Exercise and Heart Disease
4Medicaleducation.com offers a number of recommendations by different organizations that will assist in making your lifestyle better. Check our website and see what we have to offer. Below is a recommendation from one of the organizations.
The American Heart Association has added to the risk of major factors causing heart disease the "lack of exercise". Smoking, high blood pressure, and high blood cholesterol are also among the high risk factors.
Exercise contributes a number of positive outcomes to your health, the risk of high blood pressure, osteoporosis, breast and colon cancer, depression, anxiety and stress is reduced. Just by adding exercise to your routine. Ideally, you should work out three to five times a week for 20-50 minutes at your target heart rate. However, your health can benefit simply by doing a combine 30 minutes of activity per day, such as stair climbing, walking to work, or gardening.
Also, it is not just aerobic exercise such as walking, cycling, jogging and swimming that is recommended. Weight training, is an important component of good fitness. This increases your strength, decreases your body fat and helps improves blood cholesterol levels.
Benefits of Training Regularly
- Improves heart and lungs
- Lowers resting blood pressure
- Lowers body fat
- Lowers total and LDL cholesterol ("bad cholesterol")
- Raises HDL cholesterol ("good cholesterol")
- Improves energy level
- Improves ability to manage stress and depression
- Controls or prevents the development of diabetes
- Improves the risk of orthopedic injury
Guidelines for Safe Exercise
- Frequency - 3-5 times a week
- Duration - 20-60 minutes
- Intensity (how hard) - within your target heart rate
Calculating Your Target Heart Rate
1) 220 - age = MHR (maximum heart rate)
2) MHR x 0.6 = _____ (this is the low end of your target HR)
3) MHR x 0.8 = _____ (this is the upper end of your target HR)
Example: If you are 40 years old, your MHR is 220 - 40 = 180.
180 x 0.6 = 108
180 x 0.8 = 144
Therefore, your Target Heart Rate is between 108 and 144 beats per minute.
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