Follow your doctor’s advice, listen to your heart and believe in yourself as you make your cardio comeback
If you have a heart condition or are making your way back from a cardiac event, studies show that exercise is not only good for you, but really one of your best bets to improve your heart health and live a long, full life. As long as you can work out safely and follow your doctor’s recommendations, you can exercise the same way any other person would. The best advice is to talk through any questions with your doctor and care team. Always check with them before making any big changes to your lifestyle, and reach out to them if you’re experiencing any difficulties. Believe in yourself. You can do this. With that in mind, here are five more tips for exercising with a heart condition.
Tip 1: Try to exercise every day.
Everything you’ve done to this point — reading, taking in the advice — that’s the easy part.
Actually getting started and putting in the work — that’s the hard part. Make it easier on yourself by getting started immediately. The faster you get up and running (or walking, biking, swimming or jogging), the more likely you are to improve your health. The more active people are, the more benefit they get, including living longer. It’s such a widely acknowledged benefit that many people coming off a heart procedure are automatically enrolled in a formal cardiac rehab program. Whatever your body allows you to do safely, you should try to maximize your activity in that context. It is recommended that adults get, at a minimum, 150 minutes per week of moderate aerobic exercise. If you can gradually bump that number up to 300 minutes or more per week, even better.
Tip 2: Be patient with yourself.
Exercise naturally makes the heart beat faster, so it’s completely OK (and quite common) to feel uncertain or have doubts. What exercises should I do? How hard can I push myself? How will my body react? Two things can help. First, your care team. Second, being open about your condition with others. Rather than take it easy or hold yourself back. But, for the most part, you can find the courage from within.
Tip 3: Pay attention to your heart rate.
Pushing yourself to your upper limits is a surefire way to derail your recovery and comeback. Monitor your heart rate so you can gauge whether an exercise, activity or level of intensity is safe for you. Generally speaking, we want to avoid extremes of heart rate shortly after a procedure. In many cases, your doctor might even advise you to not go over certain thresholds for a set period of time before letting you try something more physically demanding.
You now have even more reason to listen to what your heart, and the rest of your body, is telling you.
Tip 4: Bring others along for the journey.
Of course, you’re probably not the only person monitoring your comeback.
Caretakers, loved ones and friends can be every bit as invested — which means their worries can easily turn into your own. People do need reassuring, and you shouldn’t dismiss the concerns that the patient or their caregivers might have about increasing activity. Meanwhile, one way to ease caregivers’ minds is to show them you are taking your recovery seriously and being responsible when it comes to your health.
Tip 5: Make exercise something you love.
If your workout is something you enjoy and look forward to, well, you’re not going to need much convincing in order to do it. Only the people who have experienced it firsthand truly know what it’s like. These comeback stories are occurring every day. These people are heroes. Their family members, the bystanders who helped are heroes. The physicians and nurses and caregivers in the hospital are heroes.
Maybe exercise is the easy part, after all.
Adapted from: Abbott
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