Jean Claude Van Damme - Heart attack

[Mr Incredible]

I'm quite sad about this if its true as I quite like the guy, his girl is a bodybuilder, he's had a lifelong passion for fitness and physique, great martial artist that actually competed and did well in kickboxing tournaments. Then this, whats interesting is that he had a really bad coke problem spending up to ten thousand a week on it in the 80's.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Jean-Claude-Van-Damme-Heart-Attack-Action-Movie-Star-Recovers-In-Belgium-As-Filming-Halted/Article/201010315761949?lpos=Showbiz_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_3&lid=ARTICLE_15761949_Jean_Claude_Van_Damme_Heart_Attack%3A_Action_Movie_Star_Recovers_In_Belgium_As_Filming_Halted

[BigSickD]

No heart attack..

[b52]

I wouldnt doubt it one bit.

This may rub some of you the wrong way, but it's too common to ignore and being politically correct on these forums to please the masses is not my plight.

Like MANY (not all) bodybuilders (he competed back in the day), he LOOKS as healthy as a horse at 50 but all those bodybuilding drugs he MAY have taken back in the day CAN catch up to any of us one day and it's very commonly in the form of heart disease!

You all would have to be LOST in space not to accept that this narrative is blatantly obvious and very common when these guys hit 40+. Denying it and coming to the rescue of ""almightly steroids"" is so typical, misguided and foolish.

Now that my rant is done (LOL), three things need to be stated and added to the aforementioned sentiment!

1) IF he did COKE for 10 years, that can certainly be the impetus for his health issues. It STILL DOES NOT render his steroid use as an innocuous variable as the combination of the two simply have exagerrated deleterious cardivascular effects!

2) PROPER, conservative use of SOME steroids and the prudent use of heart healthy supps, macro choices, amongst other things (like ACE inhibitors if applicable) can thwart MANY of these common reports of aging bb'ers and the gross manifestations of CVD.

3) His familial history is certainly a factor to be considered as well BUT even so, improper steroid use/abuse could have tipped the scales into an unfavorable scenario.

((((Gets flame-retardant suit ready)))

Well said. Steroids are not something to be taken lightly. I have seen so many people, starting with myself defend steroids and say that could not have been the cause of this guys health problem or that guys heart attack, or joe schmoe's kidney disease.(generally speaking) Many people do abuse them, and your body is not meant to be on 5 compounds at a time for 8 months at a time.

You might end up being fine, or you might end up screwing yourself up pretty bad. Just like some people can smoke for a lifetime and be healthy and others get serious diseases, but do not abuse any drug or it will catch up to you whether you believe it or not. Use steroids in moderation if you are going to use them. If this was 4 years ago, I would've never agreed with VJ, but I have had a lot of time to think about this stuff over the years i've been away from the board.

Also just some food for thought. I have been researching alot of things these past years so bear with me. If someone is on the verge of osteoperosis, and they get their blood checked, their blood calcium levels will be normal. It will only show up deficient until you have raging osteoperosis and are very brittle. By that time you are almost dead anyway. There are other diseases that don't show up in your blood until it's too late also but for the sake of time i'm not going to name every one of them. Now, if there are diseases that do not show up in your bloodwork, it makes me wonder how many other things do not show up in your blood until it's already too late?

Back to the subject of JCVD. I have read numerous articles about his cocaine habit, and it was out of control. I'm sure this was a huge cause of this if it did happen. But AAS and rec's do not mix, and should never be combined. Including alcohol. I'm sure the steroids from years earlier helped kickstart the CVD.

[liftsiron]

I thought his wife had left him years ago ? I also thought that he was a dancer and not a kickboxing competitor, that the story of his being a champion was fabricated to enhance his movie career? I know at least a dozen guys from my home town who never did gear or worked out but did rec's and alcohol nearly everyday all dead before 50. However I fully agree that if you live a lifestyle using rec's and consuming large amounts of alcohol, and eat poorly, steroids are going to compound the problem.

[b52]

I thought his wife had left him years ago ? I also thought that he was a dancer and not a kickboxing competitor, that the story of his being a champion was fabricated to enhance his movie career?

Yes he was a ballerina. More so than a kickboxer but he did compete in martial arts. A champion? Not quite. Not sure about his wife leaving him.

[Dawgpound_Hank]

...

((((Gets flame-retardant suit ready)))

Bwahahaa!

[Dawgpound_Hank]

Yes he was a ballerina...

OMG learn something new everyday...hard to imagine him in his little slippers and tootles.lol

[Mr Incredible]

If he did have a heart attack he would want to keep it quiet or else people won't buy into his character in action movies, they have to believe he can still do it. Yeah he was a real kickboxer. It was years of coke if anything not steroids, he was never that big lol, always fit looking

[Dawgpound_Hank]

If he did have a heart attack he would want to keep it quiet or else people won't buy into his character in action movies, they have to believe he can still do it. Yeah he was a real kickboxer. It was years of coke if anything not steroids, he was never that big lol, always fit looking

I remember when I first came on the boards years ago...reading posts like "Brad Pitt MUST be on gear!".LMAO Amazing that some guys apparently must be SO fucked genetically that they believe that.

[b52]

OMG learn something new everyday...hard to imagine him in his little slippers and tootles.lol

haha I used the be the biggest van damme fan when i was younger, I used to make my aunt rent me double impact every weekend. then i found out he did balet. Not cool.

[liftsiron]

I liked many of his movies, I'm glad to learn that he actually was into Karate and fought in tournaments.

[Mr Incredible]

Respectfully and not directed to you specifically......

It is impossible for any of us to know but to discount steroids as the etiological agent here is simply not prudent. Why all of us here continue to give steroids a free pass I will never understand!

Look: ANY exogenous drug introduced into the body has the grave potentinal to cause deleterious effects! Why people here continue to preach that steroids are fall into some "special category" where sides are only possible when abused boggles the mind.

Certainly, years of coke abuse may have caused his heart attack. Years of steroid use may ALSO have lead to caused his heart attack. The combination of the two taken in concert would only exaggerate this phenomenon. Again, only God knows what caused this IF he indeed had one.

For what its worth, he looked pretty darn good/ripped to shreds at one point. Certainly better than 95% of the people on these boards who have been on gear for YEARS. At the end of the day, it's very conceivable to say he DID use steroids for aesthetc reaosns and to land roles for long period of time unless he was blessed with insane genetics which is a possibility ableit remote.

I just wish everyone would stop this "head in the sand" intelligence-insulting posts about the fabricated innocuos profile of gear!

I would discount steroids as the route cause in the context of the information known.

IF he had heart attack then there could certainly be a multitude of reasons, not known to us. I'm not arm chair diagnosing without knowing everything, BUT, we know that he had a massive coke habit at one time, we know that this causes damage to the heart and other organs. Do you KNOW that steroids cause damage to the heart at low to moderate levels? We know that he wasn't a hardcore bodybuilder. Did he use steroids? maybe but I never saw him with a Mellon head or other indicators of massive doses or weight gain.

We do know that steroids can cause adversarial cholesterol profile and other ancillary factors which aren't helpful to the maintenance of a healthy cardiovascular system but on the balance of probabilities, and on the information we have I would personally discount the likelihood of steroids causing what happened, relative to what else we know he took.

Lastly I agree that people on boards generally, not this one, do have a flagrant disregard to the side effects steroids are known to cause. Contrastingly, the media and the general public have an imbalanced inflated opinion of the adverse effects of steroids.

[John Benz]

This is like arguing that crack is bad for you on a crack board and all the crackheads coming to crack's rescue.

For my own sanity, I give up. And people wonder why I am barely around anymore.

You are not alone my friend. As we and our friends grow older, we are hearing more and more about the adverse effects of steroids. In our twenties we seem invulnerable—totally immune. In my late 20's I could do grueling 2 hr long full body workouts 3x a week....and I made the best gains of my life at that time, without steroids and with no knowledge of postworkout nutrition or anything else. I drank heavy every night, ate a 12 egg omelette or about 1.5 lbs of ground beef, got up early (usually with a hangover)and worked hard roofing/construction until dusk, hit the gym ...took a shower and changed there and hit the bars and started again.

Last time I did a cycle of test/tren, I overtrained and got sick...NOT 28 anymore! I reprint a post I made over 5 years ago that will attest to the fact that steroids are NOT benign.

[theartofwar]

I thought his wife had left him years ago ? I also thought that he was a dancer and not a kickboxing competitor, that the story of his being a champion was fabricated to enhance his movie career? I know at least a dozen guys from my home town who never did gear or worked out but did rec's and alcohol nearly everyday all dead before 50. However I fully agree that if you live a lifestyle using rec's and consuming large amounts of alcohol, and eat poorly, steroids are going to compound the problem.

I worry about this shit all the time , I not only started gear when I was in highschool through my football coach, but I was already doin 80s all day and night - it's taken 7 years of opiate hell to shake those demons. I switched it up and ended up speedballing just to try to catch a high - OD'd 4x.

Now I've put that shitty fucking life behind me, I hate that I ever touched any of it, pure greed and fear of dealing with my life. But my heart checks out fine w/docs - they know I run gear, they know my past use of drugs... I still am thinkin, im 25 now - by the time I'm 40, if i make it that long, ill be a heart attack waiting. How concerned and what steps would you recommend ? Mind you: I am not about to stop AAS, don't plan on it ever frankly. I have a particularly stressful 3 year span for plans physically - so it's gonna be a hard run on my body for this period.

Sorry if it sounds like im asking a stupid question since I won't stop running gear, but if I go down that road it's another story all together - in short - I'm as obsessed with lifting as I ever was addicted to dope. All or nothing , but I'm willing to listen to what can help - feel free to flame lol, I just am being honest with where I am and what I worry about.

[John Benz]

I posted this on 6/3/2005

Juicedbull posted earlier @ MuscleSci that masswithclass died today from congestive heart failure. He has been on dialysis 3 days a week for several months now.

He was a great guy, one of a kind; very knowledgeable and always eager to help. 6 months ago he posted "The Ugly Side Of Steroid Use" and I am re-posting some exerpts below.

Alot of you people know me, but for those who don't i'm a 2 time state middleweight Pa State champion in the NPC. I also took it to the next level 2 times competing at Nationals for the allmighty PRO card. I recently was diagnosed with Renal Kidney Failure, that means basically my kidney are shutting down. I need dialysis 3 times a week for 4 hours a session to stay alive. Kidney problems do not run in my family, nobody in my family has ever had a kidney related issue.
You have to realize there are consiquenses to your actions with AAS, do not think that you are invincible.

I was recently prepping for the state championships, I figured this is my year for the overall state title Mr Pennsyvania and it was balls to the wall. About 6 weeks out I started throwing up every day sometimes 2 times a day, my ankles were holding water and my skin was turning very pale and I was so fatigued but i pushed on anyway thinking I was being a pussy. Finally it got so bad I could hardly breathe and was truly afraid that something very serious was wrong. I went to the doctor for bloodwork, he sent it out stat the next thing I know he called me and wanted me in the hospital NOW. I went to intensive care where they gave me 4 units of blood and blood pressure meds, turns out my kidney's where shutting of and have been doing so for some time now. I went from prepping for a state title to having a doctor sitting in front of me telling me "you need a transplant". If I would have had bloodwork and payed attention to it i would more than likey not been in this grim position. Nobody talks about the bad side of steroids on these boards, so I just wanted you to know what you are getting into. I don't mean to lecture, I was asked to write this piece to make people realize there is a bad side about steroids that most people are in denial about.
Thank you for listening and hopefully I can help some of you from being in the same position as me some day.

I am a non drinker, non smoker, I have had a very strict diet since 1996 always lean. I have to say that I have also taken the ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin stack since 1991 nonstop, and nsaids for joint and muscle pain. Once again this is not in my genes and I am only 37. We all know anadrol, d-bol, winny, halo, and tren are harsh substances, but the quest for size blinds us to the negative aspects of these drugs. I'm not saying don't do them, that is a personal choice but at least be careful.

I never juiced like some of these people on the boards. Shit was hard to come by where I live so cycles were very basic with average doses. I never did 1 gram of test a week, d-bol would be 50mg a day tops, and anadrol would be 150 mg a day for a maximum of a week during a cycle. The thing is that I never really came off since 1996. Figured I'd never turn pro if I took time off.