Resting Heart Rate Chart By Age And Gender
A resting heart rate chart shows the normal range for resting heart rate by age and physical condition. Athletes, those who are physically active, tend to have a lower RHR than those who are less active.
The average heart rate generally increases with age. But many factors determine your heart rate at any moment. These factors include the time of day, your activity level, and your stress level.
How Long Does It Take To Lower Resting Heart Rate
It takes about 12 weeks to lower your resting heart rate. Studies show that you can lower your resting heart rate with diet and exercise in 12 weeks.
A low resting heart rate means that your circulatory system is efficient. Diet and exercise will make your body more efficient by asking for more work from it.
Your body however, needs time to adapt to the changes you make. These changes include enlarging your heart, increasing red blood cells, building more capillaries, and increasing mitochondria in your muscles.
Alternatively, you can lower your resting heart rate at any moment by slowing your breathing or with meditation. Practice breathing deeply and slowly and your resting heart rate will slow more quickly in response to stress or exercise.
What Is A Normal Exercising Heart Rate
To determine what a normal exercising heart rate is, you first need to determine your age-predicted maximal heart rate. Here is the generalized equation for predicting maximal heart rate in healthy adults:
HRmax = 208
For example, a 20-year-old person, the age-predicted maximal heart rate would be 194 beats per minute and for a 65-year-old person, the age-predicted maximal heart rate would be 163 beats per minute. A simplified age-predicted maximal heart rate equation is commonly used, but it overestimates maximal heart rate in young adults and increasingly underestimates the maximal heart rate in older adults.
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Heart Rate Zone : 8090% Of Hrmax
Heart rate zone 4 is where the going gets tough. Youll be breathing hard and working aerobically.
If you train at this intensity, youll improve your speed endurance. Your body will get better at using carbohydrates for energy and youll be able to withstand higher levels of lactic acid in your blood for longer.
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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 you’re not exercising. If you are sitting or lying down and you’re calm, relaxed and aren’t 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.
What’s 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
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Does Your Heart Have A Maximum Number Of Beats
The maximum number of lifetime heartbeats for humans is about 3 billion. But you wont die when you reach a set number of heartbeats. Heartbeats, however, are a marker of your metabolic rate. The faster your metabolic rate , the shorter your lifespan.
For example:
The total number of heartbeats per lifetime is amazingly similar across all mammals. For example, a mouse has a heart rate of 500 to 600 beats per minute but lives less than two years. At the other extreme, a Galápagos tortoise has a heart rate of about six beats per minute and has a life expectancy of 177 years.
Do the math and the heart of a mouse beats 100 times faster than that of a tortoise. But a tortoise lives 100 times longer than a mouse. Humans, however, have about 60 bpm and have about 3 billion heartbeats per lifetime.
What To Expect At The Doctors
Your doctor may use a variety of diagnostic tools to help diagnose your condition, including:
- Electrocardiogram. Also referred to as an ECG or EKG, this diagnostic tool uses small electrodes to record the electrical activity of your heart. Your doctor can use the information collected to determine if heart abnormalities are contributing to your condition.
- Imaging tests. Imaging can be used to assess if there are any structural abnormalities in your heart that may be contributing to your condition. Possible imaging tests can include echocardiogram, CT scan, and MRI scan.
- Laboratory tests. Your doctor may order blood tests to determine if your condition is caused by something such as an electrolyte imbalance or thyroid disease.
Once a diagnosis is made, your doctor will work with you to develop a plan to treat and manage your condition.
Depending on the findings from the diagnostic tests, your doctor may refer you to a cardiologist. A cardiologist specializes in treating and preventing diseases of the heart and circulatory system.
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What Do My Heart Rate Numbers Mean
Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats each minute when youre not active. The normal range is between 50 and 100 beats per minute. If your resting heart rate is above 100, its called tachycardia below 60, and its called bradycardia. Increasingly, experts pin an ideal resting heart rate at between 50 to 70 beats per minute.
If you want to find out your resting heart rate, pick a time when youre not active, find your pulse, count how many times it beats in 30 seconds, and then double that number. You may want to check it several times throughout the day, or over a week, to average out the number and to look for any irregularities.
Resting heart rates can change from person to person and throughout the day, influenced by everything from your mood to your environment. It rises when youre excited or anxious, and sometimes in response to smoking cigarettes or drinking coffee. More athletic people tend to have lower heart rates.
What The Experts Do
Monitor Heart Rate for Motivation
For Johns Hopkins cardiologist Michael Blaha, M.D., M.P.H., most workoutstake place on an elliptical trainer in his home. His machine has electrodeson which he can place his hands to automatically see his heart rate. Itgives me a sense of how hard Im working, he says.
Blaha also uses his targeted heart rate to guide the course that heprogrammed into the machine, so that he works up to where he wants to be interms of exertion. Knowing your target heart rate and trying to achieve itcan be very motivating, he says.
Stay on Top of Your Heart Health
If you have a new or existing heart problem, it’s vital to see a doctor. Our heart health checklist can help you determine when to seek care.
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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:
How Low Is Too Low For A Resting Heart Rate
Generally speaking, a persons resting heart rate is normal if its between 60 and 100 beats per minute, says Dr. Brian Mikolasko of Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston. There are a ton of different factors that play into what it is for each individual, from fitness level to age and environment.
The standard resting heart rate window actually varies the most in young children. Up to 1 month, heart rate ranges from 70 to 190 beats per minute. The upper limit of that range declines slowly until age 9, when the range is sits between 70 and 110 beats per minute. From 10 years old and beyond, the window sits constant between 60 and 100 beats per minute.
Whereas a resting heart rate of 42 or even 38 beats per minute can be typical for a well-trained endurance runner or triathlete, that would be pretty low for someone who is a casual exerciser. Best measured before you start moving around first thing in the morning, a resting heart rate is much different than what youll see during exercise.
Because the normal range of a resting heart rate is between 60 to 100 bpm, a resting heart rate under 60 beats per minute is considered slow, often referred to as bradycardia.
It is not unusual for healthy people involved in endurance activities to develop a bradycardia based on the increased vagal tone from training that suppresses heart rate, says William O. Roberts, M.D., a professor in the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota.
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How Do You Know Your Resting Heart Rate
You can easily check your own RHR by taking your pulse from your wrist or neck. Tracking your RHR over time can give you a better sense of what is your normal range for RHR.
You should check your pulse at the same time everyday because your RHR naturally varies throughout the day.
Checking it at the same time everyday will give you a better sense of your range for RHR.
Health experts suggest checking your RHR first thing in the morning before you even get out of bed, have caffeine or exercise.
How Dangerous Is An Artificially Slow Heart Rate
The finding that people with a resting heart rate of less than 50 bpm on heart slowing medications are 2.4 times more likely to die prematurely, is a new finding. For these people, the slow heart rate may be a sign that they are on too much heart medication.
Common medications that artificially slow the resting heart rate include beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, digoxin, and anti-arrhythmics. If your heart rate is artificially slowed to less than 50 bpm, please speak with your physician to see ifyou should be on less heart medications.
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How Do I Get My Heart Rate In The Target Zone
When you work out, are you doing too much or not enough? Theres a simple way to know: Your target heart rate helps you hit the bullseye so you can get max benefit from every step, swing and squat. Even if youre not a gym rat or elite athlete, knowing your heart rate can help you track your health and fitness level.
How To Monitor Your Heart Rate
Outside of directions from a physician, how often you want to check your heart rate is an individual choice that largely depends on how useful the information is to you, experts said.
Rather than focusing on the fixed heart rate number at a specific moment, it may be better to keep track of trends and observe how your heart rate is changing, said Thomas Allison, director of the Sports Cardiology Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
If you see rather persistent trends in your heart rate up or down, or you see sudden change, that might be of concern, he said, particularly if youre not feeling well.
It may also be helpful to monitor your heart rate if youre starting a new fitness program to gauge improvement and make sure you arent overdoing it, Allison said. We know that with training, with cardiovascular conditioning, your heart rate gets slower, and so you can track your improvement there, he said. If youre over training and working too hard and not getting enough rest, you might see the heart rate drift back up again.
During exercise, Khan said she encourages people to get their heart rate up to at least 50 percent of their estimated maximum heart rate, which is 220 minus your age.
But dont obsess over your heart rate, Allison said. It may give you a false degree of concern or a false sense of security, he said.
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Female Resting Heart Rate Chart: Average Bpm By Age
Normal resting heart rate for women increases slightly with age, and is also generally a few BPM higher than the average for men.
The graphic above shows the average resting heart rate of female and male WHOOP members ages 20-50. As you can clearly see, women normally have a slightly higher RHR than men do .
There is also usually a minor increase in RHR with age between a persons 20s and 50s . The normal bpm for women in their 20s is about 58, but by their 40s its closer to 60.
Two Caveats To Keep In Mind
If you notice a change in your resting heart rate but none of the scenarios above seem plausible, there are two other factors that may be playing a part: age and medication.
Resting Heart Rate Increases With AgeMost of the time your RHR can be modified. Unfortunately, as you get older, your RHR tends to increase. To reduce the impact that aging can have on your cardiovascular system, you can help maximize your results by exercising within your target HR zone to help lower your resting heart rate.
Medication Affects Resting Heart RateChanges in your resting heart rate can also result from over-the-counter or prescription medications. Medications to treat asthma, depression, obesity, and attention deficit disorder tend to increase your RHR. However, medications prescribed for hypertension and heart conditions typically decrease your resting heart rate.
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for medical diagnosis or treatment. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or condition. Always check with your doctor before changing your diet, altering your sleep habits, taking supplements, or starting a new fitness routine.
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What Is An Irregular Pulse
An irregular pulse is when the heart doesn’t beat in a regular, steady rhythm. This is also called an irregular heart rate or an arrhythmia.
If your heart rate is irregular, you may notice that your pulse:
- seems irregular or is ‘jumping around’
- is racing, even when you’re at rest
- seems unusually slow some or most of the time.
What Your Heart Rate Says About Your Cardiovascular Health
Your heart is responsible for pumping blood and oxygen throughout your body and if youre having heart troubles, the rest of your body will be impacted too.
A higher resting heart rate can be dangerous because it taxes the heart, making it work harder. This is linked to a higher risk of heart disease and death, just like high blood pressure or high cholesterol. Resting heart rates that near or exceed 100 should be brought to the attention of your doctor.
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Start With Resting Heart Rate
You should test your resting heart rate before measuring your training heart rate. The best time to test your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning, before youve gotten out of bed ideally after a good nights sleep.
Using the technique described above, determine your resting heart rate and record this number to share with your doctor. You might try checking your resting heart rate for a few days in a row to confirm that your measurement is accurate.
According to the American Heart Association , the average resting heart rate is between 60 and 100 beats per minute. However, this number may rise with age and is usually lower for people with higher physical fitness levels. The AHA notes that physically active people, such as athletes, may have a resting heart rate as low as 40 beats per minute.
Can Resting Heart Rate Be Too High
Can resting heart rate be too high?
As mentioned, normal heart rate can range between 60 to 100 beats per minute. So, if your resting heart rate is consistently higher than 100, do you need to be worried?
“The more beats your heart has to take on a regular basis, the more strain it places on your heart over time. A resting heart rate regularly above 100 beats per minute is called tachycardia, which can place you at an increased risk of heart disease, and even death if your heart rate climbs high enough,” warns Dr. Chebrolu.
This means that it’s incredibly important to talk to your doctor if you’re resting heart rate is consistently high. He or she can run the tests and bloodwork needed to assess your overall heart health.
Your doctor can also recommend lifestyle changes that may help lower your resting heart rate, including:
- Getting regular exercise
- Regularly practicing relaxation techniques, such as yoga and meditation
- Losing excess weight
- Maintaining healthy choices and modifying your cardiovascular risk factors
- Avoiding certain prescription and over-the-counter medications that can affect your heart rate
- Avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol use
“In particular, starting an exercise program can help you decrease your resting heart rate up to one beat per minute for every week or so that you train with reductions in resting heart rate, over time, ranging from 10 to 12 beats per minute,” adds Dr. Chebrolu.
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