The heart often represents our emotions, such as love, affection, courage, bravery, empathy, kindness, and truth. Your heart often counterbalances your mind’s logic and reasoning by adding intuition, passion, and emotions. You may listen to your heart when making important decisions. So, why not listen to it about your health?
Your Heart’s Resting, But It’s Not Quiet
Your heart speaks to you even when you are at rest, and your resting heart rate (RHR) can say a lot about your health. All you have to do is listen. But how do you know what to listen for? First, you need to know your resting heart rate.
How Do You Measure Your Resting Heart Rate?
A typical resting heart rate for a non-athlete adult is between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm), ideally between 60 and 80. A higher resting heart rate may suggest your heart is working harder than it should. On the other hand, it is not unusual for those who regularly exercise to have a RHR below 50 bpm. If you’re concerned that your heart rate isn’t normal, you should speak with your doctor.
The best time to measure your resting heart rate is first thing in the morning before getting out of bed, ideally after a good night’s sleep. The best position is lying down, but sitting quietly works too. You want to be completely relaxed, not talking or moving. The room should be quiet, and you’re not cold, stressed, or have recently had caffeinated drinks. Now you can see why measuring it first thing in the morning works best!
Smartwatches and fitness trackers make it easy to measure your heart rate. You simply have to watch (pun intended) your heart rate for a few seconds while in a relaxed state.
However, you can use your fingers if you don’t have one. You can measure your resting heart rate by placing your index and middle finger against the radial artery on your wrist or the carotid artery in your neck. You can find the radial artery by turning your hand over with the palm side up. It’s just below the base of your thumb where the wrist creases. The carotid artery is just below the jawline and next to your windpipe. In either case, you’ll feel your pulse by gently pressing those spots. Count the number of beats for 30 seconds, then multiply it by two to get your resting heart rate.
Tracking Your Resting Heart Rate
If you don’t track yourself, you won’t know whether your resting heart rate has changed when you check it because you won’t know what’s normal for you. Otherwise, you’ll base everything on the last resting heart rate you remember, which could be yesterday, a week ago, or longer. This will give you a limited view of reality and your progress, and you may become frustrated without that bigger picture.
Whether you’re losing weight, getting more sleep, improving your fitness, or something else, tracking yourself is the best way to know if you’re efforts are paying off. You can use an app, notepad, spreadsheet, or journal. Whatever works best for you. It doesn’t take long, just a few moments to jot it down somewhere, and when you look at it over weeks and months, it can reveal a lot about your progress.
So, track your RHR for a few days, ideally a week, to establish a baseline. Then, you can start comparing your daily RHR with your average, indicating if it seems “off”, which can also be good. You should establish your new normal every month based on the previous month’s measurements.
Decoding Your Heart Rate
You diligently tracked your heart rate and determined your “normal” resting heart rate. So, now that you have it, how do you use it to help you monitor your health? Let’s look at how your heart speaks to you and what it could mean.
Fitness Improvements
Generally speaking, your RHR will go down if you consistently exercise because your heart is getting stronger and more efficient. Aerobic exercises like walking, running, and cycling increase your heart rate, improving your cardiovascular fitness. Over time, your heart becomes better at pumping blood with each beat, so it doesn’t need to work as hard to circulate blood around your body.
Tracking your resting heart rate over time can indicate if your workout routine is improving your fitness, even if your weight or appearance hasn’t changed. Eventually, it will settle in on what’s normal for you. Typically, trained athletes have resting heart rates between 40 and 60 bpm.
Fatigue
Physical exhaustion can take a toll on your body. If you exercise every day or at a high intensity for most of your workouts, your body may not recover, increasing your resting heart rate. In fact, you may notice an increased RHR for a couple of days after a particularly intense workout.
A slight increase may indicate mild fatigue, but a larger increase may indicate overreaching and not recovering properly. It’s best to take a rest day or do a low-intensity workout, and prioritize sleep until your RHR returns to normal.
Stress
Mental exhaustion and stress cause your fight-or-flight system to stay active. In prehistoric times, starvation and running away from danger were some of the most significant threats. However, today’s stresses, such as deadlines, anxiety, work, and family obligations, keep the body alert in a similar way. While in this state, you can experience an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, cortisol, and adrenaline. As a result, your RHR will increase.
Usually, one or two days of a higher RHR are due to short-term stress, like an argument or a deadline. However, an elevated RHR over time could be due to chronic stress, burnout, or emotional fatigue. How do you know if your RHR is due to stress? Do you feel tired but can’t relax, have difficulty focusing, or are reacting more emotionally? Then, it might be because of stress.
To return your RHR to its baseline, try setting boundaries between your time and stressors and engaging in recovery activities like hobbies, walking, yoga, or napping. What works for others may not work for you. So, you may have to experiment to find out what works best.
Dehydration
Dehydration can lead to an increase in your resting heart rate, which varies depending on its severity. A slight increase may occur with minor dehydration, while a more significant increase is likely in severe cases.
Dehydration decreases blood volume due to less fluid in the bloodstream, making the heart work harder to deliver oxygen to the muscles and organs. Your body may also have difficulty cooling off because it can’t sweat efficiently. Another telltale sign is that your urine is darker than usual.
Mild dehydration is easy to fix. Drink water or electrolyte drinks, especially after workouts or periods of being outside in warm weather. Your RHR can return to normal within a few hours after hydrating, which can be a good indicator if your elevated RHR was due to dehydration. For severe dehydration, you should seek medical attention since IV fluids may be necessary.
Illness
When you’re in the early stages of an illness or infection, your immune system kicks in, increasing inflammation and triggering other demands on your body to fight it. Your body must work harder even if you’re lying down or resting. So, illnesses like colds and flus often raise your resting heart rate during the early stages before you see any symptoms.
Instead of plowing forward with an intense workout, it’s better to prioritize rest and hydration. Intense exercise can tax your immune system and affect your ability to fight off an infection. As you recover, your RHR will return to normal. However, if it’s still elevated even if you feel you’re at the end of your illness, it could signal that you need more time to recover.
What About Your Heart Rate While Exercising?
While your resting heart rate can indicate whether you’re rested, your heart rate while you exercise can help you control your effort. For example, if you’re fatigued, stressed, or catching a cold, your body may have to work harder while you exercise. If you’re body needs rest, your heart rate while exercising may be higher than usual. On the other hand, if your heart rate is lower than normal while doing your typical workout, your fitness may be improving, and you’ll have to push harder to increase it to match previous efforts.
If your body needs a break, take a day off or do an easy workout to recover. After a day of rest, your resting heart rate may start returning to normal. One or two days of rest will not erase all your hard work. In fact, rest can recharge your body and mind, increasing your motivation and improving your performance. So, don’t be afraid to take a day off when needed.
The Takeaway
We often think of our hearts in emotional terms, such as love, courage, and intuition. But your heart is also a messenger of your physical state. Monitoring your resting heart rate can uncover valuable signals about your fitness, recovery needs, fatigue, stress, dehydration, and even an early indicator of illness.
Tracking your heart rate can be a powerful form of self-awareness. Whether chasing performance, prioritizing wellness, or simply trying to understand your body better, your heart can guide you. All it takes is a moment to listen. After all, your heart is always speaking, even while resting.
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Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.
