Do you have an athlete in your family? Few things you should know about heart disease screening..

Athletes who are well-trained might have hearts that look quite different, sometimes resembling a diseased state.

By delving deeper and using advanced tests, we can distinguish between a healthy athletic heart and a heart with issues.

What changes are often observed?

Chambers of the heart might get bigger.

Heart walls can become thicker.

In athletes focused on serious endurance training, the right side of the heart might enlarge and weaken at times.

At rest, the heart rate is generally slow, and there could be some irregularities in an ECG.

Did you know that the heart of someone who does mostly endurance training looks different from someone who focuses on resistance training?

The heart adapts to stress and strain from training. While most of the changes are protective, sometimes they can be concerning. In most cases, the heart returns to its normal state when the athlete stops training.

There's a debate about whether pushing exercise intensity too far can be harmful.

There's also a discussion about regularly screening young athletes for heart issues using ECG and echocardiography. However, it's widely accepted that a history and physical examination make sense. If athletes experience symptoms like fast heartbeats, dizziness, chest pain, or shortness of breath, it's important to seek medical help. Athletes with a family history of sudden death or heart problems should consider screening before intense exercise.