How to make your heart rate slower

Exercise is an important part of disease prevention – and that includes cancer prevention, too. But not all exercise is created equal. It’s essential that some of your exercise make your heart beat faster than it does when you’re resting.

Getting your heart to beat faster trains your body to move oxygen and blood to your muscles more efficiently, helps you burn more calories and lowers your cholesterol. All of this can help you stay healthy and lower your cancer risk.

According to the American Institute for Cancer Research, 150 minutes of moderate physical activity or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise each week can help lower your cancer risk. It’s the vigorous exercises that can help you get your heart rate up.

How to measure your heart rate

So, how do you determine your heart rate? One of the easiest ways to measure your heart rate is with a monitor, says Whittney Thoman, exercise physiologist at MD Anderson’s Cancer Prevention Center. This is typically a watch or a strap that goes around your arm or chest that syncs with a watch or another device. Many wearable fitness trackers now include heart rate monitors.

If you don’t have a heart rate monitor you can check your heart rate using your pulse. To find your pulse, use two fingers (your middle and your index fingers) to find your carotid artery, just below your esophagus or throat. Then, count the beats you feel for 10 seconds. Multiply that number by six. That’s roughly the number your heart beats per minute.

Understanding your heart rate

Now that you know how to measure your heart rate, you can determine:

Active heart rate: how fast your heart beats when you’re active or exercising
Resting heart rate: how fast your heart beats when you’re resting or relaxing
Maximum heart rate: the highest rate your heart can obtain during activity. To find your maximum heart rate, subtract your age from 220. For example, if you’re 40 years old, subtract 40 from 220 to get a maximum heart rate of 175. This is the maximum number of beats your heart is capable of per minute, but you should not try to exercise to this level.

Check your pulse or your heart rate monitor while you’re resting and then again while you’re exercising to compare your resting heart rate to your active heart rate.

If you’re working at 50 to 70% of your maximum heart rate, then that exercise is considered moderate. If you’re working at 70 to 85% of your heart rate then its vigorous exercise. If your heart is working harder than that (above 85%) it could be dangerous, so be sure to back off or consult your doctor.

If you’re worried about an increased heart rate causing other health problems or have had heart problems in the past, talk to your doctor before you begin exercising at a higher intensity.

Ways to get your heart rate up

Now that you know how to determine your heart rate, the next step is to find exercises that will help boost it to improve your health. Here are a few ways to get your heart rate up.

Set an incline. If you’re on the treadmill increase the incline. Or if you’re walking outside look for hills. This will challenge your muscles and help increase your heart rate.
Take the stairs. Just like adding an incline, stairs bring a new challenge to your workout.
Alter your pace. Whether you’re walking, riding a bike, swimming or practicing yoga, you don’t have to increase your pace for the entire workout. Add in short bursts of increased effort at a faster pace. Over time, you’ll be able to increase the duration of these bursts.
Take shorter breaks. If you’re doing an interval workout or lifting weights, take shorter breaks in between the different exercises.

High blood pressure is dangerous. It can lead to many health problems, including heart attack, stroke, heart failure, angina, coronary artery disease, peripheral artery disease, kidney disease, vision loss, sexual dysfunction and more.

Fortunately, high blood pressure can often be prevented or controlled.

Here are some easy things you can do to lower your blood pressure or help prevent high blood pressure in the first place.

Exercise. Doctors recommend at least 150 minutes per week of exercise to help reduce blood pressure. Brisk walking is excellent for reducing blood pressure and improving overall cardiovascular health, but other exercises can work too. Try jogging, riding a bike, swimming, dancing, or interval training to get your aerobic exercise. Strength training is also important to your heart health and can help reduce blood pressure.
Eat a heart-healthy diet. Eating a well-balanced diet with lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds that is also low in sodium, saturated fat, added sugar, and cholesterol is important for your heart. There is a diet specifically geared toward lowering blood pressure. It’s called the DASH diet, which stands for dietary approaches to stop hypertension. Talk to your doctor or make an appointment with a dietitian if you need help making changes to your diet.
Eat potassium- and magnesium-rich foods. Potassium can help regulate your heart rate and can reduce the effect that sodium has on your blood pressure. Foods like bananas, melons, oranges, apricots, avocados, dairy, leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tuna, salmon, beans, nuts, and seeds have lots of potassium. Magnesium is thought to help blood vessels relax, making it easier for blood to pass through. Foods rich in magnesium include vegetables, dairy, chicken, legumes, and whole grains. It’s better to get vitamins and minerals from food, and a heart-healthy diet like the one we described above is a good way to ensure you get plenty of nutrients. However, you may want to talk to your doctor about whether taking certain supplements might help your blood pressure.
Reduce sodium in your diet. One easy way to reduce your sodium intake is to limit or avoid processed foods, such lunch meats, hot dogs, bacon, frozen dinners, canned vegetables with added salt, and that sort of thing. Most packaged convenience foods, like macaroni and cheese, soups, side dishes, pizzas, and other multi-ingredient foods have a lot of added sodium. Start reading labels and pay attention to the sodium content. You should aim for 1500mg or less every day.
Limit your alcohol consumption. Drinking alcohol can raise blood pressure, and drinking more than one alcoholic beverage per day may raise your blood pressure and increase your risk for hypertension.
Reduce the stress in your life. Long-term stress can lead to high blood pressure. There are small lifestyle changes you can make to both combat stress and to manage the effects of it in healthy ways. Exercise, eating a healthy diet, limiting alcohol and caffeine intake, practicing yoga, meditation, or deep breathing, meditating, praying, journaling, laughing, listening to music, spending time with family and friends, and playing with animals can all help reduce your stress and lower blood pressure. Learn about more tips for reducing stress.
Eat dark chocolate. Dark chocolate and cocoa powder are both full of heart-healthy plant compounds called flavonoids. Flavonoids are good for you because they cause your blood vessels to dilate, which can help lower blood pressure. Just make sure your chocolate doesn’t have too much sugar. Choose chocolate that is at least 70 percent dark for best results. You can buy individually wrapped chocolate pieces that are the perfect size. Eat one or two a day and enjoy the delicious heart-protective effects.
Eat berries. Berries have many health benefits, and one of them is improving blood pressure and reducing other heart disease risks. Berries, like strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries, have lots of polyphenols, which are great for your heart. They’re also really tasty. So, load up on the berries for better blood pressure. If you don’t like eating them all the time, try adding them to a smoothie made with low-fat or fat-free yogurt without added sugar. Throw in some ice, banana, and low-fat milk for a heart-healthy treat.
Reduce processed sugar and refined carbohydrates. Many studies have shown a link between high blood pressure and processed sugar. Even moderate amounts of sugar can raise blood pressure. For example, during the Framingham Women’s Health Study, women who drank as little as one soda per day had higher blood pressure than women who drank less. It’s not just sweet sugar that raises blood pressure. Refined carbohydrates, like white bread and pasta, covert to sugar quickly when they’re eaten, and they may also cause blood pressure to rise. There is evidence that reducing refined sugar intake can lower blood pressure and improve heart health.
Hug people – and pets. There is evidence that hugging people can lower your blood pressure. A similar effect can occur from cuddling with pets or even just petting them.

There are other important things you can do to reduce your blood pressure and improve your health, but they may take a bit more effort than the ten things listed above.

Quitting smoking and staying away from secondhand smoke is vital to your health, and it’s a great way to lower your blood pressure. If you smoke, talk to your doctor about how to quit. Then quit. It’s one of the best things you can do to get healthy and reduce your risk of serious health problems.

Another important step is to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. Being overweight elevates your risk for high blood pressure and many other diseases and conditions. Losing just 5 percent of your body weight can have a significant positive impact on your blood pressure. Studies have shown that the combination of exercising and losing weight improves blood pressure numbers even more than either one alone. It may seem daunting to lose weight, but it is possible. Talk to your doctor about how other people have done it. And consider seeing a weight loss counselor too. You can do this! And after only a few pounds of healthy weight loss, you should start seeing your blood pressure numbers drop.

Set small, easily attainable goals, and when you reach them, set bigger ones. Step by step, you will take control of your health and your blood pressure.