Elisa Francesca Roselli <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:I'm disappointed that after 6 months of steady training I should still be in a hypertension zone
of 15/9, and that my resting rate doesn't seem to have improved much. The doctor told me,
moreover, that it is unlikely that the blood pressure will go on improving beyond its current
level, since there is a bottoming out effect. I don't know what it was before I
First off, I have to say that that for riding a stationary bike an hour a day for 5 months you
should get some kind of medal. I, too, tried to do an hour a day on "machines" (stationary bike,
nordic ski machine, etc.) for much the same reasons you are--after finding out it would take about
an hour of exercise a day to have any real effect on blood pressure or weight--but even at my best I
don't think I was really doing it more than 4 or 5 days a week for a few months.
I find that I can "enjoy" riding a machine indoors, watching TV, for 15 minutes or maybe up to 30
minutes a day. But riding for 60 minutes is pure torture.
On the other hand, I find a ten or twelve mile ride (outside) to be very short--this is about what I
would do in an hour when I first started. A two or three hour ride is a nice ride and a long one
might be five or six hours. Even a five or six hour ride isn't nearly as
psychologically tortuous as a one-hour stationary bike ride. Getting out is just fun and
invigorating.
One "problem" I've noticed since starting to ride outdoors is that I have a much lower tolerance for
riding indoor machines. My machines went almost entirely neglected last winter. I was out riding,
walking, or jogging most every day, though. With the right clothing I'm pretty comfortable bicycling
with temperatures down to the freezing point, but if I feel it's too cold to ride I just (speed)
walk or jog instead.
By the way, unlike some other people, I've lost about 35 pounds on the "bicycle diet". That is
basically, avoid all fast food and generally eat a decently healthy diet plus ride at least 10 miles
a day with longer ride(s) on the weekend. I have noticed that I maintain weight but don't lose
unless the longer rides are in the mix.
Keep in mind that, even if your weight hasn't chnaged much, in the last five months you have without
a doubt increased your muscle mass and decreased your percentage of body fat.
You might find you enjoy adding speed walking and/or jogging to your routine. After cycling for a
year or two (and never running or jogging) I found that could jog for an hour. But my feet and back
couldn't take it (15 minutes 3x a week--yes, an hour every day--no way). Then I found out about
speed walking:
healthatoz.comspeedwalking.htmlOpen ↗
If you're pressed for time, a good approach (which I see you're already starting to take) is to walk
and/or cycle to and from work. Then maybe squeeze in even a 5, 10 or 15 minute walk during lunch or
some other break.
Building this kind of exercise breaks built the day helps invigorate and energize (at least, I find
it so) rather than frustrate and tire. For most people, the only way to get in lifelong, daily
exercise is to weave it into the daily routine in this way.
Then when you get home, you might find that, to finish your daily 60 minutes of exercise, you only
need 15 or 20 minutes on the stationary bike. If the commuting walks/rides are relatively moderate
(because you don't want to be sweaty at work) then maybe the stationary bike ride is shorter, but
more vigorous.
As far as suggested heart rate when exercising: If your doctor is giving you specific, personal
medical advice here I would take it VERY seriously (i.e., if he's saying, "Because of your specific
medical conditions it will be dangerous for you to let your heart rate go above X"😉. It may be that
in your particular situation, letting your blood pressure rise above a certain point, even for a
short period, would be quite harmful.
On the other hand, if he's just giving generalized advice ("This here article says that the 'ideal'
exercise heartrate is 60% of VO2Max"😉 then I would take it with a LARGE grain of salt. For the
typical person there is no one single 'ideal' or 'best' heartrate--you get different benefits from
spending time during your exercise period at a variety of different heart rates.
Typical medical advice and studies are designed around the "average person" whose idea of a
vigorous bout of exercise is walking all the way from the TV room to the kitchen to grab a beer.
Getting this kind of person to go for a 20-minute stroll 3 or 4 times a week is a marvelous medical
breakthrough. But the ideal exercise program for "beer walking man" and for you are not necessarily
one and the same.
As others have pointed out, a person who always exercises at a very moderate level has a very
difficult time moving the overall fitness level up. Moderate exercise is NOT necessarily better for
losing weight, either. A good explanation of the issues involved:
cptips.comweight.htmOpen ↗
You might experiment with "interval training". That is simply alternating periods of moderate
exercise with periods of harder exercise. The periods when you work harder can be as short as 10 or
15 seconds.
ivillage.com0,,165562 1598,00.htmlOpen ↗
Resting heart rate: The "real" way to check resting heart rate is in the morning, just after
awaking, and before getting up or even rolling over in bed. This way, my resting pulse is in the
mid-40s. Sitting around the house in the afternoon it is more like 60 or 66. Certainly, with 6
months of exercise, your resting heart rate has improved, and if you continue to exercise it will
continue to improve.
Finally, about blood pressure: Personally, I would take whatever steps are necessary to keep blood
pressure VERY well under control. Not at the lower end of high BP. Not in the borderline high BP
range. Not near the bottom of the borderline high BP range. But rather, comfortably within the
normal range.
From what I know about the subject (which is far from everything), more and more research has been
pointing to the wisdom of this approach. The long-term benefits of keeping BP very well controlled
are pretty substantial (I wish *I'd* known this 20 years ago . . . ). Two things to look at:
drbobmartin.com2003k 04 02news01.htmlOpen ↗ future.newsday.comkidn7.htmOpen ↗
Two reasons to keep tight control of blood pressure are:
* High BP is a vicious cycle, where higher BP gradually damages the very mechanisms that control
BP, thus leading (gradually) to ever-higher BP. Particularly, the delicate filtration elements
in the kidneys are very susceptible to damage by high BP; damage to the kidneys makes it
harder for them to do their job of regulating BP. The earlier you break up this vicious cycle,
the better.
* Damage from high BP is cumulative and progressive but not obvious immediately--it may be a
decade or two before you realize the benefits of the BP control regimen you start now.
Better physical fitness helps reduce blood pressure. But if you have some underlying condition that
raises your blood pressure (as you apparently do . . . ) that condition can raise BP far more than
exercise alone is able to reduce it.
So, you have to think of exercise and weight reduction as helping to REDUCE the amount of medication
you need to take to control your BP. But exercise/fitness does not eliminate the medication
altogether.
Blood pressure tends to increase with age, and so medication levels for BP tend to increase with
time. So if exercise even helps you to keep at the same medication level for an extended period of
time, that is a very valuable contribution indeed.
Even being at olympic athlete fitness level would not be enough to completely eliminate high BP in
many (most?) people with high BP. So you have to accept that being fit HELPS with your blood
pressure, reduces the amount of medication you must take for it, and has a lot of other benefits
(including health benefits) beyond simple blood pressure control.
Exercise is an important part of the answer, but not the entire answer.
Hope this helps!
--Brent
Elisa Francesca Roselli <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...
Quoted message said:Today I finally had my Stress Test at the hospital to determine what level of effort I should put
into my nightly hour's training on the stationary bike.
I have had the stationary since January and have been using it devoutly in front of the TV for
over 5 months. I have been training at a pulse rate of 147 because that seemed to be my aerobic
threshold, the point at which it starts to feel "hard to talk or sing normally" as someone in this
forum put it. I've also been monitoring my resting pulse rate which now seems to be around 58 on a
good day, although it varies widely. I train for half an hour then take a very short break, two or
three minutes to gulp some water and mop the streaming sweat, then another similar break after 45
minutes, and in the last two minutes of the hour I usually sprint, letting the pulse rate go way
up into the anaerobic zone, because this seems to improve the recovery reading taken in the minute
after I stop.
The cardiologist measured a starting blood pressure of 15/9, which he said was high. The test
finished at 162 pulses per minute and a tension rate of 24/8. His recommendation was that I train
at around 135-140 pulses per minute, blood pressure around 21/8, rather than my current 145-147 at
22/8. The energy produced at this rate is 120 watts, but my own machine doesn't measure watts so I
cannot track that parameter.
I'm disappointed that after 6 months of steady training I should still be in a hypertension zone
of 15/9, and that my resting rate doesn't seem to have improved much. The doctor told me,
moreover, that it is unlikely that the blood pressure will go on improving beyond its current
level, since there is a bottoming out effect. I don't know what it was before I started training,
but on at least two occasions it alarmed doctors with readings up in the 18s, so perhaps there has
been some improvement. On the other hand, I had hoped that improvement would be steady and that I
would be able to control the hypertension with exercize alone. There he's talking about treating
it with drugs, an idea I want to resist. I feel trapped because I know things will deteriorate if
I _stop_ training, but they won't improve if I continue.
However, this doctor is a very taciturn, uncommunicative type and I couldn't get many answers out
of him, so I turn to you highly trained people for your experiences.
Is that famous resting pulse rate in the 40s that rewards trained cyclists open to everyone with
continued effort, or is it a matter of talent and individual morphology? Does an hour's daily
training get you there in the end, or do those people spend their lives pedalling? I really don't
think I could do more than an hour - it's already extremely contraining as I often don't get home
until 9pm and find myself pedalling deep into the night. Is it related to the blood pressure
reading or an independent variable?
What improves when you put effort in, and what motivates you to continue? Appearance-wise I have
experienced no change whatsoever. My legs don't look a bit more muscular than in January, despite
having the Frankenstein Walk from stiffness at the end of my sessions. I'm no slimmer, either. In
the heat, I'm still getting the oedemas at the ankles from poor circulation that I had in the bad
old days.
My recorded speed seemed to improve for a while. At the lower resistances I could eventually cover
up to 37 km in an hour. Now it's down to only about 30 km but the resistance is also higher.
Unfortunately I do not know exactly what the resistance is: my machine has settings from 1 to 10
and the maximum is supposedly 25 kg, but does that necessarily make the setting at 6 15 kg? And
how can I relate that to the doctor's machine which measured in watts?
I hate that hour of torture and it's hard to keep up the motivation.
. . .
Quoted message said:Elisa Roselli Paris, France
