[Music] 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 bolsas 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 10 beats
per minute increase is associated with a 10 to 20 percent increase in the risk of premature death
there seems to be a continuous increase in risk with increasing heart rate at least for values
above about a beat a second so we could just look at our watch and if our heart is beating
faster than the seconds go by even when we're 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 a pulse of 90 may have 5 times higher risk of sudden cardiac death meaning the first symptom is
their last compared to those down in the safety zone living up around 90 increases heart disease
risk at a level similar to smoking have you asked most doctors though 90 is considered normal the
accepted limits of heart rate have long been set at 60 to 100 beats per minute how'd 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 cardiologists measured the heart rate of
500 people concluded that 45 to 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 doctors shouldn't be telling people with heart rates in their 50s that
they're too low in fact they may be right where they should be certainly a heart rate higher than
80 should ring an alarm bell but what can we do about it well exercise is one obvious possibility
ironically you 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 heart 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 and running on a treadmill you can drop their resting heart rate down from about
69 to about 66 so 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 control
trial of beans for the treatment of diabetes and indeed successfully improved blood sugar control
dropping a1c levels from 7.4 to 6.9 but this is also the first study to ever assess the effect
of bean 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 diabetics 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 to the nerves and
eyes so how did beans do a three point four beat drop in heart rate just as much as the fifty 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 legumes there's also the potential display value of reducing some of the animal protein
foods by eating so many beans instead regardless we should consider eating pulses for our pulse
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