OK, so with this whole fitness kick, I decided to get my old heart 
monitor out again.

First I found the battery was dead. I was fortuitously able to obtain 
some CR2032 batteries, and now it works just fine. I also managed to 
find the user manual online (God knows where the physical one has 
gone...), and I was eventually able to figure out how to disable the 
annoying beeping which caused me to stop using it in the first place!

Initially it seemed that my resting heart rate is between 80 and 90 BPM. 
But perhaps I misunderstood the idea of "resting". You might imagine 
that standing around the kitchen doing nothing would be pretty 
"restful". But it turns out even surprisingly trivial actions have an 
unexpectedly large effect on heart rate.

For example, standing still seems to produce a higher beat rate than 
sitting still. OK, you can kind of see how standing up uses 
infintesimally more energy than sitting. But you wouldn't expect the 
difference to be large enough to measure.

Also, drinking causes my heart rate to go up about +15. The actual 
action of lifting a cup to my lips is so trivial that it cannot be the 
source. I can only presume it's because in order to drink, you have to 
stop breathing.

Out of curiosity, I stopped breathing on purpose. Sure enough, my heart 
rate /slowly/ increased by about +10 or so. No matter how long I held my 
breath, it did not rise further, and even appeared to fall very 
slightly. (It waivers around all over the place constantly, so it's hard 
to be certain.) But - interestingly - when I /started/ breathing again, 
my heart rate jumped up +15.

At first, that seems counter-intuitive. But if you think about it for a 
moment, if there's no oxygen coming in, pumping blood harder isn't going 
to do any good, and just wastes precious oxygen. I guess the normal 
response to lack of oxygen is to shut stuff down rather than fire it up. 
But when oxygen /does/ become available and all your tissues are short 
of it, /then/ the blood starts pumping.

Perhaps even more ridiculous, I looked at my shiny new PC and thought 
"hohooo, boy - this is the MAN!", and my heart rate went +20. For doing 
/nothing at all/. Go figure. But then, I guess if you're a wild lion 
stalking your prey, you do /not/ want to leap out of the bushes and 
start chasing it and /then/ have your heart speed up to compensate. You 
want to be ready /before/ the strike.

All of that being the case, I found that it I sit really /really/ still, 
I can make the reading from below 80 BPM. (Deep breaths actually elivate 
my heart rate, not lower it. So I have to remember to breath normally.) 
At least, that's what I found yesterday. Today I'm managing to stay 
below 70 BPM for longish periods of time without really trying. Perhaps 
on another day I'll catch it going even lower - who knows?

I would probably spend a lifetime gazing at this little number and 
theorising about its every wobble and waiver. But wasn't this supposed 
to be about fitness somewhere?

Well, I gather that a low heart rate is supposedly a sign of fitness. In 
response to exercise, the heart enlarges, shifting more blood per beat, 
and allowing it to achieve more work with less effort. So if my heart 
really is hanging around at 80 to 90 BPM when I'm not even doing 
anything, that would presumably indicate a pretty poor level of fitness.

(Just now, I went into the kitchen and turned the oven on. Before I 
stood up I was at 67 BPM or so. After I turned the oven on, it was 115 
BPM. That's a heck of a jump for bugger all activity...)

So what about /exercise/?

Well, first of all, yesterday (before I dug out the heart monitor) I did 
spend about 20 minutes intermittently dancing at various levels of 
intensity. (It would be a lie to say it was a /constant/ 20 minutes.) I 
had intended to do more, but my legs were complaining too much. So I sat 
down for a while. When I got up, my legs felt awfully shakey and 
unsteady. Yuck. :-S

The signifigance became clear later. While trying out my heart monitor, 
Peppermint Twist came on. It's such a fantastic song that I had to dance 
to it. So I went really flat out. (Depsite my legs complaining really 
quite loudly towards the end.)

Interesting thing #1: The monitor claims my heart rate peaked at 178 
BPM. That's quite a lot. (Nearly 3 beats /per seconds/!)

Interesting thing #2: After that, obviously, I was exhausted. I sat down 
to rest. My heart rate seemed to fall logarithmically. After 15 minutes 
later, it was still hovering above 100 BPM.

Now I wonder if the reason that today my heart rate is lower is because 
I've done no exercise yet...

At any rate, my legs are really quite tired now, so I'm going to leave 
it for today. I think if I can manage some dance time every night that's 
not a school night, I should get somewhere. And if I keep a record of my 
heart readings, I can see how pifflingly little progress I'm making. o_O

Also, the heart monitor has various "activity zones". You program in a 
tiny amount of data about you, and it makes a statistical guess as to 
what your maximum heart rate is. Based on that, you can select an 
activity zone based on whether you want to burn fat or increase stamina 
or whatever.

Based on my data, it appears the device is estimating my maximum heart 
rate at 200 BPM or there abouts. I selected that I want to increase 
stamina, and so it seems to think I want to aim for between 122 and 150 
BPM. (Much lower than the 178 BPM freakout yesterday.) I have no idea 
whether these numbers are reasonable, but I'll try them and see what 
happens - if anything.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> OK, you can kind of see how standing up uses 
> infintesimally more energy than sitting. But you wouldn't expect the 
> difference to be large enough to measure.

  How exactly do you think the heart is able to pump blood all the way
from your feet to your head when you are standing? By pumping stronger
and faster.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 05/02/2012 15:34, Warp wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
>> OK, you can kind of see how standing up uses
>> infintesimally more energy than sitting. But you wouldn't expect the
>> difference to be large enough to measure.
>
>    How exactly do you think the heart is able to pump blood all the way
> from your feet to your head when you are standing? By pumping stronger
> and faster.

Again, if the blood reaches all the way to my head when it's 4 feet off 
the ground, you would have thought reaching it when it's 6 feet off the 
ground wouldn't be that much more difficult.

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 05/02/2012 15:34, Warp wrote:
> > Orchid Win7 v1<voi### [at] devnull>  wrote:
> >> OK, you can kind of see how standing up uses
> >> infintesimally more energy than sitting. But you wouldn't expect the
> >> difference to be large enough to measure.
> >
> >    How exactly do you think the heart is able to pump blood all the way
> > from your feet to your head when you are standing? By pumping stronger
> > and faster.

> Again, if the blood reaches all the way to my head when it's 4 feet off 
> the ground, you would have thought reaching it when it's 6 feet off the 
> ground wouldn't be that much more difficult.

  50% more total height requires at least that much more force, probably
more.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>> Again, if the blood reaches all the way to my head when it's 4 feet off
>> the ground, you would have thought reaching it when it's 6 feet off the
>> ground wouldn't be that much more difficult.
>
>    50% more total height requires at least that much more force, probably
> more.

According to Wikipedia, pressure increases linearly as a function of 
depth. So, ignoring any change in resistance to blood flow due to the 
altered configuration of my body, yeah, 50% more force is required.

It's still an unexpected result.

Post a reply to this message

On 05/02/2012 5:16 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Again, if the blood reaches all the way to my head when it's 4 feet off
> the ground,you would have thought

Who would have thought? Not me, not the way you seem to.

> reaching it when it's 6 feet off the
> ground wouldn't be that much more difficult.

Your heart has to pump your blood through your leg arteries with enough 
energy to lift it through your thigh veins on the return. There is less 
work for it to do when you are sitting down.
Have you ever felt feint when you suddenly stand up? That is because the 
blood pressure/flow to your brain drops before your heart can catch up 
with the increase of work it has to do.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 05/02/2012 05:50 PM, Stephen wrote:

> Have you ever felt feint when you suddenly stand up?

Yes - but usually only when I'm dancing.

Like, I dance to the point of exhaustion (not very far, in my case), sit 
down for a moment, and then stand up again and- WOAH! OK, I'm sitting 
down again...

Post a reply to this message

On 06/02/2012 9:12 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 05/02/2012 05:50 PM, Stephen wrote:
>
>> Have you ever felt feint when you suddenly stand up?
>
> Yes - but usually only when I'm dancing.
>
> Like, I dance to the point of exhaustion (not very far, in my case), sit
> down for a moment, and then stand up again and- WOAH! OK, I'm sitting
> down again...

It sounds like you need to get fit but you know that, ;-)

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

>> Like, I dance to the point of exhaustion (not very far, in my case), sit
>> down for a moment, and then stand up again and- WOAH! OK, I'm sitting
>> down again...
>
> It sounds like you need to get fit

O RLY?

> but you know that, ;-)

YA RLY!

:-(

Post a reply to this message

Note to self: Walking along snow-covered roads in flat-soled office 
shoes. Bad idea.

Although, it apparently affected my heart rate more than you'd imagine...

Post a reply to this message