{"id":478,"date":"2023-02-25T01:13:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T01:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/2016\/02\/21\/wilt-chamberlains-heart-attack\/"},"modified":"2023-02-28T20:26:05","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T20:26:05","slug":"wilt-chamberlains-heart-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=478","title":{"rendered":"Wilt Chamberlain&#8217;s Myocarditis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wilt Chamberlain was possibly the greatest basketball player and the greatest athlete ever. The 63-year-old Chamberlain was reported to have died of heart damage called myocarditis, but how could arguably the world\u2019s greatest and fittest athlete die of heart damage? A possible explanation would be venereal diseases, which are a common cause of myocarditis (<em>Case Rep Infect Dis<\/em>, 2015; 2015: 385126). Chamberlain wrote a book, <em>A View from Above<\/em> (published in 1991) in which he claimed that he had had sex with more than 20,000 women. He received a tremendous amount of criticism for this claim, but he never backed down in defending it. Every casual sexual contact puts a person at high risk of acquiring a venereal disease, since more than 67.6 million North American adults have venereal diseases such as chlamydia, mycoplasma, ureaplasma, trichomoniasis, genital herpes, human papillomavirus (HPV) and many more (<em>Sexually Transmitted Diseases<\/em>, April 2021;48(4):208-214).<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8xr3i9jpiTE\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Success in Every Sport He Tried<\/strong><br \/>Wilton Norman Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia in 1936. He was 6&#8217;11&#8221; when he entered Philadelphia\u2019s Overbrook High School, and led them to three public school championships and two all-city titles. \u00a0In high school, he:<br \/>\u2022 ran the quarter mile in less than 48 seconds, to set the U.S. high school record, and ran the half mile in 1:58.3<br \/>\u2022 high-jumped 6\u20196&#8243; and broad jumped 22 feet<br \/>\u2022 was the state of Pennsylvania shot put champion at 53&#8217;4&#8243;<\/p>\n<p>He was the most recruited high school player in the country, with more than 200 colleges interested in him. \u00a0He went to the University of Kansas, where he:<br \/>\u2022 was the best basketball player in the country<br \/>\u2022 won the Big 8 high jump championship his junior year<br \/>\u2022 threw the shot put more than 47 feet<br \/>\u2022 was 4th in the \u00a01956 Kansas Relays&#8217; hop-step-jump triple jump<\/p>\n<p>In the National Basketball Association, he scored more than 100 points in a single game and averaged more than 30 points per game throughout his professional career. \u00a0He bench pressed 500 pounds, was timed at 4.6 seconds in the 40-yard dash and had an incredible vertical jump of 48 inches.\u00a0 After his amazing NBA career, he became arguably the best volleyball player in the world. At age 60, he ran in the Honolulu marathon and competed in a 50-mile race in Canada.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vQDnkC1C-g4\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>The Great Lover<\/strong><br \/>Long after his athletic career ended, Chamberlain made news with his claim that he had had sex with 20,000 women. That comes to 500 women per year, or 10 different women per week in his 40-year career of sharing his sperm. This would probably make the world\u2019s greatest athlete the most prolific lover of all time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Diagnosis: Cardiomyopathy<\/strong><br \/>Chamberlain\u2019s health first became an issue in the 1960s, when a former coach told the news media that the star player might have had a heart attack before the 1964 season. But Chamberlain denied it.<\/p>\n<p>In 1992, when Chamberlain gathered with former teammates for a halftime ceremony marking the anniversary of their 1971-72 NBA championship, he had to leave early because he was having trouble breathing. He was admitted to a hospital and found to have an irregular heartbeat. He was released from the hospital after three days, wearing a heart monitoring device.<\/p>\n<p>During his last years, he was diagnosed as having cardiomyopathy which means that his heart was too weak to pump blood through his body. Cardiomyopathy can be caused by:<br \/>\u2022 arteriosclerosis (Chamberlain did not have high cholesterol and was still able to do amazing athletic feats in his 60s)<br \/>\u2022 damaged heart valves (he did not have this)<br \/>\u2022 genetic conditions (nobody in his family was reported to have a similar condition),<br \/>\u2022 long-term high blood pressure (his doctors never would have missed this)<br \/>\u2022 metabolic disorders such as obesity, thyroid disease or diabetes (no evidence of any of these)<br \/>\u2022 nutritional deficiencies of vitamins or minerals (his doctors would have made that diagnosis)<br \/>\u2022 drinking too much alcohol over many years (he was not an alcoholic)<br \/>\u2022 recreational drugs such as cocaine, amphetamines or anabolic steroids (no evidence of this)<br \/>\u2022 chemotherapy or radiation to treat cancer (does not apply to him)<br \/>\u2022 iron buildup called hemochromatosis (an easy diagnosis that would not have been missed),<br \/>\u2022 sarcoidosis or amyloidosis (his doctors would not have missed these)<br \/>\u2022 autoimmune diseases such as lupus (no evidence that he had any of these diseases)\u00a0<br \/>\u2022 infections<\/p>\n<p><strong>Infections that Cause Cardiomyopathy<\/strong><br \/>Chamberlain&#8217;s heart failure apparently came from an infection that caused heart muscle damage, called myocarditis:<br \/>\u2022 He was hospitalized seven years before his death with an irregular heartbeat <br \/>\u2022 He was unable to go anywhere in the last months of his life <br \/>\u2022 He lost up to 50 pounds in the few weeks before he died. Heart failure caused large amounts of fluid to collect in his legs and doctors had to give him drugs to get rid of this massive accumulation of fluid.<\/p>\n<p>The most likely cause of Chamberlain&#8217;s cardiomyopathy was an infection in his heart with bacteria such as chlamydia, mycoplasma or ureaplasma (<em>N Am J Med Sci,<\/em> 2013 Mar; 5(3): 169\u2013181). \u00a0Regular bacterial and viral cultures will not grow these germs. A doctor would have had to order special cultures and sometimes even these cultures fail to grow them. It was only in 1999, after Chamberlain&#8217;s death, that researchers proved that chlamydia and mycoplasma can cause the inflammation that forms plaques in arteries (arteriosclerosis), damages the heart and causes heart attacks (<em>Science<\/em>, 1999;283:1335-9).\u00a0 The first dependable test for the sexually transmitted Mycoplasma genitalium was approved by the FDA on February 1, 2019.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that he lost 50 pounds and was unable to go anywhere in the last months of his life points to a diagnosis of heart failure, caused by cardiomyopathy (heart muscle damage), possibly caused by an infection such as chlamydia or mycoplasma. \u00a0He could easily have acquired these infections from making love to considerably fewer than the 20,000 women that he claimed. These infections may be cured by taking antibiotics, such as minocycline, doxycycline or clarithromycin, for several weeks or months.\u00a0 His body was cremated, so we will never know for sure how he died.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wilt_Chamberlain\">Wilt Chamberlain<\/a><br \/>August 21, 1936 &#8211; October 12, 1999<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wilt Chamberlain was possibly the greatest basketball player and the greatest athlete ever. The 63-year-old Chamberlain was reported to have died of heart damage called myocarditis, but how could arguably the world\u2019s greatest and fittest athlete die of heart damage? A possible explanation would be venereal diseases, which are a common cause of myocarditis. Chamberlain wrote a book, A View from Above (published in 1991) in which he claimed that had had sex with more than 20,000 women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7602,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[56,1196,1221,75],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-histories-and-mysteries","tag-heart-attack","tag-myocarditis","tag-venereal-disease","tag-wilt-chamberlain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}