Sensible brought up the point that when you have a treadmill ecg they test you to apparent destruction.
I have done a few of these at Gatwick with the CAA and am becoming more and more suspicious of its use.
You are wired up and informed by the nurse that the "normal" time is nine minutes. This leads you to assume that if you stop at 8 minutes you will fail. It also kicks in the competitive nature of pilots in that we try to beat that (especially when you have just met a 72 year old in the waiting room who did 14 minutes as I did...)
So the treadmill gets faster and faster and steeper and steeper. I usually go for twelve minutes which last time got my heart rate up to 179. I am early fifiies, BMI 22 and jog 10k a week so I am vaguely fit.
I now read in the literature that it is very unwise to push your heart over the rate 220 minus your age. I also read that if you excercise to this rate and then stop without a cool down period "arrhythmias are common in the recovery phase." There is no cool down phase in the CAA test. Just stop and lie down.
So when, surprise surprise an arrhythmia showed in the cool down phase the cardiologist looked serious and asked me to come back next year. To keep his numbers up?
Next year I shall stop at nine minutes exactly.
Grizzle over.