How to reduce your resting heart rate naturally
The resting heart rate is a good indicator of your overall health. The average person with good health has between 60 and 100 heartbeats per minute. Super healthy athletes can have heart rates at as low as 35 beats per minute. Reducing your resting heart rate is an excellent way to maintain health, vitality and fitness. The lower you manage to get it, the better you will feel in yourself. There are many different ways of reducing the resting heart rate in a completely natural way.
In this article, we will take a look at some of these methods.
1. You can reduce your resting heart rate by performing Intermittent Fasting. This is where you do not eat for a certain period of time. This gives the body’s digestion system a chance to flush out toxins and has many other health benefits especially for the heart and brain. We recommend fasting for 24 hours once a week to boost health.
2. Another option is to perform cardiovascular exercise. This is simply the act of exercising in a way which increases the heart rate such as running, cycling, swimming or rowing. This boosts blood flow around the body, strengthens the heart and over time reduces your resting heart rate.
3. We highly recommend performing a daily meditation practice. This is the act of sitting comfortably for around 10 minutes per day and focusing on deep breathing. Simply allow yourself to relax, focus on the breath and do nothing for a period of time. This reduces the stress hormone called cortisol in the body, and reduces your heart rate naturally.
4. Avoid tobacco products such as cigarettes as this has been scientifically shown to increase your resting heart rate and stress levels. Stress can cause major health problems down the line. Although a cigarette may feel as though it is calming you, it is, in fact, causing more stress by triggering addiction mechanisms multiple times per day.
5. Reduce caffeinated products and refined sugar drinks from the diet. Coffee, tea, energy drinks and soda all have the effect of raising the heart rate. The true key to living a healthy life is to live without stimulating products and find a sense of peace and calmness within the mind. These drinks cause blood sugar spikes and are therefore stressful to the cardiovascular system.
6. Reduce overall body fat, and lose weight. If you are obese or struggle to walk upstairs then it is likely that you are carrying too much weight. The heart has to work harder in other to pump blood around the body. Excessive fat in the body leads to inflammation of the arteries and poor overall health.
Try out all or a mixture of these techniques in order to reduce your resting heart rate. To measure the heart rate simply sit comfortably in a chair for 5-10 minutes doing absolutely nothing. Then place your first two fingers on the carotid artery in the neck and measure how many heartbeats you feel per minute. Use a stopstream or timer to do this. Children have a higher resting heart rate than adults, please refer to online charts to find average heart rates for your age.