Heart Rate

[Jepskie]

Hi to all of you. I have a 28 month old St. Jude Mechanical Valve. I want to ask those who have an active lifestyle here. How long does it take for your heart beat to slow down to its normal rate (around 60bpm) after a rigorous exercise. Im currently playing basketball weekends and it takes me about 3 hrs for my heart to slow down from around 100 bpm after playing to around 70bpm after 3 hrs.? I would appreciate your responses. Tnx.

Joey

 

[Cooker]

My rate was around 70 to start with. It took about a year for it to settle down to 70 again but I am on Toprol. Do you not take Coumadin? I thought Pritor was a BP med.

Tom

 

[Jepskie]

yes i do take coumadin

 

[SumoRunner]

Coumadin would have no effect on the heart rate. A beta blocker would though. That functions by trimming off the top end of your HR, meaning if your max should be 180, the BB might keep it from going above 160. It doesn't do anything to the low end of your HR.

What you're really asking about is recovery time, i.e. time to return to resting HR after a hard workout. Recovery time is a function of conditioning. Maybe you haven't had enough time and foundation training to get yourself back in good enough shape yet.

I know that if I'm well rested my resting HR will be 58-60, but after a tough workout like a road race, it might only drop to 62 or 64 that day. It may take a day or two or three depending on how hard I ran before it goes back to 58. The better condition I'm in, the lower my resting HR will go. It may be 51 to 53 later in the year when I do more long distance training. Still a hard effort will keep it elevated for a day or two afterwards.

 

[kodi]

I guess I'm a little luckier than a lot of fit athletes. My norman resting is 38 to 40 BPM. My highest level of exertion is when I run track intervals and get my HR in the low to mid-150s (my max is somewhere around 170). During my rest interval I'll drop to around 100 usually within 2 minutes. The following morning my RHR will most likely be around 42. If I do a normal workout, ie. running 6 to 8 miles at my current training pace, I'm back to normal RHR the next morning. The only medications I take are Crestor and one daily aspirin. As of yesterday (Aug 5), I'm now 10 months post surgery. I am also one of the older athletes that post here at the age of 69.

 

[67walkon]

Kodi, how long did it take your HR to get back down to those levels? My resting HR was in the mid 40's pre-surgery and now is in the high 60's; I'm hoping it will come back down over time, but all I can do is wait and see.

 

[MarkU]

My HR was in the mid-70's prior to my AVR, my blood presure was borderline pre-hypertension, and I was suffering from left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH).
Three years post-op, after changing my focus from weightlifting to aerobic exercise (triathlon training) and watching my diet more closely, my LVH had completely reversed itself, my resting HR was down to 42-44 BPM, and my BP was down around 116/70.
I think I have been extremely lucky the way things have turned out and feel like I have been given a second chance in life since my AVR.
Mark

 

[kodi]

Kodi, how long did it take your HR to get back down to those levels? My resting HR was in the mid 40's pre-surgery and now is in the high 60's; I'm hoping it will come back down over time, but all I can do is wait and see.

67walkon, It was erratic at first, sometimes it would be in the high 40s and low 50s but now it's back to the 38-40 range fairly consistently. I think it was somewhere around 6 months when it started to level off. That was about the same time I started to build my base running mileage and extending my longer runs. I think this probably coincides with MarkU mentioned in his last post; once he started more aerobic training his dropped.

BTW, MarkU, good progress just keep it up and the running will come along. In my experiences with many triathlons, my challenge was to complete the swim, make up time on the bike and hang on in the run. It was always a little disappointing that my runs were never really good since that's my primary sport. I'm planning on one in Nov; haven't done one in 5 or 6 years.