Overweight
Sport in the form of endurance training has a positive effect on blood pressure in the long term, even if you are overweight, because it also drops here as a result of training. Cholesterol levels are also positive for overweight and sports. It should be noted that there are two forms of cholesterol.
One is HDL cholesterol, which is responsible for removing cholesterol from the body and thus reduces the risk of arteriosclerosis in our blood vessels (“vascular calcification”). Arteriosclerosis refers to a deposit in the walls of the blood vessels. The “good” HDL cholesterol is increased by sporting activity and is therefore useful in cases of overweight.
In addition, there is LDL cholesterol, which transports cholesterol into the body and thus promotes arteriosclerosis. Through sport it comes to the reduction of LDL cholesterol. Other positive effects of sport for overweight people are a reduction in the heart rate and an increase in the stroke volume of the heart.
This increases the heart performance in the long term. In addition, a better insulin effect and less high fat values in the form of triglycerides are observed. In addition, the anaerobic metabolism, which produces lactate as an acid, is permanently converted to an aerobic metabolism.
Beta blocker
With beta-blockers, first of all it is important to ensure that the patient does not suffer any loss of performance due to the beta-blocker. It can happen that the pulse and especially the systolic blood pressure are set so low by the beta blocker that the heart cannot perform sufficiently. It is particularly important that the maximum heart rate is lowered, but this is needed as additional cardiac output during physical exertion.
As a result, the person affected can perform less. Circulatory problems are also possible. Therefore, the patient should have his or her well-being under stress monitored by a physician with adapted training.
Bradycardia is to be feared if the beta-blocker is not well adjusted or if heart rate reducing drugs are used. A bradycardia is a heart rate below 50 heartbeats per minute. Bradycardia can lead to a reduced blood supply to organs.
Reduced blood flow to the brain may lead to unconsciousness. In addition, beta-blockers interfere with the metabolism of sugar and fat. As an alternative to beta blockers, one can consider using other drugs, such as ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor antagonists, calcium antagonists. These drugs do not have as great an effect on the performance of the heart as beta blockers and also have less effect on sugar and fat metabolism.
Pulse
Basically, exercise has a positive effect on the pulse rate because it is lowered for a long time and this is beneficial to the heart. In order to protect the heart also during sport and not to strain it too much, it is important to make sure that the training pulse does not rise too high. Roughly speaking, the heart rate should never exceed 180 during training.
As a rule of thumb, the training pulse can be calculated as follows: 180 – age = optimum training pulse. If you also use pulse slowing medication, such as a beta blocker, the training pulse must be calculated differently. In the case of treatment with a beta blocker, a pulse should be aimed for that is 10-20% lower. In addition, the pulse rate for swimming training should also be about 10-15 beats lower than the calculated training pulse for other sports.
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