Lowering resting heart rate

[Hatamoto]

Hellew. For a fat bloke, I read Men's Health quite a lot. I follow very little of it for some reason. Anyways, was looking at it this morning and there's a bit that said if your resting heart rate is 70 or below you're something like 36% less likely to have a heart attack. Sounds fair, I thought, I'll have a crack at that.

Mine's 84 :s

So I'm thinking of interval training since I hear that does wonders for fitness, the old "run 40 seconds sprint 20 seconds" sort of ratio (I think I read of one where you do that on an exercise bike which might be friendlier to my knees) but will that help lower my resting heart rate? I do karate three times a week, would that count toward the recommended "five hours of moderate exercise a week" quota?

Advice and suggestions appreciated.

[Mitch]

The trouble with a Karate class is that it might be good exercise or it might be very gentle depending on what the senei is trying to accomplish that night.

Interval training is excellent and you can push yourself consistently(do a search here on MAP for lots of ideas).

To be honest though I think diet is an even more important part of the equation. Getting that sorted is in some ways even more important.

I believe this will all have an effect on your resting pulse rate, although someone more knowledgeable will confirm that.

I'm sure there are genetic factors as well. I'm really not that fit and carry too much weight, but my resting HR is down in the 50s for example.

Mitch

[Hatamoto]

Thanks for the reply Mitch. You're right about karate, but the bonus (if it could be called that) is that because I'm so unfit and overweight, every class pushes my endurance and heart rate, just going up and down the hall a few times with speed and power and a few strong kiai will have me out of breath, so while some classes are harder than others (last night destroyed me, did circuits of press ups, heavy bag, sparring, skipping, and weights, loved it lol) I get a moderate workout from most classes :)

I'll look up the interval stuff posted elsewhere, but could you expand a bit on how diet will affect resting heart rate? Is it to do with how complex carbs and stuff keeps metabolism up, or is it common sense stuff like eating stuff like crisps will take its toll on the heart? I think that's what's got me in the state I'm in, too much snacking on crisps and the like through my depressed days when making omelette was too much hassle :$

Thanks a lot :) *skips over to the interval training posts*

[Mitch]

Diet will largely determine how much weight you lose. I can eat or drink calories much faster and more easily than I can burn them. So, if I burn off 600 calories in an hours run at medium heart rate, I can put it all back on again with 3 pints of bitter or nearly half of it back on with a bag of crisps. That kind of exchange rate sucks doesn't it? :)

So the amount of exercise you would have to be doing to balance out a diet that is only relatively naughty is very high. See what I mean?

As a result, getting your diet sorted will make a huge difference to your weight, as well as your energy levels, both of which will feed positively into your exercise, thus helping you lose more weight, etc etc.

This will also affect your HR of course; someone with better knowledge tan me would have to answer the question as to how diet affects HR directly, I only have the layman's knowledge of bad diet contributing to heart disease etc.

Hope that helps.

Mitch

[righty]

First of all, make sure you are recording your resting heart rate as accurately as you can. Some places suggest resting for a full 20 or so minutes before taking it. And take it a few days in a row to get an average just to make sure you're not recording an outlier.

There are a huge amount of factors that can effect heart rate. Although diet is important in overall health I would think other factors are more important. Cardiovascular fitness is a big one. Stress is also another.

Take Mitch's advice and look at the interval training and keep up with the Karate. Getting a better diet will do wonders for overall health, but keep in mind the best way to measure overall healthy is not your RHR. Also taking a blood pressure test is good.

EDIT: I would take that study with a grain of salt (actually don't eat the salt, do something else with it). The study was monitoring because who were already receiving treatment for heart disease, so it's a bit difficult to determine if their raised heart rate was due to lifestyle issues (like you are worrying about) or due to the disease already present.

[Kuma]

Check your RHR every day when you first wake up. As far as lowering it, it's all a matter of building aerobic and anaerobic fitness. Caffeine, nicotine, and similar stimulants can increase it. Some people just naturally have higher RHRs than others as well, and some lower.

[Frodocious]

As Kuma says the best time to check your resting heart rate is usually first thing in the morning. However, in my case, this doesn't work, I find mine is actually lower after I've been sitting watching tv for an hour or so than it is when I wake up. A friend of mine reckons its due to mornings being such a shock to my system (I'm not a morning person at all)! :D

[Arnoo]

Frodo tried measuring it at days that you have the day off so you can wake up w/e you feel like it ?

[Frodocious]

Frodo tried measuring it at days that you have the day off so you can wake up w/e you feel like it ?

That's when I did it anyway. Apparently even late saturday mornings are too much for my delicate sensibilities!

[Arnoo]

That's when I did it anyway. Apparently even late saturday mornings are too much for my delicate sensibilities!

Or maybe you always have very exciting euh..... i mean "interesting" dreams :evil:

[jsteczko]

Start running, train cardio. Or do as you said, interval training. But be careful with intervals so you don't overtrain because then your resting heart rate may increase.

[SpikeD]

As previous posts suggest, check your HR first thing or after a good 20 minutes complete inactivity. I was recently in hospital and had the usual BP and HR checks and i noticed that my HR was lower than expected at around 62 resting, but when i shifted my position to get more comfy the HR rose to the high 80's for a few seconds before slowly dropping but didn't reach any lower than around 76 before the check was over, around 2 minutes. This suprised me as i didn't think such a simple act would elevate the heart rate so much so quickly.

[nerdette_007]

And hey, watch your hydration. When you're short on fluids, your heart has to pump faster and harder to push thick blood through your veins. Drinking adequate fluids and watching sodium intake will definitely lower your heart rate and blood pressure. So PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE CRISPS!

[Hatamoto]

Saw the doctor a couple of days back for some stuff, he checked my heart rate and he said it was "around 70" so either I'd just had coffee or something or I'm just fitter than when I made this thread, it looks like I'm doing something a bit better now :)