CardioExchange Archive

CardioExchange, an NEJM practice community for medical professionals dedicated to improving cardiac patient care, was active from 2009 to 2015. CardioExchange fostered discussion between clinicians from across the globe.

March 22nd, 2011

Good News And Bad News About Physical And Sexual Activity and Cardiac Events

The bad news is that physical and sexual activity can trigger acute cardiac events. The good news is that the immediate increase in risk becomes much smaller with more frequent activity, and the long-term overall benefits of activity remain unchallenged. These are the key findings of a meta-analysis by Issa Dahabreh and Jessica Paulus published in JAMA of 14 case-crossover studies.

The authors write that their “results are not incompatible with the well-established beneficial effect of regular physical activity on the risk of acute coronary events: active individuals are overall at a lower risk of such events compared with inactive individuals; however, during the short time period of acute exposure to physical or sexual activity, an individual’s risk of an event is increased compared with unexposed periods of time.”

Their findings, they write, suggest “that physicians counseling patients regarding their exercise habits may need to tailor their advice to the patients’ habitual activity levels: sedentary individuals should be counseled to increase the frequency and intensity of physical activity gradually.”

Categories: General, Prevention
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One Response to “Good News And Bad News About Physical And Sexual Activity and Cardiac Events”

  1. VAZHA AGLADZE, MD., PhD says:
    March 23, 2011 at 1:50 am

    I think, there is nothing extremely new; exaggerated physical(and sexual) activities always were triggers of acute cardiac events, especilly in elderly, or in high and very high risk cohort. when we subscribe drugs, we tell patients to take them cautiously and notwithstanding, if they take 10 high dose tabs of beta blokers, or ACEI, or calcium antagonists, they’ll harm themselves indeed. Same is with physical(including sexual) activity.

    Competing interests pertaining specifically to this post, comment, or both:
    NONE