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The Age Shoveling Snow Turns Risky for Your Heart Anja Stefanovic – Getty Images<\/p>\n
An \u201cage is just a number\u201d mindset is fantastic when it comes to things like writing your first novel later in life or marrying your soulmate who happens to be younger than you. <\/p>\n
But one place it does not apply is when it comes to shoveling snow, which so many of us do every winter: The incidence of sudden heart attack spikes some 16% in men of a certain age when it snows, particularly if it\u2019s a big storm, leading to a 34% rise in deaths, a large, two-decade Canadian study<\/a> found. (The study authors didn\u2019t see the same link in women \u2014 apparently, men tend to do the driveway-clearing, especially if there\u2019s a snowpocalypse.)<\/p>\n Why is snow-clearing so dangerous?<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the fact that wet snow is freakin\u2019 heavy. In one study on men, the average shovelful of snow weighed 16 pounds. \u201cThat\u2019s 16 pounds per shovel, 12 lifts a minute for 10 minutes,\u201d says Barry Franklin, Ph.D.,<\/a> a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and director of Preventive Cardiology and Cardiac Rehabilitation, Beaumont Health in Royal Oak, MI. That adds up to almost 2000 pounds, the weight of a subcompact SUV. A different study<\/a> conducted by Franklin and his team years ago found that a shoveler\u2019s heart rate increases up to 97% of his max heart rate, more than when the same person does a treadmill test at maximum exertion.<\/p>\n Secondly, snowstorms happen when it\u2019s, well, cold. When you huff and puff in that cold air, your blood vessels constrict, making it harder for blood to circulate around your body. This raises your blood pressure<\/a>, making it even harder for your heart to get enough blood, he says.<\/p>\n But what makes shoveling snow uniquely dangerous has to do with the activity itself, which is why the American Heart Association has been working to raise awareness of the unique risks involved. Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n Shoveling is static exertion, i.e., you\u2019re standing in one spot and using your upper body to lift heaps of heavy, wet snow. \u201cWith this kind of exercise, you see sudden, big increases in heart rate and blood pressure,\u201d says Franklin.<\/p>\n Lifting with your arms asks much more of your heart than if you lifted the same weight with your legs, says Franklin.<\/p>\n Hoisting and pushing tend to make us hold our breath as we strain, which in turn increases heart rate and blood pressure.<\/p>\n Standing still while you shovel or use the snowblower means that \u201cyour heart is running like hell, but you\u2019re not moving your legs, so blood pools in the lower extremities,\u201d explains Franklin. I.e., it\u2019s not getting back up to your heart as readily.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the constriction of the arteries of your heart because it\u2019s cold; these are the size of cooked spaghetti to begin with, and get even narrower, he says. That raises blood pressure and means less blood gets to your heart.<\/p>\n What does age have to do with it?<\/p>\n \u201cPeople don\u2019t run into trouble if they\u2019re 20 or 30 because they haven\u2019t developed coronary artery disease<\/a>,” says Franklin. \u201cBut if they\u2019re 45 to 50 or older, with known or hidden heart disease<\/a>, especially people who are habitually sedentary, this activity is very dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n