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What Does Low Resting Heart Rate Mean

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How Is Bradycardia Treated

Does A Lower Heart Rate Mean You’re Fitter? | GTN Does Science

The treatment of bradycardia depends on whats causing it. Bradycardia thats mild or occasional may not require treatment.

If a slow heart rate is due to the effect of a medication, its possible that your doctor may adjust your medication dosage. If possible, they could also switch you to a different medication that doesnt have bradycardia as a side effect.

Similarly, if an underlying condition is contributing to your bradycardia, your doctor will work to address that condition. For example, the medication levothyroxine can be used to manage hypothyroidism.

Its also possible that your doctor may recommend a pacemaker. This is an implanted medical device that stimulates heartbeats so that they occur at a regular rate and rhythm. Bradycardia is one of the main conditions for which a pacemaker may be recommended.

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The Difference Between Fitness And Endurance

How important is the resting heart rate for people who want to be fit? Or in other words: Is it enough that your heart is in good shape?

You have to think about the goal of your training, Hallén says.

He distinguishes between endurance and fitness. A low resting heart rate is a sign that you are in good condition.

But to be good at various sports, you need to train other muscles, not just your heart.

Endurance in the muscles that you need for your sport of choice is perhaps just as important, Hallén said.

A cyclist who is in good condition will most likely have poorer endurance on the football field than a football player in poorer condition, says Hallén.

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What Are The Symptoms

A very slow heart rate may cause you to:

  • Feel dizzy or lightheaded.
  • Have chest pain or a feeling that your heart is pounding or fluttering .
  • Feel confused or have trouble concentrating.
  • Faint, if a slow heart rate causes a drop in blood pressure.

Some people don’t have symptoms, or their symptoms are so mild that they think they are just part of getting older.

You can find out how fast your heart is beating by . If your heartbeat is slow or uneven, talk to your doctor.

Does A High Metabolism Make Your Heart Beat Faster

Tracking Resting Heart Rate « Adafruit Industries  Makers, hackers ...

The hypothalamus directly controls hunger, thirst, body temperature and energy production, which are all important aspects of metabolism. metabolic rate is not a direct reflection of heart rate. People with high metabolism do not necessarily have higher heart rates.

Well, it turns out that high metabolic rates are associated with higher body mass index , which is a measure of a persons weight in relation to their height. So, if you have a high BMI, you are more likely to gain weight than to lose it.

This is why its important to maintain a healthy weight, even if your metabolism isnt as high as youd like.

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What Makes A Heart Rate Soar

Typically, a normal resting heart rate falls between 60 and 100 beats a minute, according to the Mayo Clinic. An abnormally fast resting heart rate called tachycardia happens when the upper or lower chambers of the heart beat more than 100 times a minute, explains Shoshana Ungerleider, MD, an internist who practices hospital medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.

It is normal for your heart rate to rise during exercise or as a physiological response to stress, trauma or illness, says Dr. Ungerleider. This is called sinus tachycardia. Not all types of tachycardia are benign, however. According to the Mayo Clinic, other types that come with health consequences include:

  • Atrial fibrillation a fast heart rate caused bydisordered, irregular electrical impulses in the hearts upper chambers, knownas the atria.
  • Atrial flutter when the atria of the heart beat rapidlybut at a steady rate, resulting in weak atrial contractions.
  • Supraventricular tachycardia an abnormally rapid heartbeat originatingsomewhere above the hearts ventricles, which are the lower chambers.
  • Ventricular tachycardia a fast heart rate originating withabnormal electrical signals in the ventricles.
  • Ventricular fibrillation when fast, disordered electricalimpulses cause the ventricles to quiver inefficiently instead of pumping bloodthat the body needs.

When To Call Your Doctor

If youre on a beta blocker to decrease your heart rate or to control an abnormal rhythm , your doctor may ask you to monitor and log your heart rate. Keeping tabs on your heart rate can help your doctor determine whether to change the dosage or switch to a different medication.

If your pulse is very low or if you have frequent episodes of unexplained fast heart rates, especially if they cause you to feel weak or dizzy or faint, tell your doctor, who can decide if its an emergency. Your pulse is one tool to help get a picture of your health.

Learn more:

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How Can You Care For Yourself

Bradycardia is often the result of another heart condition, so taking steps to live a heart-healthy lifestyle will usually improve your overall health. The steps include:

  • Having a heart-healthy eating plan that includes vegetables, fruits, nuts, beans, lean meat, fish, and whole grains. Limit alcohol, sodium, and sugar.
  • Being active on most, if not all, days of the week. Your doctor can tell you what level of exercise is safe for you.
  • Losing weight if you need to, and staying at a healthy weight.
  • Not smoking.
  • Managing other health problems, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.

How To Check Your Pulse And Heart Rate

The Importance Of Having A Lower Resting Heart Rate

Exercise is an important part of cancer prevention. You need 150minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorousexercise each week to help lower your cancer risk. Your heart rate canhelp you determine if the exercise youre doing is moderate orvigorous.

If youre working at 50 to 70% of your maximum heart rate, then thatexercise is considered moderate. If youre working at 70 to 85% ofyour heart rate then its vigorous exercise.

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When Is This Combo Not A Big Deal

Sometimes blood pressure and high heart rate occurs momentarily. For example, Dr. Taigen explains, when we stand up:

  • Blood pools in the veins of our legs and gut.
  • Less blood travels to the heart muscle, so thereisnt much for the heart to pump out.
  • The nervous system automatically increases theheart rate to get the blood pumping.
  • Meanwhile, the blood pressure drops a bitbecause the force of blood moving through the veins is lower.
  • However, that phenomenon is short-lived. When the heart rate stays consistently high while blood pressure is low, there may be something problematic going on.

    Average Resting Heart Rate Chart For Men & Women

    What is a good resting heart rate by age and gender? The graphic below depicts the average resting heart rate by age for male and female WHOOP members between 20 and 50 years old.

    the average resting heart rate for men wearing WHOOP is 55.2 bpm, and for women its 58.8 bpm.

    Across all ages, the average resting heart rate for women wearing WHOOP is 58.8 bpm, and for men its 55.2 bpm.

    Given that our members tend to be athletes and/or people who are particularly interested in monitoring their health and well-being, its no surprise that the normal resting heart rate for men and women on WHOOP is below what the AHA considers average.

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    How To Take Your Pulse

    Although you may be able to feel your blood pumping in a number of placesyour neck, the inside of your elbow, and even the top of your footyour wrist is probably the most convenient and reliable place to get a good pulse.

    Press your index and middle fingers together on your wrist, below the fat pad of your thumb. Feel around lightly until you detect throbbing. If you press too hard you may suppress the pulse. You can probably get a pretty accurate reading by counting the number of beats in 15 seconds and multiplying that number by four.

    The best time to get your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning, even before you get out of bed. To gauge your maximum heart rate, take your pulse immediately after exercising as vigorously as possible.

    Your Resting Heart Rate

    Solved: Low resting heart rate (too low?)

    When you are at rest, your heart is pumping the lowest amount of blood to supply the oxygen your body’s needs. For most healthy adult women and men, resting heart rates range from 60 to 100 beats per minute. However, a 2010 report from the Women’s Health Initiative indicated that a resting heart rate at the low end of that spectrum may offer some protection against heart attacks. When WHI researchers examined data on 129,135 postmenopausal women, they found that those with the highest resting heart ratesmore than 76 beats per minutewere 26% more likely to have a heart attack or die from one than those with the lowest resting heart rates62 beats per minute or less. If your resting heart rate is consistently above 80 beats per minute, you might want to talk to your doctor about how your heart rate and other personal factors influence your risk for cardiovascular disease.

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    How Do You Fix A Slow Metabolism

    Eat plenty of protein with each meal 25 to 30 percent of your total daily calories to boost your metabolism. It is recommended that you get at least 8 hours of high-quality sleep per night. You can eat probiotic-rich foods or take probiotic supplements. Daily meditation will keep stress to a minimum.

    What Does A Low Active Heart Rate Mean

    A low active heart rate can mean that a person is not exercising intensely enough to benefit from the activity. For example, if a person is walking or jogging slowly, their heart rate may not be within the ideal range.

    People with no underlying conditions who notice that they have a low active heart rate may want to increase the intensity of their workout to get it within the recommended range.

    However, if someone is new to regular exercise or has a health condition that affects their ability to exercise, it may be better to aim for the lower end of the range initially.

    The American Heart Association recommends that these individuals aim for 50% and gradually work upward as they develop more strength and stamina.

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    Know Your Numbers: Heart Rate

    The better you understand your heart rate, the more you can maximize your movement to give your heart a good workout.

    What is your heart rate?

    Your heart rate, or pulse, is the number of times your heart beats per minute. Your resting heart rate is the heart pumping the lowest amount of blood you need because youre not exercising. If you are sitting or lying down and youre calm, relaxed and arent ill your heart rate is normally between 60 and 100 beats per minute.

    Other factors can affect your heart rate include:
    • Air temperature When temperatures or humidity increases, the heart pumps more blood so you pulse or heart rate may increase.
    • Body position Sometimes when going from a sitting to a standing position, your pulse may go up a little. After a few minutes, it should return to a normal rate.
    • Emotions
    • Medications that block adrenaline tend to slow your heart rate. Thyroid medication may raise it.

    Why your heart rate matters

    Learn why you should track physical activity.

    Whats considered normal?

    Your target heart rate is the minimum heart rate in a given amount of time to reach the level of energy necessary to give your heart a good workout. To find your target heart rate to maximize your cardiovascular exercise, the first step is determining your maximum heart rate.

    Your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. Your target heart rate for moderate exercise is about 50%85% of your maximum heart rate.

    Averages by age as a general guide are:

    What you can do

    Which Is The Best Way To Measure Your Resting Heart Rate

    What Does Your Resting Heart Rate Say About You?

    You can measure your heart rate manually, and the procedure is very simple. The most convenient place to measure it is on your wrist. First, you have to locate the pulse or beat by pressing the side of your wrist below the thumb. Press gently on that place for exactly 30 seconds and double the beats. This gives you your heart rate in beats per minute . If you feel your beat is a bit irregular, count it till 60 seconds.

    The best time to measure your resting heart rate is as soon as you get up in the morning, preferably after a good nights sleep.

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    How To Measure Your Resting Heart Rate

    Your resting heart rate should be taken first thing in the morning before you get out of bed. Your pulse rate will rise if you do any activityincluding getting up, eating, drinking, or smoking.

    To get a true resting heart rate you must be completely still and calm. If something like an alarm startled you awake, lie quietly for a few minutes before you take your pulse.

    If you cannot take your pulse immediately after awakening, wait for one to two hours after having any caffeine, exercising, or dealing with an emotional stressor. Lie down or sit quietly for at least 10 minutes before taking your pulse.

    To take your pulse, you will need a device that counts seconds, like a clock or watch that has a second hand or displays the seconds. You can also use the stopwatch or clock app on your smartphone.

    What Does A High Resting Heart Rate Mean

    Just as a low RHR is a sign of a stronger heart, a high resting heart rate may signify a weaker heart muscle. Research indicates that in the long-term, an elevated RHR likely adds to the risk of mortality.

    In the short-term, the following factors can increase resting heart rate:

    • Strenuous exercise or overtraining
    • Smoking cigarettes or use of certain drugs
    • Illness or underlying health conditions
    • Medication side effects

    However, having an above-average resting heart rate compared to others is not necessarily a cause for concern. A recent study showed that normal RHR from one individual to the next may vary by as much as 70 bpm.

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    Whats The Relationship Between High Blood Pressure And Low Pulse

    To consider how your pulse and blood pressure can affect each other, think of your pulse as an electrical system and your blood pressure as plumbing.

    Your pulse is mostly controlled by electrical impulses. These impulses travel through your heart, telling the chambers to beat in even time. Exercise, stress, fear, and other factors can speed up your pulse. Being sedentary can slow it down.

    This electrical system stimulates the pumping motion that propels your hearts plumbing system. When the pipes, or blood vessels, arent blocked, blood easily flows through them.

    If your blood vessels are narrow or have some kind of obstruction, your heart has to either squeeze harder or beat faster to pump blood. This results in high blood pressure.

    When your blood pressure and pulse are out of balance, it strains your heart. You might also experience a range of symptoms, including:

    • confusion

    Several things can cause a combination of high blood pressure and low pulse.

    The Bottom Line: Youre Probably Ok But

    Resting Heart Rate Chart

    You’re probably OK, but it’s worth talking to your doctor.

    To recap: youre probably fine if your resting heart rate is over 50, or 40 if youre an athlete. Youre also probably fine if you dont feel any of the symptoms of bradycardia, like dizziness, fatigue, sweating, or fainting.

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    But if youre close to those values and still worried, its worth talking to your doctor and getting a few simple tests, including hematocrit, blood oxygen content, electrolyte levels, heart rate variability, and blood pressure.

    If youre a health nut, its easy to obsess over isolated measures like your heart rate. The bottom line is, if your low heart rate is a problem, youll probably be feeling it. If youre exercising regularly and have a low heart rate, but you feel good and every other measure of cardiac health looks good, youre fine.

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    Traumatic Injuries Or Internal Bleeding

    A traumatic brain injury or bleeding around your brain can also cause a combination of high blood pressure and a low pulse. Both injuries and bleeding increase pressure on your brain, leading to something called the Cushing reflex.

    The symptoms of Cushing reflex include:

    • slow heart rate
    • high blood pressure
    • irregular or very slow breathing

    If youve recently had any sort of head injury and notice these symptoms, contact a doctor right away.

    Should You Be Concerned About A Low Resting Heart Rate

    Sure, your heart speeds up when you watch an action movie or watch your child do a dangerous move in gymnastics.

    But if your heart is a slowpoke the rest of the time, your health could be at risk.

    Cardiologists consider a pulse rate of between 60 and 100 beats per minute to be normal, and over the course of adulthood, our resting heart rate usually manage to be pretty consistent.

    The vast majority of U.S. adults fall into the normal range. In a 2011 study of a decades worth of heart-rate data from 49,000 American adults, the average RHR was 72 beats per minute.

    But some of the RHRs studied were, well, slow. About 15 percent of the men and 6.9 percent of the women had an abnormally low RHR of fewer than 60 beats per minute a phenomenon known as bradycardia.

    Researchers are still trying to disentangle the many factors that may cause the condition. One thats key is the autonomic nervous system, the control center that keeps our internal organs humming so we dont have to initiate every breath or beat.

    That system has two parts: the sympathetic nervous system, which responds to perceived threats and speeds things up internally, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms our processes down.

    A large percentage of endurance athletes have RHRs as low as 40 beats per minute, and even lower when they sleep.

    That doesnt let the rest of us off the hook, however.

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