the accumulated weight of evidence linking elevated resting heart rate to a
shortened lifespan even an apparently healthy individuals makes a strong case
for it to be considered in the assessment of risk
it's got strong advantages taking one's pulses cheap takes a little time
it's understandable to people and it's something everyone can do at home to
measure their progress to become an active participant in their own health
management every ten beats per minute
increase is associated with a ten to twenty percent increase in the risk of
premature death
there seems to be a continuous increase in risk with increasing heart rate at
least four values above about a beat a second so we can just look at our
watches of our heart is beating faster than the seconds go by even more just
sitting quietly then we have to do something about it especially when we
start getting up around 80 or 90 men with no apparent heart disease evidence
with the pulse of 19 have five times higher risk of sudden cardiac death
meaning the first symptom is their last compared to those down the safety zone
living up around 90 increases heart disease risk at a level similar to
smoking if you ask most doctors though 90 is considered normal
the accepted limits of heart rate of long been set at sixty to a hundred
beats per minute
how they come up with that it was adopted as a matter of convenience just
based on the scale of the squares on EKG paper a historical accident like the
qwerty keyboard that just became the norm
sixty to a hundred doesn't even represent the bell curve and these
cardiologist measured the heart rate of 500 people conclude that
45 - 95 was a better definition of normal
rounding to 50 to 90 which a survey of leading cardiologist conferred with
concurred with
now we know that normal doesn't necessarily mean optimal but dr.
shouldn't be telling people with heart rates in their fifties that they're too
low in fact they may be right where they should be
certainly a heart rate higher than 80 should bring an alarm bell but what can
we do about it
exercise is one obvious possibility ironically make the heart go faster so
that the rest of the time your heart beats slower the public health benefits
of physical exercise especially for hard protection widely accepted and among the
many biological mechanisms proposed to account for this risk reducing effect is
autonomic nervous system regulation of the heart that's your brain's ability to
slow down the resting beat of our heart if you put people through a 12-week
aerobic conditioning program of cycling Stairmaster running on a treadmill
you can drop the resting heart rate down from about 69 to about sixty 60 three
beats per minute
drop of course you have to keep it up stop exercising your resting heart rate
goes right back up
exercise is just one way to drop our heart rate though the way to our heart
may also be through our stomach
what if instead of three months of exercise you did three months of beans a
cup a day of beans chickpeas or lentils the first randomized controlled trial of
beans for the treatment of diabetes and indeed successfully improved blood sugar
control dropping a1c levels from 7.4 26.9 but this is also the first study to
ever assess the effect of being consumption on heart rate and indeed one
of the few to determine the effective on heart rate of any dietary intervention
now this is particularly important in diabetic since having a higher resting
heart rate not only increases the risk of death just like everybody else but
also appears to predict greater risk of diabetic complications such as damage
the nerves and eyes
so how did beans do a 3.4 beat drop in heart rate just as much as the 50 hours
on a treadmill
we're not sure why beans are as powerful as exercise and bringing down
one's resting heart rate in addition to the potential direct beneficial effects
of all the good stuff and let go
you know there's also the potential displacement value of reducing some of
the animal protein foods by eating so many beans instead
regardless we should consider eating pulses for our pulse
yeah