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(Circulation. 2006;114:2306-2308.)
© 2006 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Marathoner’s Heart?

Paul D. Thompson, MD; Fred S. Apple, PhD; Alan Wu, PhD

From the Henry Low Heart Center and Division of Cardiology, Hartford Hospital, Hartford, Conn (P.D.T.); Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, Hennepin County Medical Center and University of Minnesota School of Medicine, Minneapolis (F.S.A.); and Department of Laboratory Medicine, University of California Medical School, San Francisco (A.W.).

Correspondence to Alan Wu, PhD, San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero Ave, San Francisco, CA 94110. E-mail wualan@labmed2.ucsf.edu

Key Words: Editorials • exercise • muscles

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Efforts to evaluate the risks and benefits of exercise, especially prolonged endurance exercise, are almost as old as scientific medicine itself. Hippocrates, the father of scientific medicine, included a chapter on athletic training in his book Regimens in Health and suggested that exercise should be moderate and only part of a healthy lifestyle.¹ Hippocrates was a near contemporary of Pheideppides, an Athenian who, in 490 BC, reportedly died after running 40 km (24 miles) from Marathon to Athens to announce the Athenians’ victory. Unfortunately, this often-quoted story is probably only partly true. The runner was unlikely to have been named Pheidippides. The distance was likely much greater and probably extended from Athens to Sparta to recruit more soldiers, back to Athens to announce that the Spartans were not coming, and, finally, from Athens to Marathon and back—a total distance of approximately 500 km.¹ Furthermore, the exhausted runner probably did not die, because his death is not noted by Herodotus, the major historian of the event. There is an element of truth to the legend, however, because 50 years later, Eucles did die after running to Athens,¹ providing at least some support for the dangers of prolonged exertion.

Article p 2325

Competitive athletics thrived in Victorian England because they were thought to build moral and ethical fitness, and the concept of an "athlete’s heart" was more a moral than a physiological concept.¹ The emergence of such sports as the Oxford–Cambridge boat race, endurance cycling, and running was accompanied by concern for . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Circulation 2006 114: 2305. [Extract] [Full Text]

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