Exercise can save your heart beating an extra 11,500 beats each day, potentially adding years to your life.
A team from St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute have crunched the numbers to bust the myth that exercise uses up a person’s heartbeats.
Sports cardiologist Professor Andre La Gerche said the daily heart activity of 109 athletes and 38 non-athletes were tracked using continuous heartrate monitoring.
Professor La Gerche said athletes had an average heart rate of 68 beats per minute (bpm), while non-athletes had 76bpm.
She said that translated to a total of 97,920 beats per day for athletes and 109,440 beats per day for non-athletes – around 10 percent less.
“That’s an incredible saving of about 11,500 beats a day.
“Even though athletes’ hearts work harder during exercise, their lower resting rates more than make up for it.”
Professor La Gerche said the study found the fittest individuals had resting heart rates as low as 40 beats per minute, compared to the average 70–80 bpm.
She said that meant over 24 hours, athletes used fewer total heartbeats than sedentary people, even after factoring in the spikes from training sessions, busting the long-standing saying, popularised by US President Donald Trump, that the body was a battery with a finite amount of energy and that exercise only depleted it.
“The fitter you are, the more metabolically efficient your body becomes.”
“Even if you’re training hard for an hour a day, your heart beats more slowly for the other 23 hours. The net effect is fewer beats used overall.”
