In the last couple of weeks, there have been at least two high profile footballers that have collapsed during a football match. Both cases were linked to heart problems. Sadly Sevilla player, 22 year old Puerta died after collapsing during a game.
In recent years this seems to have become alarmingly common amoung what we see as extremely fit sports men. All cases of deaths are treated as “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome”, I guess because the experts just can’t put their finger on what the causes actually are.
I have my own theory, generally based around my love of football. Over the past decade or more, the game of football has become a much more athletic type of game. The days of players coming out to play for their club after being out on the tear the night before are long gone.
It’s not good enough to just be a talented footballer, you now need to be very athletic and super fit to play with the rest of them. So obviously, the conditioning and training of players is a lot more intense than it used to be. There are cases of teams not letting their players play, or being classed as being unfit if they have a body fat percentage of over 12%.
Could this higher level of fittest actually max the capabillities of a persons heart? I think there could definitely be a link here.
There is of course the common use of supplements used by players that could also be a factor. Either way, I think it’s time for the fittest coaches to take a serious lok at their strategies and see if anything they are doing could be causing these unfortunate circumstances so that we can eradicate it from happening again in the future.
#1 by K Man at April 23rd, 2008
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I think your theory is largely a load of b****** and you might want to do a bit of reading about the causes of these deaths before spouting off a load of crap which may only result in coaches having less fit and able players.
#2 by Tom Doyle at April 24th, 2008
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K Man, see this is thing for me, most of these so called sudden death cases, don’t have any causes. They are generally put down to natural causes, which could mean anything. So you point me in a direction of where I should read, because everything I have read is inconclusive.
I’m not asking coaches to have less fit players, I’m asking them to help find out a reason why this could be so common nowadays.
There is something different about how players train than they did in the past and it’s really naive of you to think that it has nothing to do with their fitness regime.
I’m just asking the question and trying to get people to sit up and look at what could possibly be the cause.
#3 by Elaine L. Messer at October 28th, 2008
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I have just learned about this syndrome after suffering the headache from hell and having it come on so fast and the pain was constant until the emerengcy room doctor gave me enough pain medication to knock me out. After a 2 day stay in the hospital I was told that this was just one of those things that we will never know what caused it. I have had bypass surgery but I recently passed my annual stress test. Could I have had a suden death episode and the doctor not have know what it was? Please give any advise you can.
#4 by Tom Doyle at October 28th, 2008
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I’m really not the person to give you advice on this.
#5 by K Man at October 28th, 2008
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I only just read the reply. It’s more naive of you to think that the training regime has any relevance. You can be having a lethargic wank and suddenly die. It happens to fit people and unfit people in pretty much equal numbers and the causes are not from over exercise or any such thing and I doubt deaths of this kind are actually increasing.
There reason why you might make that jump from one to the next is because we hear about Sudden Death Syndrome in sports starts far more than in the general public because quite often they’re celebrities and also because it’s so bizarre for us to actually think that people so fit can die so easily.
I think the cause is pretty obvious if you actually decided to educate yourself on the matters rather than read a few newspapers and watch youtube videos of footballers collapsing – an undetected heart defect.
There are signs of such defects which can lead to sudden death syndrome and if we are more aware of the signs we can get those suffering looked at and maybe even some form of surgery but unless we are going to look at everyone’s heart in close detail there will always be deaths of this sort.
#6 by Tom Doyle at October 28th, 2008
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@ K Man – Why?
It’s obviously on the increase or weouldn’t be hearing about it so much nowadays.
I don’t remember hearing about people suddenly dying on a football pitch 10-20 years ago.
If the cause is obvious, why are most unexplained?
Again, this post is about highlighting it to the public. I’m not a doctor and I’d never say I know what the cause is. But sometimes when you work to closely to something you miss the obvious and that’s all I’m saying.
I’m simply saying that the people taht are in the know, so start taking a serious look at what they are doing to see what could possibly be causing the increase in the cases of SADS