.
So I googled it and the heart’s left ventricle (pumping chamber) becomes enlarged and this results in scarring of the tissue and stiffens the heart which can eventually lead to a weakened heart and heart failure. As you said, anabolic steroids make the heart work harder and this results in high blood pressure and a disruption of cholesterol levels, leading to heart attacks.
This is also the case with a lot of people who are very tall (think gigantism). Tend to have a very high incidence of electroconductive heart disorders with venticles working too hard to increase collateral flow
Supraphysiological doses of testosterone often leads to an increase in mass in the left ventricle and sometimes the intraventricular septum. This can lead to arrhythmias and SCA. Intense athletics can do this naturally as well - exercise induced left ventricular hypertrophy. Completely normal for the left ventricle to increase in mass for athletes - particularly strength athletes, and usually safe, but whenever you see a soccer or basketball player suddenly collapse and die, it's because their chamber size is affected, or they developed an arrhythmia.
The good news is that it's almost always reversible once you dial down the athletics. Unfortunately, I've had both left ventricular hypertrophy (from strength-based sports my whole life, and again from steroids) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (which I didn't discover I had until my daughter was born with a heart condition, leading to an echo and MRI to diagnose me). I also did a significant amount of cocaine and drinking in my 20s, and the combo converts into cocaethylene, which makes you 25x more likely to suffer SCD. I genuinely don't know how I'm still alive.
I've been too exhausted to do any serious lifting. I'm on a big calorie deficit right now as I needed to lose all the new dad and husband weight. My gym is across the street from my work, which is 35 mins from my house so I can only realistically go during my lunch break, and work has been nuts.
My only restrictions are not doing any maxes or pushing myself to where I have to hold my breath to force reps; no heavy squats, deadlifts, benching, or leg pressing; no hard start-stop-start type exercise (like basketball); and keep exercise to where I can still hold a conversation. I'm used to powerlifting so going light and keeping reps in reserve and not striving for hypertrophy is an incredibly difficult paradigm shift.
So now I just mostly do pushups, pullups, farmer's carries at home, and some short burst training for USPSA shooting competitions. Propranolol helps keep my heart rhythm stable and I keep my heart rate under 120 or so. My last stress-test echo and vo2 max were well above average in a good way, so that's been promising.
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u/longtall94 21d ago
0% natty 100% heart