More health information

[johnpalmer]

Okay... so, jogging (possibly jogging, plus a mildly intense heart-rate raising exercise session the next morning) can make me feel wiped out.

What about just walking? I'd assumed it could, but I counted "walking" as including "slower than normal on my big-hills workouts on my treadmill". And that got my heart rate reaching pretty high levels, even if my feet weren't moving as quickly.

So yesterday, for multiple reasons, I walked 10 miles, combined outside-walking + treadmill, with a goal of keeping my heart rate low(ish).

I'm tired, but I don't think I'm fatigued. And yeah, my legs hurt, and my feet are doing a kind of "hey, boss, you didn't give us time to develop a healthy layer of callus!" But I don't think I'm getting the kind of exhaustion I'm afraid of.

I'm going to try to do "enough" walking today to give that a good test - if I can manage an hour walk while watching movies, that'd be great. Then we'll see if this was a wise (if painful) choice, or a really bad choice, tomorrow.

If walking is safe, it sounds like heart-rate might be key, and I might be needing to do exercises that are less heart-intensive.

This isn't awful, by the way. Getting one's heart rate up to the 120s to 130s is more than enough to strengthen it. But if you push your heart rate into the 140s and higher and keep it there, you can be burning in the region of a thousand calories an hour, versus 5-600 an hour from less intense exercise. And for numbers-junkies, it's nice to see larger numbers pile up more quickly. Plus, intense exercise is known to help release fat from the liver and abdomen. Less intense exercise isn't. Then again, maybe it's because there aren't enough people stubborn enough to do less intense exercise long enough to make it happen.

Comments

[dubhain]

Congrats upon finding a possible solution, at least for the time being. Hoping very much that the situation improves. I actually enjoy walking, as it gives me the sens of bonding with and being a part of the area I live in. So does bicycling, actually, save that I can't ride one these days. Perhaps when I've more of an income, again, I'll be able to buy something I can ride, safely.

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

Then all your doctors need to do is figure out why you can only push your heart so far before feeling rotten afterwards. (I assume you've already had every cardiac diagnostic test known to science.)

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Not all of them, but a cardiac stress test.

The thing is, most heart issues would keep me from exercising. It's not "I run for so long and then suddenly, I feel like an elephant just sat on my chest" - that would be heart. And it wasn't "I run until I'm gasping (or close) and feel like I have heartburn" - that's definitely heart. This is "I'll run, and I'll feel, you know, wow, this sucks, but I can handle it, and then, hours later, I feel like hammered crap". And that doesn't map to heart issues well.

I'd assumed it did - overwork your arm, and then you can't use your arm as well until it recovers. Okay, but the heart is smooth muscle, it's different. Everyone seems to agree that this just doesn't happen. Not due to cardiac issues, at least.

(I'm seeing that it *might* map to neurological issues - the sympathetic nervous system, IIRC. But the treatment is purely "do what you can for symptom relief".)

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

EKG? Echo-cardiogram?

An "echo" will disclose all sorts of interesting things about how well your heart functions, most of which will not show up on a standard stress test (the kind that uses EKG information). In particular, malfunctions of various heart valves can cause problems that show up as a delayed reaction after exercise.

(I happen to know about this because I have an abnormal EKG - it looks as if I might have had an "infarct" to a portion of the heart wall a long time ago. It takes an echo-cardiogram to prove that this never happened. And every goddam time I need pre-surgical clearance, the doctor who evaluates the EKG insists on sending me for an echo... which, of course, shows that my heart is remarkably healthy for a fat, out-of-shape old woman. I just have a weird EKG.)