Heart Rate Tips

Heart Rate Tips

In-game tips to lower your heart

Lowering your heart rate
1. Breathe slowly
2. In through your nose And out through your mouth
3. Relax your body
4. Take your time
5. Try to observe your muscles and insides. Are your muscles sore or tense? Is your stomach tight or sore?
6. Try to observe your breathing. Are your breaths shallow? Do you breathe with your chest mainly?
7. Slow down

When you are in the right range and the sun starts to shine!
1. Focus on skip
2. You’re doing great keep that in mind!
3. Keep breathing
4. Go for your goal

Lowering your heart rate tips (and stress) during the day
1. Try talking to someone. Having a balanced listener can help calm you down and get your mind in the here and now.
2. Surround yourself with soothing images, colors that lift your spirits, or picture yourself a situation that feels peaceful and rejuvenating.
3. Try humming your favorite tune. Or tune in to nature with crashing waves, rustling leaves or singing birds.
4. Surround yourself with energizing scents. Fresh laundry, scented candles or fresh, clean air outdoors.
5. Go fetch your favorite treat. Slowly experiencing every last bit of flavor and texture can calm you down.
6. Experiment with your sense of touch. Grab hold of a comforting object, like a stuffed animal, a talisman or try petting an animal.
7. Try engaging your muscles. Jump up and down a few times, or roll your head around and relax your neck.
8. Memorize a moment, object, sound or flavor that relaxed you. Think back to last year’s vacation, or imagine a heartily embrace with a friend.
9. Observe how others deal with stress. What can work for them, might work for you too.
10. Unplug! Try ignoring electronic devices for a while. Drive in silence, look around, or take a walk.
11. Make ‘Have Fun’ your motto. If something doesn’t work, maybe something else will.
12. Close your eyes and pinch your fingers. Focusing on one specific action and/or feeling can bring your mind right back to the present.
13. Take your ‘you-time’. Don’t listen to anything except yourself for five minutes. No deadlines, no electronics and no people.
14. Go outdoors for a while, fresh air and oxygen can feel rejuvenating and make you feel less confined.
15. Drink! Dehydration can directly affect your heart rate.
16. Squat down and hold your knees. This increases cardiac output, which results in a drop in heart rate.
17. Exhale and hold your breath for a couple seconds. This triggers your parasympathetic nervous system, which decreases your heart rate.
18. Go to the toilet! A full bladder triggers the sympathetic nervous system, causing the heart rate to rise.
19. Repeat! Repetitive motions or activities have shown to lower heart rate and blood pressure; just make sure you focus on your task.
20. Recall a past success. Thinking about a past moment where you were able to power through helps you reconnect to your resilient side.
21. Pay attention to your senses. Instead of thinking about worrying events, revert your mind to what you feel, hear, smell or taste right now.
22. Remember to work out! An athlete’s heart beats up to twenty beats per minute slower than that of someone who doesn’t exercise.
23. Laughter is the best medicine? It is! Laughter has shown to cause changes in the autonomic nervous system, and reduce levels of stress-hormones in your blood.

 

Heart Facts

General

  • There are two parts to each heartbeat. The Systole, where the heart contracts, and the Dyastole, where it relaxes.
  • Your heart is rougly the size of your two hands clasped together. e
  • Each minute your heart pumps around 16.8 liters of blood. e
  • Only the right side of your heart pumps blood into your body. e
  • Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive a truck 20 miles. In a lifetime, that is equivalent to driving to the moon and back.a
  • The heart pumps blood to almost all of the body’s 75 trillion cells. Only the corneas receive no blood supply.c

 

Medically related

  • The first Pacemakers were plugged into a wall socket e
  • Happiness and emotional vitality reduce risk of heart disease. e
  • A fetus’ first heart cell begins to beat after four weeks. e
  • The “thump-thump” of a heartbeat is the sound made by the four valves of the heart opening and closing.a

 

Heart Rate

  • The average adult heart beats 72 times a minute; 100,000 times a day; 3,600,000 times a year; and 2.5 billion times during a lifetime.f

 

Random facts few people care about

  • The blue whale has the largest heart, weighing over 1500 pounds. e
  • Early Egyptians believed that the heart and other major organs had wills of their own and would move around inside the body.d
  • A woman’s heart typically beats faster than a man’s. Up to eight beats per minute faster.
  • Physician Erasistratus of Chios (304-250 B.C.) was the first to discover that the heart functioned as a natural pump.f
  • Grab a tennis ball and squeeze it tightly: that’s how hard the beating heart works to pump blood.a

 

 

 

Sources

 

a Avraham, Regina. 2000. The Circulatory System. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House Publishers.

b Chilnick, Lawrence. 2008. Heart Disease: An Essential Guide for the Newly Diagnosed. Philadelphia, PA: Perseus Books Group.

c Daniels, Patricia, et. al. 2007. Body: The Complete Human. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society.

d Davis, Goode P., et. al. 1981. The Heart: The Living Pump. Washington D.C.: U.S. News Books.

e http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2014/07/20-amazing-facts-about-your-heart-infographic/

f Parramon’s Editorial Team. 2005. Essential Atlas of Physiology. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.