Heart Failure: Exercise for a Healthy Heart

A sedentary (inactive) lifestyle is one of the top risk factors for heart disease. Fortunately, it's a risk factor that you can do something about. Regular exercise, especially aerobic exercise, has many benefits. It can:

* Strengthen your heart and cardiovascular system.
* Improve your circulation and help your body use oxygen better.
* Improve your heart failure symptoms.
* Increase energy levels so you can do more activities without becoming tired or short of breath.
* Increase endurance.
* Lower blood pressure.
* Improve muscle tone and strength.
* Improve balance and joint flexibility.
* Strengthen bones.
* Help reduce body fat and help you reach a healthy weight.
* Help reduce stress, tension, anxiety and depression.
* Boost self-image and self-esteem.
* Improve sleep.
* Make you feel more relaxed and rested.
* Make you look fit and feel healthy.

Before starting an exercise program, talk to your doctor about:

* Medication changes. New medications can greatly affect your response to exercise; your doctor can tell you if your normal exercise routine is still safe.
* Heavy lifting. Make sure that lifting or pushing heavy objects and chores such as raking, shoveling, mowing, or scrubbing aren't off limits. Chores around the house can be tiring for some people; make sure you only do what you are able to do without getting tired.
* Safe exercises. Get the doctor's approval before you lift weights, use a weight machine, jog, or swim.

Types Of Best Exercise.

Exercise can be divided into three basic types:

* Stretching: slow lengthening of the muscles. Stretching the arms and legs before and after exercising helps prepare the muscles for activity and helps prevent injury and muscle strain. Regular stretching also increases your range of motion and flexibility.

* Cardiovascular or aerobic: steady physical activity using large muscle groups. This type of exercise strengthens the heart and lungs and improves the body's ability to use oxygen. Aerobic exercise has the most benefits for your heart. Over time, aerobic exercise can help decrease your heart rate and blood pressure and improve your breathing.

* Strengthening: repeated muscle contractions (tightening) until the muscle becomes tired. For people with heart failure, many strengthening exercises are not recommended.


Examples Of Aerobic Exercises:

Aerobic exercises include: walking, jogging, jumping rope, bicycling (stationary or outdoor), cross-country skiing, skating, rowing and low-impact aerobics or water aerobics.

In general, to achieve maximum benefits, you should gradually work up to an aerobic session lasting 20 to 30 minutes, at least three to four times a week. Exercising every other day will help you keep a regular aerobic exercise schedule.

Every exercise session should include a warm-up, conditioning phase and a cool-down.

* Warm-up. This helps your body adjust slowly from rest to exercise. A warm-up reduces the stress on your heart and muscles, slowly increases your breathing, circulation (heart rate) and body temperature. It also helps improve flexibility and reduce muscle soreness. The best warm-up includes stretching, range of motion activities and the beginning of the activity at a low intensity level.

* Conditioning. This follows the warm-up. During the conditioning phase, the benefits of exercise are gained and calories are burned. Be sure to monitor the intensity of the activity (check your heart rate). Don't over do it.

* Cool-down. This is the last phase of your exercise session. It allows your body to gradually recover from the conditioning phase. Your heart rate and blood pressure will return to near resting values. Cool-down does not mean to sit down! In fact, do not sit, stand still or lie down right after exercise. This may cause you to feel dizzy or lightheaded or have heart palpitations (fluttering in your chest). The best cool-down is to slowly decrease the intensity of your activity. You may also do some of the same stretching activities you did in the warm-up phase.

Rated Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale:

The Rated Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale is used to measure the intensity of your exercise. The RPE scale runs from 0-10. The numbers below relate to phrases used to rate how easy or difficult you find an activity. For example, 0 (nothing at all) would be how you feel when sitting in a chair; 10 (very, very heavy) would be how you feel at the end of an exercise stress test or after a very difficult activity.

Rated Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale

0 Nothing at all

0.5 Just noticeable

1 Very light

2 Light

3 Moderate

4 Somewhat heavy

5-6 Heavy

7-9 Very heavy

10 Very, very heavy

In most cases, you should exercise at a level that feels 3 (moderate) to 4 (somewhat heavy). When using this rating scale, remember to include feelings of shortness of breath, as well as how tired you feel in your legs and overall.