It's been such a long time since I said anything about my heart that maybe a recap is in order. You'd probably have to be a longtime reader with an excellent memory for this to have lodged in your brain.
When I was pregnant with Pete, who just turned 18 (!!), I had an unsettling arrhythmia episode that led to a diagnosis of PSVT. PSVT is generally benign, and I opted to treat it with medication. They offered me an ablation, a procedure in which they short out part of the wiring that makes your heart go, but I chose to keep my wiring intact.
My arrhythmia episodes are fairly predictable, and for 18 years I have taken the same medication if I am going to be doing cardio, heading into an unusually stressful situation, or spending time at high altitudes.
HOWEVER--
--this spring I started wondering if there might be a connection between the medication and my lackluster running performance as an adult. It has always seemed weird to me that I could run toward the front of the pack as a teen (i.e., I could knock out a sub-6:30 mile without working too hard) but I've always been near the back of the pack as an adult. I have written about some of that angst in these pages over the years. In the seasons when I was more serious about running I would sweat and labor and struggle and agonize, and never feel like I was seeing much improvement. I was always a little baffled about why it felt so hard.
WELL.
It turns out that there is a body of research from the 80s linking my particular beta-blocker to decrements in athletic performance. Reduced cardiac output. Reduced VO2 max. Reduced endurance. Some researchers looked at participants' skeletal muscles as well as their hearts, and found lower levels of ATP and creatine phosphate, along with impaired glycogenolysis. One study reported that they found 25-30% performance reductions in muscles with predominantly slow-twitch fibers.
SO MAYBE, just MAYBE, a person who has taken this medication faithfully before running for 18 years should not be surprised that running has felt hard!! Maybe this person should not have wasted mental energy on thoughts like "lazy" or "untalented" or "why bother?"!!
So I made an appointment for next week to talk about a different management strategy. I think I will ask to try a different medication first, and request a referral to get more information about an ablation. I am still feeling a little cautious about shorting out the wiring that makes my heart beat, but I am also feeling cautious about continuing a medication that may have been slowing me down for eighteen years. (Wait, I need more exclamation points: eighteen!!!!!!! years!!!!!!!)
I am trying to keep my expectations modest. It is entirely possible that I am just a back-of-the-pack runner as an adult, and the medication only accounts for a tiny slice of my back-of-the-pack-ness. But I'm so curious now. And I can't help being a little bit hopeful.
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