Arterial Stiffness

[coldfire]

Hello Mark,

I don't know if this question should be directed at you or Dr. Kilgore, but I'll try anyway.

I've heard from a few sources that resistance training is associated with increased arterial stiffness which increases the chance of a heart attack, stroke and world war III.

Now, I've looked at some articles and found that this is not an established fact, but a few claim for this to be true. Here are two of them (the first is only abstract):

http://www.jhypertension.com/pt/re/j...195628!8091!-1
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/cont...ll/110/18/2858

Now, this sounds like some silly attempt to make weight training dangerous once again, but I would like to know your opinion.

There is also a funny part in the article:

Maximal muscular strength in the intervention group was tested before and after resistance training using the following exercises: half squat, bench press, leg extension, leg curls, lateral row, and abdominal bend. After 10 warm-up repetitions, 1-repetition maximums (1RM) were obtained according to the established guidelines. Because of the potential risks involved in 1RM testing, this test was not performed in the control group.

Thanks for your time.

[Mark Rippetoe]

Typical idiotic medical types doing studies about a training method they do not understand. Both studies show no increases in BP with this "decreased carotid arterial compliance" and no femoral arterial "stiffening". Sounds like a perfect adaptive response to strength training to me. They seem to be poor understanders, failing to distinguish the differences between arterial stiffening due to disease processes and an increase in tone as an adaptation to the higher temporary pressures encountered in training. Standard worship of aerobics in evidence.

I'll get Dr. Kilgore to respond.

[coldfire]

That's what I thought. Thanks for your time coach.

[Lon Kilgore]

Little snippets of information extrapolated to the real world are only ocassionally accurate and useful. I think everyone needs to read this article:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/art...medid=18595904

Being strong means you are less likely to die from all causes. This study is a large and long one and clearly shows this. You get strong from training with weights. So I'd say that a large scale and big picture study (there have been 3 similar large studies that I know of) that actually measures death rates trumps the hypothetical relationship between training, the microphysiology of the vasculature, and risk of disease.

[coldfire]

Thanks dr. Kilgore. That's a nice article which confirms that strong people are harder to kill and are more useful in general.

[EIC]

Dr. Kilgore and Rip burnt this one to a crisp already, but I thought I'd add that, if I recall correctly, weight training (particularly at higher rep ranges) essentially lays down miles of additional capillaries throughout the muscles of the body. Much like installing additional sinks in a home and turning them all on, it would seem that this would result in a relative reduction of fluid pressure (be it blood or water) at any given point in the plumbing.

I doubt that such an effect could be perceived in a study of short duration, but it certainly becomes a significant factor when one adopts a prolonged dedication to the iron.

[Mark Rippetoe]

And the geniuses that insist on doing these studies on untrained populations will never understand why this is stupid.