Disability Law Claims Blog

Shoveling Snow: Can you be digging your own grave?

Doctors say, tackling heavy snow with only a shovel and grim determination can put a potentially fatal strain on the heart.

Every winter, Americans in snowy states drop in their tracks or wind up in emergency rooms - their hearts stopped, damaged or in pain after sudden and unaccustomed exertion in the cold.

As physical activities go, "snow shoveling is particularly bad," said Dr. McRae Williams, an emergency room doctor at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. That's because it puts heavy, sudden stress on the heart without simultaneously boosting oxygen supplies to the heart muscle.

A 1995 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the cardiovascular exertion of snow shoveling was equivalent to "maximal" effort on a treadmill for sedentary men, and "may contribute to cardiovascular events reported after heavy snowfalls."

"It's not aerobic exercise. It's static lifting," like weight-lifting, he said. "It creates stress on the heart at the same time as it raises blood pressure." Cold temperatures only make things worse. In the cold, the body constricts blood flow to the skin to conserve heat, which also raises blood pressure.

Those who pick up the shovel despite underlying coronary artery disease and high blood pressure are courting disaster.

To learn more about the physical stress shoveling snow puts on the heart, click here.

Labels: aerobic cold heart attack high blood pressure snow weight-lifting