Preventing Chest Pain in Cycling Than Experiencing It!

Since the first time that cycling is considered as a kind of good exercise to keep fit, we have been talking about the benefits of riding a bike. However, there is still a few health problem may cause during the cycling. Generally, the inappropriate posture and the time you pedal can be the key factors to lead the problems.

Chest chain is a common problem appearing when you use the wrong way to breathe in your cycling. Fairly to say, we have to concede that everyone feels pain differently. If you have never felt chest pain and you’re a healthy cyclist, it is easy to think that it will be something else like acid reflux or pulled the muscle, which shows reproducible and it is defined that it is brought for exercise and it subsides when you rest. If you feel intensely during your exercise and feel pain when you rest, get to the doctor, please.



Causes

The first thing to prevent a health problem is to know what caused it. Chest pain may be resulted of breathing too hard while you’re cycling. Cycling can lead the heartburn or acid reflux symptoms for the increase in respiratory rate and pressure put on your abdomen when staying proper bicycle posture. You may also experience chest pain and soreness when you ride your bike if you have pinched nerves, fibromyalgia or a bruised rib.

If you’re a cyclist, you must know what breath pattern should be while riding--no matter what your level. When you feel your physical power is not normal, particularly catching a sudden breath while working on, something gets wrong. It is one easy thing to think you could be tired or coming down with a cold or virus. But this is a warning and if it is unexplained, you should make an appointment with a doctor.

Symptoms

Before the chest pain becomes the big health problem, you should care the symptoms that may cause your chest pain. It can appear with a burning sensation beneath your sternum, nausea and swallowing difficulty. It will be worse when you change position or breathe deeply. In severe cases, you may feel tightness in the chest, pain and the pain may radiate down your jaw or shoulders with sweating or shortness of breath.

A heart palpitation is another symptom you should not ignore. You should concern whenever your heartbeat is abnormal. It can be pounding in your chest or a light, fast fluttering. If you feel something wrong, it means that it isn’t. If your heart zooms along at 210 beats per minute without a good reason suddenly, that is a sign that it will cause chest problem.

Sometimes, Chest pain is a symptom of a serious medical condition such as a heart attack, angina, coronary spasm or aortic dissection. If the chest pain is severe, develops without explanation and varied in intensity, pay attention and seek immediate medical. It may radiate down your back, shoulder or left arm with nausea, dizziness, sweating or shortness of breath sometimes, please visit the hospital or at least confirm that nothing is seriously wrong.

Gastrointestinal issues

Too much riding or high-intensity training can increase the risk of gastrointestinal issues (GI) that cause chest pain. This can be related to what you eat, the way to eat and how you exercise. For example, you can’t eat too much before you ride, which will cause stomach discomfort and avoid getting worse to the chest.

Moreover, we can commonly see the gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD, or heartburn) on the athletes. Because when they’re training, food moves more slowly from the stomach into the intestines. Also, in order to train, the small muscular band (sphincter) around the bottom of your esophagus can relax and allow food and acid in your stomach to rise into your esophagus so that causes a burning sensation. What’s more, tensing the abdominal muscle during exercise will increase the pressure in the stomach so that it will force the stomach contents up into the esophagus. Then the wrong way is to take for pain such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (ibuprofen, naproxen, etc.) can irritate the lining the stomach and contribute to GI upset and chest pain.

Lungs problem

When chest pain strikes during the exercise or immediately appears after riding, the most common cause is the spasm of the lungs’ small airways, called exercise-induced bronchospasm (EIB). It can cause sharp chest pain and lead breathing difficult. This situation can often be worse at certain times of the year or when exercising in some certain environments.

Infrequent but more serious lung issues include pneumothorax, pulmonary embolism and blood clots in one or more of the lungs arteries. The bacterial lung infections which from the outside work can cause in either in pneumonia or pleurisy, inflammation of the tissues that line the lungs and chest cavity. The inflammation feels a sharp pain that is most severe when you breathe in.

Angina

Chest pain can include angina, which caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscle as a result of coronary artery disease. Myocarditis is a kind of inflammation in the heart’s muscle and pericarditis is an inflammation of the membrane that surrounds the heart, which is often caused by a virus and can be exacerbated by exercise.



In addition, too-hard tackles and hits can cause aortic dissection on rare occasions, which is a tear in the heart’s primary artery. It leads to intense, tearing chest pain. This condition may threaten life and need to be treated immediately.

Treatments

If you experience chest pain or lung discomfort during your riding, please stop exercising or reduce exercise intensity. If the heartburn is the reason, you can take a medication to neutralize or stop production of stomach acids, such as antacids or H2-receptor blockers. A doctor should be required to treat or prescribe medication to remedy chest pain associated with fibromyalgia or pinched nerves.