A lower resting heart rate should be everyone’s goal. After all, it can help keep your cardiovascular system healthy by preventing issues like heart disease, high blood pressure, and other medical conditions. However, lowering your resting heart rate must be done safely, lest you accidentally cause more damage.
What are some of the methods that you can use? Which works best? Today, My Fit Foods will cover some healthy suggestions and more here.
What Is Your Resting Heart Rate?
Your resting heart rate is exactly what it sounds like. It consists of the number of beats that your heart does when you’re at rest, whether you’re sitting in a chair or laying in bed. This measurement differs from those of the target heart rate, which measures when you’re in your ideal fat-burning zone during a workout, and your maximum heart rate.
What Is a Normal Resting Heart Rate?
Ideally, you want your resting heart rate to be between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Most physicians won’t be extremely alarmed at a high resting heart rate unless it’s part of a pattern and persists for a long period of time.
Also, although some professional athletes have a resting heart rate that dips below 60 BPM for the average person, any number around 60 or slightly higher is what you should shoot for.
Why Does Your Heart Rate Matter for Your Overall Heart Health?
A consistently high resting heart rate can be a precursor to heart disease and other illnesses. A fast heart rate at rest could be an indication that you’re at greater risk of a heart attack.
In addition, an elevated resting heart rate can also mean that you have issues with your thyroid or suffer from anemia. Other health problems that can cause a high resting heart rate include dehydration, anxiety, an infection, and being in poor physical shape.
The lower your resting heart rate, the better your health tends to be. This is why it’s important to do what you need to in order to get that number as close to 60 as possible.
So, how can you lower your resting heart rate? Here are some suggestions.
How To Lower Your Resting Heart Rate With Lifestyle Changes
Lowering your resting heart rate can be done safely using a number of methods. Every one of the suggestions here is easy to implement. If you truly want to lower your heart rate to the lower end of the healthy zone, then consider doing one or more of the following tasks:
Physical Activity: Regular Exercise Is a Key to a Healthy Heart Rate
Exercising your heart muscle, as well as the rest of your body, can help you lower your heart rate when you’re at rest. When you exercise, your heart beats more, making your blood flow more quickly throughout your body. This gives your heart the exercise that it needs to become stronger, thus lowering your resting heart rate.
How much exercise should you get? According to the American Heart Association, also known as the people to turn to for such metrics, in order to give your heart the exercise that it needs, you should aim for at least 75 minutes of vigorous activity, like running, per week.
Want to start off slower? Do some exercises at a moderate level of intensity for at least 150 minutes per week.
Change Your Diet for a Healthy Heart Rate and Healthy Lifestyle
Although exercise and a healthy diet tend to go hand in hand, if you want to lower your resting heart rate, you’ll have to incorporate one specific food into your diet: fish. According to a study done in the 1990s, men who eat fish more than twice a week had a lower resting heart rate than those who only included fish in their meals once a week.
Other foods that can help include those that contain an antioxidant known as alpha-lipoic acid. The lengthy list of options includes a number of fruits and vegetables, including brussels sprouts, broccoli, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, and beets.
Also, foods high in potassium can help lower your heart rate, so consider adding bananas,asparagus, beans, various types of squash, and avocados to the list as well.
Drink Plenty of Water Alongside Aerobic Exercise
Your blood is a liquid, so it makes sense that if you’re dehydrated, your heart needs to exert more effort into pumping that fluid around your body. If you get dehydrated, you’ll notice that your heart rate goes up, even if you’re at rest.
For this reason, if you want to lower your heart rate, just make sure to drink plenty of water and avoid dehydration. The effects occur pretty quickly, so if you find that your heart rate is up and you feel thirsty, drinking some water can lower it almost automatically.
In addition, if you’re exercising more, you’ll definitely want to get more water to compensate.
Lay Off the Caffeine
Caffeine is a stimulant, so it makes your heart beat faster. In turn, your blood will flow more quickly throughout your body, either helping you wake up (like your morning coffee), or providing you with additional energy (like your afternoon cup of coffee.)
Other stimulants, including nicotine, have the same effect on your body. All of them raise your resting heart rate. In order to lower that number, you’ll need to go easy on the caffeine.
However, if you routinely drink a lot of coffee every day, it’s important to slowly taper off your caffeine intake rather than quitting cold turkey. Going into caffeine withdrawals (which is actually what it is) can raise your heart rate, cause you to feel dizzy, and more.
Get Enough Sleep
Making sure to get plenty of sleep at night is another method of lowering your resting heart rate. A lack of sleep places stress on the body, particularly the heart, causing it to beat faster. If you get enough sleep, this doesn’t happen because your body is well-rested and not stressed in any way.
Wondering how much sleep should you get? The official number depends on what you need each night. Some people feel perfectly rested with six to seven hours of sleep, while others need a bit more.
Learn To Relax
Speaking of stress, spending too much time worrying about deadlines, work, and other things can cause your resting heart rate to rise instead of lower. The best solution here is to spend some time relaxing instead.
Follow your self-care routine, take a vacation, or tune out the world by watching a movie or several episodes of your favorite television show can help you de-stress and feel better. Plus, it will help lower your resting heart rate as well, which is what you want most.
Seek Help for Anxiety
Anxiety, specifically General Anxiety Disorder or GAD, causes a number of physical symptoms, ranging from an upset stomach to a high heart rate. Other symptoms can include:
- Shortness of breath and trouble with deep breathing
- Heart rate increases
- Chest pain and tightness
- An increase in the number of times you feel anxious per day
If your anxiety goes untreated, you’ll end up with a resting heart rate that isn’t as low as you’d like. The best solution is to seek medical advice from a psychiatrist and therapist.
There are also a number of medications that can help with anxiety, as well as treatments like biofeedback, meditation, and more that may lower anxiety levels. Of course, once those levels get lowered, and your anxiety is under control, your heart rate will be better controlled as well.
Weight Loss
Your overall physical weight plays a role in your resting heart rate. If you’re overweight and out of shape, then it takes more effort for your heart to send your blood throughout your body. As a result, your heart will beat faster.
Once you’re at a healthy weight, you’ll notice that your resting heart rate is lower. This is a good incentive to start a diet and exercise plan, both of which can help with weight loss and your heart rate, too. As your healthcare provider would likely tell you, weight loss is essential for overweight people to help ward off cardiovascular disease and lower their risk of heart failure.
Lowering Your Resting Heart Rate
Do you want to lower your resting heart rate safely? The methods described here, ranging from exercising to eating a healthy diet that includes certain foods, are all ways to do so. Some of them, such as drinking plenty of water and getting a lot of sleep, can lower your resting heart rate on the spot. Others, such as losing weight and getting into better physical shape, can take a bit longer — but the effects are still helpful.
If you have any questions about lowering your resting heart rate, please contact us today!
Sources:
Fish Consumption is Associated with Lower Heart Rates | Circulation
How to Lower Your Heart Rate | The Cleveland Clinic
How to Lower Your Heart Rate: In the Moment and Over Time | Healthline
How do you lower your resting heart rate? | Medical News Today
About Author: Mario Mendias
