How to Lower your Resting Heart Rate (RHR)

A lower heart rate while in resting position indicates better health of your heart. Normally people have RHR (Resting Heart Rate) in range of 55 to 100. Those who have a RHR of more than 80 bpm are twice more prone to death from a heart disease, while those with more than 90 bpm are thrice more prone. In our last post we published a calculator to evaluate and compare your heart health by telling us your age, gender and resting heart rate (RHR). Usually athletes have the best heart health and their RHR always remains below 65.

A number of variables affect our heart rate and keep changing it through out the day. Apart from activities like sitting, walking and running, even our mood can change our heart beat count. It can even change while watching TV on a comfortable sofa, just due to emotional and mood related changes in the act being played on screen.

How to Lower your Resting Heart Rate (RHR) ?

Our genes, ageing, stress level, medications and medical conditions play an important role in deciding our RHR. Here we are proving some tips to lower your Resting Heart Rate (RHR).

• Exercise Regularly: You may choose any exercise that suits you, such as a brisk walk, swim, or bicycle. It is not necessary to workout at a gym. When we exercise our heart beats faster, even for a short time afterwards. But when we do it regularly our resting heart rate starts to decrease.
• Reduce stress: If you feel that your stress level is high then you may engage yourself in meditation exercises such as yoga or tai chi. These stress-busting techniques have shown a significant impact in lowering the resting heart rate over time.
• Avoid tobacco: Smoking increases resting heart rates, even the passive smoking. Quitting can easily bring it down. Calculate the damage done by smoking.
• BMI in check: We can lower our RHR through good lifestyle and maintaining a healthy BMI (body mass index), i.e. height-weight ratio. A BMI value of 19 to 25 is considered best. So Calculate your BMI. Larger body requires more effort from our heart to supply the blood, and losing weight can easily reduce that effort.
• Take long breaths: This technique can instantly bring your heart beat down. At any point of time, if you feel that your heart is beating badly, then you must take long breaths to lower the heart rate. It is the reason behind practicing breathing exercises to lower the blood pressure.
• Stay Cool: Except the exercise time, try to keep your body cool. Higher temperature outside make our heart to pump more blood to keep the right body temperature, thus increasing the heart rate. So staying away from heat can lower the RHR.

Note: The best time to measure your RHR (Resting Heart Rate) is just before leaving bed in the morning. You should measure it while still lying on your back.