Suppose you’re a trained athlete who has an average heart rate of 50 beats per minute, will you still see it as a perfectly healthy heart rate? There are certain situations or conditions that influence a person’s heart beat, such as age, exercise and fitness level.
With infants for example, 120-180 bpm is considered a healthy heart rate. But for a 5-year old preschooler, a healthy heart rate falls within 80-120 bpm. In older people, the heart rate can go as low as 50 bpm because of the inevitable changes in the heart muscles as it grows older. You may have observed that 60-100 bpm may not absolutely mean a healthy heart rate for an entirely different age group.
What Happens During Physical Exercise?
During physical exercise, the heart pumps way a lot faster and any type of workout will demand the muscles to move. The muscles of the body will need to use more oxygen as a result of the increased movement. This higher demand for oxygen makes the heart work double time so that it can deliver adequate amounts of oxygen-rich blood to the muscle tissues. Therefore, a heart rate of 120 bpm during exercise can be considered as a healthy heart rate.
If an individual works out regularly, his or her heart becomes a lot stronger and this makes it capable of pumping much more blood to the rest of the body with fewer beats per minute. Because of this increased strength, the heart becomes capable of sustaining intense work outs even at a much slower rate. This is why well-conditioned athletes who have a low heart rate of 40-70 bpm are still considered as having a healthy heart rate.
So do you have a healthy heart rate zone? Any heart rate that falls below or above 60-100 bpm can be regarded as a healthy heart rate provided that the body is getting the adequate amount of blood that it requires.
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