Good exercise to use a shovel.
Depends on your physical condition.
Let's be careful out there.
"After a heavy, wet snowfall, we'll get five to six times the number of heart attack cases that we would on any other typical winter day," says Dr. Hargarten, associate professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
At least 75,000 heart attacks occur each year during or shortly following strenuous physical exertion. About 1 in every 3 of those heart attacks are deadly, says Murray Mittleman, M.D., a researcher at the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center West in Boston. Many of these heart attacks and deaths occur among people over age 60 who have been shoveling snow.
"A lot of people think, 'Oh, it's just snow. I can take care of this.' They think of it as just another domestic chore like mowing the lawn," Dr. Hargarten says. "But snow shoveling is a lot more strenuous an activity than power mowing. Shoveling causes changes in blood circulation that are a lot more stressful on the heart."
Those changes in blood flow can be particularly risky for people over age 60 who are sedentary or who are unaware that they have heart disease.
"As you move along in years, you tend to get less exercise, and activities like snow shoveling become more dangerous," Dr. Hargarten says.
A study of 10 sedentary men in Michigan, for instance, found that just 2 minutes of shoveling snow raised heart rates above the limit commonly recommended for safe exercise. And if you are out of shape, the chances that you will have a heart attack in the hour following a physically draining task like snow shoveling are 53 times greater than that for a person who is physically active, Dr. Mittleman says.