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Summary
On episode 214 of 40+ Fitness, Coach Allan sits down with Lennard Zinn, one of the co-authors of the book Haywire Heart.
At age 55, still racing at a competitive peak, Lennard was chasing a personal record up a climb near Boulder when his heart rate spiked to 218 with no warning. He kept pedaling, finished the ride, and only later learned he had an arrhythmia serious enough to send him to the hospital by ambulance.
The conversation covers the difference between a heart attack and an arrhythmia, the symptoms athletes should never ignore, and the supplements Lennard now uses to support his heart, along with his shift from chasing records to chasing longevity.
Links
- https://zinncycles.com
- https://velopress.com
Key Takeaways
- More exercise is not always better for longevity. The dose-response curve in Haywire Heart plots exercise against lifespan, not muscle gain. Longevity rises as you move from sedentary to active, but past a certain point the curve bends back toward the couch-potato end.
- Lennard’s own heart rate hit 218 during a record attempt. He felt a single skipped beat he had never noticed before, watched his heart monitor jump from 155 to 218, and kept riding for seven more minutes before he stopped.
- Arrhythmias are an electrical problem, not a plumbing problem. A traditional heart attack is blocked blood flow. What Lennard experienced, and what the book focuses on, is the heart’s electrical signaling misfiring instead.
- Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia in athletes. AFib means the atria are firing above 300 beats a minute; the AV node protects the ventricles from that rate, so a heart monitor may just read an oddly elevated but not extreme number.
- A Holter monitor is a portable, telemetric EKG. It streams data to a monitoring center that calls you if it detects something abnormal, even in the middle of the night, as happened to Lennard when his heart stopped for over three seconds.
- Magnesium and CoQ10 support the heart’s electrical function. CoQ10 is produced by every cell, but statins block the same pathway that produces both cholesterol and CoQ10, so anyone on statins needs to supplement CoQ10 or risk deficiency.
- Inflammation control matters for both arrhythmias and coronary artery disease. A low daily dose of aspirin and the herb hawthorn, used for centuries for heart health, both target inflammation as a root driver of heart problems.
- L-carnitine needs an antioxidant partner. Taken alone, L-carnitine raises free radicals in the bloodstream; pairing it with alpha lipoic acid scavenges those free radicals and protects the arteries.
- Most people are low in usable iodine. Chlorine, fluoride, and bromine in water, toothpaste, flour, and household products block iodine receptors, so the thyroid, and the energy it governs, can suffer even if RDA iodine intake looks adequate.
“I think that that’s certainly what I found out personally and does seem to be indicated in the research that has recently been coming out that you certainly can overdo it.”
Lennard Zinn