Heartbeats could become a new measure of healthy exercise standards, expert says
A new study has found inactive people have about 11,500 more heartbeats per day than their more athletic counterparts.
Are you wasting heartbeats by exercising when you could have a longer life if they were saved up? It sounds tempting in theory but new Australian research shows the heartbeat trade-off tips towards those who do at least moderate exercise because they can reduce their daily number of heartbeats.
Professor Andre La Gerche, who heads the HEART Laboratory at St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research, said heartbeats could be a new metric for healthy exercise standards, with lower heart rates having the potential to add several years to the average lifespan.
“The fitter you are, and the less blood that you need to pump around with a bigger heart, the lower the heart rate,” Professor La Gerche told The Australian.
“It’s a really simple and all-encompassing measure of both metabolic and heart efficiency.”
A new study, led by Professor La Gerche, has found a difference of about 11,500 heartbeats a day between athletes and non-athletes, with the latter churning out 109,440 beats a day.
“That’s 10 per cent fewer heartbeats used by athletes. The fitter you are, the more metabolically efficient your body becomes,” he said.
“Even though athletes’ hearts work harder during exercise, their lower resting rates more than make up for it.”
Heartbeats have not traditionally been studied as a metric for healthy exercise standards because it’s “only over the last few years that people have been wearing monitors that record your heart rate”, Professor La Gerche said, referring to the popularity of devices such as Garmin watches.
“So many of us are wearing these devices and some of those companies are probably sitting on some really interesting data.”
For triathlete Eliza Verwoert, who regularly incorporates heart-rate training into her preparation for competition season, the scale of the discrepancy between athletes and non-athletes is noteworthy.
“It really does surprise me because it’s a really big difference between the two, but I do understand that it makes sense if your heart needs to work a lot harder if it’s not used to more intense workouts,” she said.
Verwoert, who exercises for about 16 to 24 hours a week, finds heart rate to be a useful tool to help understand the intensity of her workouts.
“Every workout, you’ve got to have some idea of the ballpark you want to be in to make sure you’re not going hard when you shouldn’t be,” she said.
“Tracking your heartbeats is important not just for working out but keeping track of recovery too.”
A lower resting heart rate has been linked to better health outcomes such as improved heart function and lower long-term cardiovascular risk, both of which could add years to your lifespan, said Professor La Gerche, whose research is also supported by the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
“The biggest bang for your health buck is going from unfit to moderately fit. Just a few hours of purposeful exercise each week can transform your heart’s efficiency and help make every beat count,” he said.
