High heart rate, low heart rate - tomato, tomaaaaato
I am not a doctor, so I can't answer your question. However, I have been to see a Cardiologist today, so maybe my story will help:-
I am fit. I exercise for at least 1 hour 5 days per week. Yet, I have a resting heart rate of 80 - 90bpm. However, sometimes it rises above 100 when I am resting, for no apparent reason and the minute I go near a hospital it goes above 100.
I was in hospital for something unrelated and, having come out of anasthetic, began to be whispered about (by the nurses) because my heart rate was about 120. Slowly, the questions over my heart-rate were latched on to by the staff and I was fitted with a 24 hour holter monitor.
Unfortunately, the day that I wore that awful thing I had a temperature (which increases your heart-rate), had the most stressful day of my life in work and could not sleep that night as the stupid contraption was so uncomfortable!
Ultimately, my monitor should peaks and troughs of 66 when asleep, about 95 during daily life, with peaks of 130 and one rare peak of 150. I was worried.
I was referred to a cardiologist who I saw today. I took my pulse when I woke up this morning (70), when I was late and stuck in traffic (90) and when I sat in the chair, preparing to do a "stress test" (120). No prizes for guessing what was pushing my heart rate up...
I spoke to the cardiologist today, who made the following points:-
1. Just because I have a resting heart rate that is on the upper end of high, does not mean that there is anything wrong with me. Some people have low heart rates and some have high rates in the same way that some people have freckles and others don't.
2. My recovery rate (the time it took my heart to come down after exercising) was excellent. This is a proper measure of fitness, not heart rate.
3. My heart rate during the time I had the holter monitor was on averaged out at 87 bpm. This was normal. It was also normal to have peaks and troughs during the day -even as high as mine went. However, I probably couldn't have picked a worse day to wear the thing.
4. Having a high rate rate does not, of itself, put me at a higher risk of a heart attack, at all. Heart rate, without more will not be a factor in whether or not I get a heart attack. If I had a naturally low heart rate but, because I smoked, was overweight and didn't exercise, and as a consequence, had a high heart rate, the high heart rate would not be the thing to cause a heart attack. It would be the underlying reasons behind my heart rate.
Ultimately, we are all different. Our hearts are still beating, slow in your case and fast in mine. Get checked out for any weird diseases. Once you are cleared from that, which in all probablility you will be, stop thinking of your heart rate as a disease. There are many types of normal and many normal reasons why you would hang about on the edge of normal heart rate parameters.
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