Sunday, 5 May 2013

YOU'VE GOTTA HAVE PULSE!




One of the most annoying things that we can be told to do is taking our own pulse...

Some think that it is impossible to get to feel the heart pumping from their veins. 

People are usually told to touch their necks and grab the main vein, that is, the biggest vein. 

We can actually even put our hand over our hearts and get it in that way. 

It all depends on how much we can feel through our hands, since all we really need to do is counting how many pulsations we have per block of time.


Measuring our blood pressure is the same as taking our pulse.

Whilst the old gadgets to take blood pressure seem to be a conundrum, only understood by medical staff, the new ones are simple and come up with the end figures quite easily. 


We have to worry about resistance of the veins to the entrance of the blood (we then compress the arm with the cuff to beyond bearable before releasing the blood and measuring the beats) and about the pumping when there is no external pressure applied to them (they call one type diastolic and the other systolic).   


One of them is taken at maximum flow of blood (diastolic) and the other is taken at minimum flow, beginning of filling (systolic)

We control all for one minute to measure or we get a fraction of a minute and do the maths. 

We say the systolic first, the higher number (http://www.diffen.com/difference/Systolic_vs_Diastolic_Blood_Pressure). 


A normal adult would have diastolic of up to 80 (http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/monitor/vitals.html).


Matt Roberts tells us that we calculate our maximum heart rate through the following formula: 220 – our age.


In this way, a person with age between 18 and 25 years old would be working at 90% of their MHR (maximum heart rate) if getting a reading of 179.


A person with age between 26 and 30 years old would be working at 80% of their MHR if getting a reading of 153.


A detailed table is found in his book, page 81.


http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html tells us that the right formula for women is 226-our age however, that is, women have more natural resistance to exercise (may last for longer and work out more, naturally).


Notice that we should have a target heart rate in mind whilst we run, and we should work out our target rate through reading http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html, and knowing what we want from the run (losing weight, keeping the heart/body healthy, conditioning, or others).


There is a minimum heart rate that is necessary that we achieve for us to be told to actually have exercised, like if we never reach that minimum heart rate, then our efforts are useless for almost all purposes (moving the body almost always helps us improve something).


The younger we are, the higher our minimum heart rate will be.



People who are below fifty years old should always be above 102 beats per minute (http://www.heart.com/heart-rate-chart.html) as they run.


It is very important to measure the heart rate whilst we run or at least before and after. 


Usually people know their limits and therefore they should be able to control those, but there are situations in which others seem to be controlling them... 



When others are controlling us, the heart rate measurement will help us argue and stop exercising when necessary.  



Lots of people have died from heart attack during runs because those controlling them did not respect their declared limits.



People as young as twenty and something have died in this way in the Army because the teacher did not respect their words (I cannot keep on going) and kept on pushing plus threatening them with really important things (you are going to be expelled from the Army!).


The symptoms of low blood pressure are usually noticed by everyone (dizziness, weakness, and others). 

High blood pressure is the worst danger of all (symptoms exist, such as headache, but they are much harder to be acknowledged by the individual).







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