Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Health & Fitness => Topic started by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 11 March, 2021, 08:13:00 am
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Just a quick question about exercise, age and heart rate.
All my life I have been active: cycling, sailing, swimming, although never competitively. Until recently I've not monitored anything like heart rate.
Now having taken to Zwift I bought a Wahoo tickr monitor that I have been using a few months. I like to do quite challenging rides, rarely over 2 hours for convenience. I am a 2.4 to 3.2 w/kg cyclist so very ordinary.
At 67 the common formula says my max heart rate should be 153 but using the tickr I find myself frequently in the mid 160s and getting a max in the low 170s if I really go for it. In the gym, pre-covid, I was aware of the same stats on their machines.
In 2005 I was hospitalised after being knocked unconscious by a carelessly opened car door. They were very concerned about my condition not least because my unconscious heart rate was very low. However, I have always had a low resting rate, ranging from 47 down to 42 (about what it is now).
What I would like to know is whether I should worry about getting a higher maximum than accepted wisdom or just accept we are all different?
Last year I was checked over in A&E quite thoroughly after a minor injury (to my ribs) and was told I was in very good shape otherwise. I have been told my blood pressure is on the low side usually but it's not problematic.
Any comments, advice would be of interest.
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The max HR age formula has statistical significance at the population level. But at the individual level, it is meaningless. Some will be under the figure it comes up with, some over it like you. As to resting HR your numbers are not unusual for people active all their life. The 60 bpm resting HR is derived for a sedentary population sample.
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We have recently discussed this in topics about running. I am 58, have a resting hr of 48 and last time I did a stress test recorded a maximum of 186. I use a Garmin chest strap when running to record my hr.
Clearly the formula does not fit all and to be honest I'd expect this to be the case. There are other formulae too but again, I don't expect a one size fits all scenario.
The stress test that I did was to go for a run at a moderate pace for 5km then really pick it up and push as hard as I could for the sixth and last km. It's clearly not as scientifically robust as being in a lab on a treadmill with all sorts of monitors blinking and beepers beeping but it's better than a random formula in my opinion. I felt absutely no negative effects afterwards.
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Individual max HR and resting HR are partly down to fitness level, partly down to genetics. There is no formula for working out the max HR of an individual.
If you work out your own max HR properly (ie not using a formula), you can use that as the basis for training zones (as percentages of your max HR) that will indicate - though not entirely reliably - your level of effort while exercising. (The reason HR is not a reliable indicator of effort is because it can be affected by things like fatigue, eg at the end of a long audax.)
Comparing your own figures to anyone else's is a waste of time.
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Asterix. You are healthy! do not worry.
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Thanks all. I shall worry no more! :thumbsup:
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Individual max HR and resting HR are partly down to fitness level, partly down to genetics. There is no formula for working out the max HR of an individual.
If you work out your own max HR properly (ie not using a formula), you can use that as the basis for training zones (as percentages of your max HR) that will indicate - though not entirely reliably - your level of effort while exercising. (The reason HR is not a reliable indicator of effort is because it can be affected by things like fatigue, eg at the end of a long audax.)
Comparing your own figures to anyone else's is a waste of time.
This.
I don't think there's any way to work out your own max HR other than measuring it. I hit 181 recently. Which I feel is lower than I should be able to do. But I've not had reason to really push it since. My resting heart rate is "low" on a population level, at 59bpm. But compared to you lot, apparently relatively high.
I think the more interesting metric is how fast it can go from one end to the other. If you push out 180, how quickly does it drop to 60 when you stop?
J
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I think the more interesting metric is how fast it can go from one end to the other. If you push out 180, how quickly does it drop to 60 when you stop?
J
I have to be careful with that. I can barely hit 180 but my resting is less than 50. I faint if it drops too quickly- presumably because of blood pressure rather than HR dropping.
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I believe it is entirely normal for a fit person who does significant amounts of cardio exercise to have a higher maximum, and lower resting, heart rate than the general population. I am 65, and my numbers are very similar to yours, Asterix. As a professional pilot, my heart has received fairly close monitoring over the last 45 years. During a bout of pneumonia in 1985, my sleeping heart rate was recorded as around 28-30 (which caused much consternation at the time), and I went through some very close monitoring after contracting viral pericarditis in 2015, including multiple Holter tests (24 hr recording), which confirmed that, while asleep, my HR was regularly well below 40.
One side effect of having been extremely fit for such a long time is that the heart, enlarged by decades of exercise, becomes flabby (like the rest of me!) when the exercise reduces. In my case, that resulted in an occasionally ectopic heart beat as the electronics start going a bit haywire. Again, that was very closely monitored every six months until I retired, during which time I learned that holding one's breath during an ECG stabilises things magically! My consultant cardiologist declared that, were I a regular patient, he would have been 'spectacularly uninterested' in the symptoms, but warned me that 'athlete's heart syndrome' is a real thing which applied to anyone who exercises long term (regardless of lack of talent) and can mean that one is more, not less, likely to experience a heart event as one relaxes into old age.
In other words, we are condemned to exercise until we drop! A mantra which I've steadfastly ignored during lockdown and need to adopt again...
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I believe it is entirely normal for a fit person who does significant amounts of cardio exercise to have a higher maximum, and lower resting, heart rate than the general population. I am 65, and my numbers are very similar to yours, Asterix. As a professional pilot, my heart has received fairly close monitoring over the last 45 years. During a bout of pneumonia in 1985, my sleeping heart rate was recorded as around 28-30 (which caused much consternation at the time), and I went through some very close monitoring after contracting viral pericarditis in 2015, including multiple Holter tests (24 hr recording), which confirmed that, while asleep, my HR was regularly well below 40.
One side effect of having been extremely fit for such a long time is that the heart, enlarged by decades of exercise, becomes flabby (like the rest of me!) when the exercise reduces. In my case, that resulted in an occasionally ectopic heart beat as the electronics start going a bit haywire. Again, that was very closely monitored every six months until I retired, during which time I learned that holding one's breath during an ECG stabilises things magically! My consultant cardiologist declared that, were I a regular patient, he would have been 'spectacularly uninterested' in the symptoms, but warned me that 'athlete's heart syndrome' is a real thing which applied to anyone who exercises long term (regardless of lack of talent) and can mean that one is more, not less, likely to experience a heart event as one relaxes into old age.
In other words, we are condemned to exercise until we drop! A mantra which I've steadfastly ignored during lockdown and need to adopt again...
I remember that this was a major problem for Steve Redgrave who had to continue exercising at almost pre Olympic levels after retirement and wean down to normal over 6-9 months. He also developed Type 2 diabetes and one has to wonder if his energy intake stressed his pancreas or changed his cellular resistance.
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I always find this discussion odd - even in my early 20s when very fit my resting heart rate never went below 50, or got it above 200. For a while (late 20s) before I was diagnosed hyperthyroid it was around 120!
Looking at the last few years cycling data, it seems my approx HR range is between 55 and 180 (in my 40s).
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I always find this discussion odd - even in my early 20s when very fit my resting heart rate never went below 50, or got it above 200. For a while (late 20s) before I was diagnosed hyperthyroid it was around 120!
Looking at the last few years cycling data, it seems my approx HR range is between 55 and 180 (in my 40s).
You fit almost exactly the average max heart rate of (220 - age) which gives 200 for a 20 year old and 180 for a 40 year old. It is an average and can vary from person to person by +/- 10% or more, just like your height and equally unlinked to level of training.
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GCN covered this topic quite well a little while back. It is well worth a watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ODB9zIywM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-ODB9zIywM)
The take away was basically, decades of being fit confers such incredible health benefits compared to the sedentary norm: And that incidents of over-training harm were fairly rare, and in most cases had red flags that should prompt action. Especially as it applies to enthusiastic amateurs.
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I remember that this was a major problem for Steve Redgrave who had to continue exercising at almost pre Olympic levels after retirement and wean down to normal over 6-9 months. He also developed Type 2 diabetes and one has to wonder if his energy intake stressed his pancreas or changed his cellular resistance.
IIRC he was diabetic while competing, there was something in a DiabetesUK magazine that we got for being part funded by them where he was discussing how he would do his BGs while rowing.
Diagnosed 1997: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/celebrities/steve-redgrave.html
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I'm aware of 3 formulae for max heart rate. Here they are:
The original one, thought up by Polar, is 220-age. This yields the lowest value and so is beloved of cardiologists the world over.
Supposedly more exact for over-40s: 207 - age * 0.7.
As above but more exact according to some: 211 - age * 0.64.
I'm 74, so the doc's favourite yields 146, the second formula gives 155 and the third 162. Judging from what I did yesterday, I should use #3, but it amuses me more to plug the first one into my stats prog and watch the figures turn red.
To be fair, my doc says that it doesn't matter how high it goes as long as it comes down to a reasonable level once you stop pushing.
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I'm aware of 3 formulae for max heart rate. Here they are:
The original one, thought up by Polar, is 220-age. This yields the lowest value and so is beloved of cardiologists the world over.
Supposedly more exact for over-40s: 207 - age * 0.7.
As above but more exact according to some: 211 - age * 0.64.
I'm 74, so the doc's favourite yields 146, the second formula gives 155 and the third 162. Judging from what I did yesterday, I should use #3, but it amuses me more to plug the first one into my stats prog and watch the figures turn red.
To be fair, my doc says that it doesn't matter how high it goes as long as it comes down to a reasonable level once you stop pushing.
This study - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7523886/#b14-ijes-13-7-1242 - looks at 9 formulae that have been proposed and decides that fox’s original (220 - age) is the best overall for predicting max hr, but rather than predicting, just measuring it is probably best.
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I remember that this was a major problem for Steve Redgrave who had to continue exercising at almost pre Olympic levels after retirement and wean down to normal over 6-9 months. He also developed Type 2 diabetes and one has to wonder if his energy intake stressed his pancreas or changed his cellular resistance.
Indeed, but the important thing to takeaway is that you don't have to be an Olympic athlete to be susceptible. Cycling a significant amount at relatively high intensity over many years - which probably covers most YACF readers - gives fantastic health benefits, but there are possible downsides too. Being aware of the issue and not relapsing into total lack of activity is probably fine for most of us, and it's something I would probably never have known if I hadn't been under fairly close supervision. But it's more of an interesting anecdote in the context of the OP than a dire warning of the consequences of exercise!
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IIRC he was diabetic while competing, there was something in a DiabetesUK magazine that we got for being part funded by them where he was discussing how he would do his BGs while rowing.
Diagnosed 1997: https://www.diabetes.co.uk/celebrities/steve-redgrave.html
Extremely tenuous claim to fame - I know the editor of the Diabetes UK magazine, who did that interview.
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Diabetes UK, by the by, is a different organization to diabetes.co.uk.
My heart rate naps down to the low forties, which terrified my GP the other year, but it's normal if you do regular exercise (that says something about the average Brit's attitude to exercise if they're shocked by that, I'm not exactly an athlete, but I do full-on aerobic exercise every day).
Apropos of nothing, there was a study a while back in Dublin that found that people with the surname of Brady were statistically more likely to suffer from bradycardia. Often used to illustrate the danger of statistical assumptions.
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Diabetes UK, by the by, is a different organization to diabetes.co.uk.
So it is. I know my friend has interviewed Steve Redgrave, but maybe it wasn't the same interview as FE linked to.
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It's a bit confusing, Diabetes UK (the national diabetes charity, aka the British Diabetic Association) is diabetes.org.uk. The other one (diabetes.co.uk) is a forum and patient group.
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I remember that this was a major problem for Steve Redgrave who had to continue exercising at almost pre Olympic levels after retirement and wean down to normal over 6-9 months. He also developed Type 2 diabetes and one has to wonder if his energy intake stressed his pancreas or changed his cellular resistance.
Cycling a significant amount at relatively high intensity over many years - which probably covers most YACF readers - gives fantastic health benefits, but there are possible downsides too.
I don’t know about others but I don’t accumulate significant durations at high intensity. My long rides is mostly sitting in my HR Z2.
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Minor thing.
I am a 2.4 to 3.2 w/kg cyclist so very ordinary.
That's not that ordinary. Most of your average Joes and Janes would really struggle with that. Ordinary for a cyclist? Maybe - but I bet there are some awesome audaxers out there who couldn't ride for long at 3w/kg.
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Minor thing.
I am a 2.4 to 3.2 w/kg cyclist so very ordinary.
That's not that ordinary. Most of your average Joes and Janes would really struggle with that. Ordinary for a cyclist? Maybe - but I bet there are some awesome audaxers out there who couldn't ride for long at 3w/kg.
I dream of being able to do 3w/kg...
Managed to hit 175bpm peak, with 171bpm for 5 mins on todays ride. Avereage 142bpm for 97 minutes.
J
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Minor thing.
I am a 2.4 to 3.2 w/kg cyclist so very ordinary.
That's not that ordinary. Most of your average Joes and Janes would really struggle with that. Ordinary for a cyclist? Maybe - but I bet there are some awesome audaxers out there who couldn't ride for long at 3w/kg.
Glad you said it, Chris - I was feeling very inadequate. 3.2w/kg for me is over 300W, and that ain't happening for long!
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My resting heart rate is around 95 and lets not discuss my blood preassure.
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Minor thing.
I am a 2.4 to 3.2 w/kg cyclist so very ordinary.
That's not that ordinary. Most of your average Joes and Janes would really struggle with that. Ordinary for a cyclist? Maybe - but I bet there are some awesome audaxers out there who couldn't ride for long at 3w/kg.
Glad you said it, Chris - I was feeling very inadequate. 3.2w/kg for me is over 300W, and that ain't happening for long!
According to TrainingPeaks, I managed 320W for a minute on 18th February, which is depressingly close to 3W/Kg for me at that time. I remember it. It was fucking grim.
The thought of being able to cruise along at 3w/kg, chatting with your mates? Yeah right, if you're in your 20s maybe*...
* ETA: or weigh 70Kg. That would help too.
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At peak Audax fitness in my 40s I'd regularly go up to around 195 on climbs. I did a VO2 max test as part of a research study at a Uni, it was around 217 I got to before the grad students decided it wasn't good to continue (and they'd run out of gas collection bags as they expected me to finish well before that). I'd drop rapidly to a resting low 40s.
Nowadays I'm nowhere near as fit, but can still hit mid-180s with little trouble. I haven't tried maxing it out though, and haven't pushed to the feeeling weird and faint level. Resting is now high 40s.
Interestingly, talking to my early-20s son, he also hit >210 when doing a VO2 max as part of a study at his uni. He was heavily into mountain biking then, but with a build more in line with a drinking student than a racing snake. I guess that's the genetics.
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My resting is 49 currently but I have a significant pectus excavatum so suspect my stroke volume may be a little less than ideal.
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Under what conditions do you measure your heart rate? Is it first thing in the morning horizontal in bed? Sat up in bed? In front of the tv watching Corrie or Eastenders?
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I use a Garmin Venu or Vivoactive to monitor my HR 24/7. My resting HR during the day is lowest while vegging in bed trying to raise the motivation to get up, but it's not so different from my sitting resting HR while working at the computer. A particularly controversial post on YACF might get me up to 60 while sitting, but it would have to be something by HF!
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Under what conditions do you measure your heart rate? Is it first thing in the morning horizontal in bed? Sat up in bed? In front of the tv watching Corrie or Eastenders?
I've had some sort of monitor since around 1990.
I set it to alarm at 40 as a lower limit and it obliged at 38/39 when I was sleeping after my dawn commute.
I've recorded 192 on a short Glasgow morning commute when I was about 32 and 170+ on long, fast commutes in the mid 1990s, when I was around 36 years old.
Recent recordings are around 50, sitting calmly at 2am.
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Under what conditions do you measure your heart rate? Is it first thing in the morning horizontal in bed? Sat up in bed? In front of the tv watching Corrie or Eastenders?
resting heart rate is lowest during sleep or just after waking up (mine is high 30ies), during the day resting heart rates goes up a bit due to more active brain, food needing to be digested etc (mine stays around mid 40).
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Under what conditions do you measure your heart rate? Is it first thing in the morning horizontal in bed? Sat up in bed? In front of the tv watching Corrie or Eastenders?
resting heart rate is lowest during sleep or just after waking up (mine is high 30ies), during the day resting heart rates goes up a bit due to more active brain, food needing to be digested etc (mine stays around mid 40).
I clearly have a very active brain
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates?
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates?
My ex MiL (ex as in I'm no longer married to her daughter, not ex as in no longer on this mortal coil) had a HR of 35, and she ended up with a pace-maker; apparently "Too low" can be for values other than 0.
Talking of night time HR - I had a massive spike in mine the other night, over 140, from a baseline of around 60. I've been having some tortuous dreams recently - I guess that one was a doozy.
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Meh :P 140...I got to around 200 and screaming out loud and thrashing about.
No clue what was going on in the night terror to cause that.
My cortizone levels are quite high too.
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Low HR levels really upset anaesthetists. They tend to give drugs to speed it up just so that the beeps are in a comfortable range
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates?
We are born that way.
I saw an ECG done on my (non-athlete) mother when she was in her late teens. Her heart rate was below 50.
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It's a bit confusing, Diabetes UK (the national diabetes charity, aka the British Diabetic Association) is diabetes.org.uk. The other one (diabetes.co.uk) is a forum and patient group.
Considering I've not worked on diabetes for around 8 years now, it wasn't that interview, I only shared that for the date of diagnosis on it and the other interesting info.
The article in the DiabetesUK mag was 3 or 4 pages worth.
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates
Years of practice. And having the right parents, probably.
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Low HR levels really upset anaesthetists. They tend to give drugs to speed it up just so that the beeps are in a comfortable range
See my pneumonia story above. I was in the Canache Hospital in the Falkland islands at the time, and probably the only relief of boredom available, but I think every member of staff in the place was beside my bed when they woke me up to tell me I was beating too slowly. Given that being awake was painful, I was not best pleased and my HR increased to something that didn't give them palpitations but was uncomfortably fast for me. I think I may have been a bit grumpy.
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I feed my resting HR into my NHS digital record. Probably add in a value, together with blood pressure, once a month. If they bother to look, at some point in the future, should I be in for something. They’ll have a good picture of what my normal values look like, month to month, year to year.
With all the fitbits and people measuring resting HR daily. I’m surprised there has been no NHS effort to collect a large sample size of resting heart rates together with age, gender. So the outdated view on what normal normal resting HR ranges are, can be updated.
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As for measuring resting HR. I do it sat down just after I’ve got up, before eating or drinking everything. I measure over 2 mins, as I’m measuring HRV as well.
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I think I have a little the reverse issue to Asterix. I'm a few years younger than you, but can't get my heart rate above about 140, and that's on a good day. This is generally going flat out on Zwift. But my resting rate is low, like others here, and so I think is my blood pressure.
I've had a heart bypass, so the drugs will have some effect. List Asterix, I took little interest until recently (when I had the op, basically), so I don't have historical data. But I've never been able to push the rate up on hills and so on. I just plod, even in time trials. So my guess is that maybe I've always been a bit like that. I do realise that there's more to hill climbing than heart rate; it's just that it doesn't seem much different now from before.
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My resting heart rate is around 95 and lets not discuss my blood preassure.
If I go for a flattish walk or a recovery ride my peak HR is below 95 ;D Just shows we are all different.
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I feed my resting HR into my NHS digital record. Probably add in a value, together with blood pressure, once a month. If they bother to look, at some point in the future, should I be in for something. They’ll have a good picture of what my normal values look like, month to month, year to year.
With all the fitbits and people measuring resting HR daily. I’m surprised there has been no NHS effort to collect a large sample size of resting heart rates together with age, gender. So the outdated view on what normal normal resting HR ranges are, can be updated.
Never heard of this facility, and just looked on the NHS app to see if I can find any info. Nothing seen. Is this a generally available process?
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I feed my resting HR into my NHS digital record. Probably add in a value, together with blood pressure, once a month. If they bother to look, at some point in the future, should I be in for something. They’ll have a good picture of what my normal values look like, month to month, year to year.
With all the fitbits and people measuring resting HR daily. I’m surprised there has been no NHS effort to collect a large sample size of resting heart rates together with age, gender. So the outdated view on what normal normal resting HR ranges are, can be updated.
Never heard of this facility, and just looked on the NHS app to see if I can find any info. Nothing seen. Is this a generally available process?
My GP surgery use the AirMD app , so it may not be NHS wide. Last year I was due a blood pressure check. (Standard thing due to my age apparently). But as they aren’t doing those (at surgery) during pandemic I was asked to do it at home (if I could) and submit readings via the app.
Ah looked on NHS App. Ah it doesn’t show there. That’s a shame as I feel the NHS having a series of reading that give a baseline for a patient would be really useful. If they don’t have a baseline it’s hard for them to say whether anything looks abnormal, for instance HR or blood pressure. They can only go by their accepted population norms and the opinion of a patient. If the patient is in a position to give an opinion.
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Thanks for checking, Phil. At an appropriate time, I may raise it with my GP that lots of 'athletes' (for want of a better category in my case) have a huge amount of health data which could be really useful background info.
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Do you mean Airmid (Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=px.mw.android.aihealth.patient.live.production) and Apple (https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/airmid-uk/id1472749780))? I do sign in to my surgery to order prescriptions etc, and they've had an announcement up on their site for a bit that they are using that app. So I've just installed it to take a look.
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Do you mean Airmid (Android (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=px.mw.android.aihealth.patient.live.production) and Apple (https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/airmid-uk/id1472749780))? I do sign in to my surgery to order prescriptions etc, and they've had an announcement up on their site for a bit that they are using that app. So I've just installed it to take a look.
Sorry yes AirMid is the app our GP surgery uses. Allows you to submit all sorts of readings. I’ve also added my complete vaccine history to my record as the digital record they had stopped at 1993.
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates?
We are born that way.
I saw an ECG done on my (non-athlete) mother when she was in her late teens. Her heart rate was below 50.
Oh well.
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How the flock do you guys have such low rates?
We are born that way.
I saw an ECG done on my (non-athlete) mother when she was in her late teens. Her heart rate was below 50.
Oh well.
It really is luck of the draw, I think. It's probably true that most who are drawn to athletic hobbies are relatively naturally suited to them, and have hearts that can shovel a lot of highly oxygenated blood reasonably efficiently. But not all, of course. I'm sure that a comprehensive study will find some exceptional athletes who have relatively high resting HRs but can still deliver the requisite amount of good stuff to the appropriate parts of the body at the right time. But it would also have to be true that, without the training they'd need to be good at what they do, their heart rates would be a lot higher.
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I'm adding anxiety levels as a hope that this affects the heart rate and pressure.