Physical Activity and Your Heart
Dr. Nanda K. Nair discusses how exercise can help lower blood pressure, improve cholesterol, control diabetes and so much more. He shares his best tips on how to live a healthier lifestyle with exercise and physical activity. Learn more about BayCare’s heart and vascular services.
Featured Speaker:
Learn more about Nanda Nair, DO
Nanda K. Nair, DO
Dr. Nanda Nair is board certified in internal medicine, nuclear cardiology, vascular ultrasound, adult echocardiography and cardiovascular diseases. His special interests include peripheral vascular disease, vascular imaging and he also participates in general cardiology. Dr. Nair is a member of the American College of Cardiology, the American Society of Echocardiography, the American College of Physicians, the Alliance for Physician Certification and Advancement and the Society of Vascular Medicine.Learn more about Nanda Nair, DO
Transcription:
Physical Activity and Your Heart
Melanie Cole (Host): Chances are, you already know that physical activity is good for you. And physical activity has many health benefits, not the least of which is protecting your heart. My guest today, is Dr. Nanda Nair. He’s a noninvasive cardiologist with BayCare Health. Dr. Nair, what does it even mean to get regular physical activity?
Nanda K Nair, DO (Guest): So, there are actually recommendations that have been put out by American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology based on studies. So, what is recommended is essentially 150 minutes of exercise a week, that’s two and a half hours a week of moderate intensity. So, it doesn’t really matter what type of exercise you are doing as long as - you can do elliptical, bike or rowing, something where you are getting your heart rate up. Moderate intensity means where you get your heartrate about 50-75% of your maximum heartrate. And there are calculators online. You can just plug in the numbers and it will tell you what your 100% is. So, as long as you are doing that about 150 minutes a week.
Host: Doctor, what are the benefits of exercise in terms of disease prevention? What diseases can it help to reduce the risk of?
Dr. Nair: Great question. So, a lot of heart disease – heart disease has risk factors and so a lot of times what we are doing is trying to help control the risk factors. So, exercise helps a lot with the risk factors on top of helping heart disease. Exercise will definitely help with blood pressure control. And we are talking about cardiovascular exercise like aerobic exercise. It helps getting better blood pressure control. It also helps with getting your diabetes under control. It can help with your cholesterol numbers. It can help you lose weight, regular exercise along with diet. So, all of those risk factors it will get those better controlled. And if I can get those risk factors better controlled; we can help with reducing the progression of heart disease.
Basically, how I explain to my patients is, let’s say you have a nail in your tire. If it gets flat, we have to pump it back up. But if you don’t go after the root causes of those risk factors, meaning take the nail out and patch it up; it doesn’t help you as much. So, it’s the same thing with heart issues. Putting a stent in or doing heart bypass surgery helps, but we still have to go after the root causes. Those are those risk factors I just told you about, the high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, smoking, things like that. So, if we can get those better controlled; that will help with your heart disease.
Now the other thing is, exercise has been shown to help reduce stroke also, the risk of you having a stroke, which is always a good thing and then there are noncardiac benefits of exercise also as far as better with depression, anxiety, mood symptoms and there are some studies suggesting that it may even help reduce the risk of you getting dementia or getting that worse. So, that’s the – that’s one end.
From a direct cardiac standpoint, exercise helps with folks who have for example, congestive heart failure. That’s a pretty big problem that is happening in the US and it’s happening more and more. So, doing regular exercise helps as far as your symptoms with your congestive heart failure. It will make you feel better, increases what’s called your VO2 max which is basically how good your body is at getting the oxygen out of the blood, and the better it is, the better you feel. So, all of those exercises have been shown to help people live longer. It reduces what’s called mortality, meaning the chances of you dying from all causes. So, that’s always a very good thing. It also helps with reducing risk of heart disease and heart attacks also. So, regular exercise is beneficial in basically most of the ways for your heart.
Host: I’m so glad that you mentioned anxiety and stress because we look at that more and more as a risk for heart disease. Doctor, does all of the recommended amount of exercise have to be done at once? Can it be split up? It’s 150 minutes. For some people, that sounds like a lot and so does it all have to be done at the same time, daily?
Dr. Nair: Oh God, absolutely not. So, it’s 150 minutes of moderate intensity or half of that, 75 minutes of high intensity. So, like I said, moderate intensity is 50-75% of your maximum heartrate. That’s all we need. What I usually recommend is do that – if you do 30 minutes a day, five days a week that gets you to 150. That’s good enough, right? If you want to do it three days a week for 50 minutes, that’s good enough. Now typically, we like from a heart standpoint, I like to get those 30 minutes to be continuous because that improves your cardiovascular conditioning.
And there are a lot of folks who can’t do that 30 minutes continuously. Maybe you can only do 10 minutes, that’s all you can do. And that’s okay. What you want to do over time, is slowly build up that where you can do that 30 minutes continuously. Now most of the recommendations for aerobic exercise say you don’t even have to do 30 minutes continuously. You want to do 10 minutes – break you know 10-10-10 in a day, that’s fine. And that’s fine for regular aerobic exercise. But from a cardiac standpoint; what I’m looking for from a heart standpoint what we like is that cardiovascular conditioning. So, that’s that continuously where you are doing that 30 minutes continuously, where your heartrate comes up and stays up there. That is building cardiovascular conditioning.
And one of the things you will notice as you start doing more and more is that you will see change in your heartrate. What I describe is I mean a lot of us now have Apple Watch or Android Watch, a lot of us have Fit Bit, a lot of these variable technologies that are – kind of let us know what your heartrate is and things like that. So, for example, the more cardiovascular exercise you do, the more aerobic exercise you do; you will notice that your resting heartrate gets lower. Because that tells me your conditioning is getting better. So, there are a lot of changes that happen that if you can do it for a longer time, that’s better. But if you can’t, you know what, I’ll take something over nothing.
Host: Dr. Nair, are there some exercise warning signs? Things that you would like listeners to know about, red flags. If they begin an exercise program, or they are really trying to reduce their risk of heart disease; what things should we look out for?
Dr. Nair: Okay. So, first of all, I usually tell patients if you are not regularly exercising, before you start exercising; you see your physician, your primary care physician, your cardiologist, whoever, talk to them and they can give you some advice as far as if you are having some symptoms of things to watch out for. But typically, if you start having symptoms on exertion and that’s usually what I look at. Now if you are having shortness of breath even sitting; that’s a different issue. That needs to be checked out, but if you are not having any symptoms at rest and you are able to go about doing your normal life, the normal things like grocery shopping, walking the malls without any symptoms; then what I’d start looking at the next step is are you having symptoms on exertion. So, let’s say you start walking on a flat ground and after walking about 20-30 minutes, or walking about five minutes you start having chest pain, chest tightness or you start getting shortness of breath on exertion. Those are warning symptoms that need to be – I don’t want to say warning – those are concerning symptoms that should be evaluated first by your physician to see what’s going on. Then, symptoms like if you are getting lightheaded, dizziness, same problem where you would fall down. And obviously, if you – the final one is if you are having – when you start exerting yourself, you start passing out, that’s also a concerning symptom. So, those are the main symptoms on exertion that need to be checked out before you start a new exercise regimen.
Host: Such important information. Doctor, wrap it up for us with your best advice about the types of exercise, you mentioned aerobics and people hear about all the different types that are out there and whether daily tasks, sweeping your kitchen floor, vacuuming, mowing the lawn; whether those can count as exercise to reduce that risk of heart disease. What is it you want listeners to take home from this segment?
Dr. Nair: Great question. So, those daily activities do not count for your exercise as far as prevention. When I ask patients, they say oh yeah, I walk all day for my work. That’s not what I’m looking for. What we are looking for – what I’m looking for is a continuous program for like 30 minutes that continuous program where you are doing something the whole 20-30 minutes. So, things like elliptical, walking, swimming, bicycling, rowing, step aerobics, Zumba classes, something where you are doing an actual dedicated exercise program for those continuous 30 minutes every day. That’s what I’m looking for and those will help you. If you are able to do that; it will help you live longer.
Host: Really, so important for people to hear. Thank you so much Dr. Nair for being on with us today and really so clearly laying out for us the importance of exercise and physical activity and decreasing our risk of heart disease. It’s great information. To learn more about BayCare’s Heart and Vascular Services, please visit BayCareHeart.org, that’s BayCareHeart.org. You’re listening to BayCare HealthChat. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
Physical Activity and Your Heart
Melanie Cole (Host): Chances are, you already know that physical activity is good for you. And physical activity has many health benefits, not the least of which is protecting your heart. My guest today, is Dr. Nanda Nair. He’s a noninvasive cardiologist with BayCare Health. Dr. Nair, what does it even mean to get regular physical activity?
Nanda K Nair, DO (Guest): So, there are actually recommendations that have been put out by American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology based on studies. So, what is recommended is essentially 150 minutes of exercise a week, that’s two and a half hours a week of moderate intensity. So, it doesn’t really matter what type of exercise you are doing as long as - you can do elliptical, bike or rowing, something where you are getting your heart rate up. Moderate intensity means where you get your heartrate about 50-75% of your maximum heartrate. And there are calculators online. You can just plug in the numbers and it will tell you what your 100% is. So, as long as you are doing that about 150 minutes a week.
Host: Doctor, what are the benefits of exercise in terms of disease prevention? What diseases can it help to reduce the risk of?
Dr. Nair: Great question. So, a lot of heart disease – heart disease has risk factors and so a lot of times what we are doing is trying to help control the risk factors. So, exercise helps a lot with the risk factors on top of helping heart disease. Exercise will definitely help with blood pressure control. And we are talking about cardiovascular exercise like aerobic exercise. It helps getting better blood pressure control. It also helps with getting your diabetes under control. It can help with your cholesterol numbers. It can help you lose weight, regular exercise along with diet. So, all of those risk factors it will get those better controlled. And if I can get those risk factors better controlled; we can help with reducing the progression of heart disease.
Basically, how I explain to my patients is, let’s say you have a nail in your tire. If it gets flat, we have to pump it back up. But if you don’t go after the root causes of those risk factors, meaning take the nail out and patch it up; it doesn’t help you as much. So, it’s the same thing with heart issues. Putting a stent in or doing heart bypass surgery helps, but we still have to go after the root causes. Those are those risk factors I just told you about, the high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol, smoking, things like that. So, if we can get those better controlled; that will help with your heart disease.
Now the other thing is, exercise has been shown to help reduce stroke also, the risk of you having a stroke, which is always a good thing and then there are noncardiac benefits of exercise also as far as better with depression, anxiety, mood symptoms and there are some studies suggesting that it may even help reduce the risk of you getting dementia or getting that worse. So, that’s the – that’s one end.
From a direct cardiac standpoint, exercise helps with folks who have for example, congestive heart failure. That’s a pretty big problem that is happening in the US and it’s happening more and more. So, doing regular exercise helps as far as your symptoms with your congestive heart failure. It will make you feel better, increases what’s called your VO2 max which is basically how good your body is at getting the oxygen out of the blood, and the better it is, the better you feel. So, all of those exercises have been shown to help people live longer. It reduces what’s called mortality, meaning the chances of you dying from all causes. So, that’s always a very good thing. It also helps with reducing risk of heart disease and heart attacks also. So, regular exercise is beneficial in basically most of the ways for your heart.
Host: I’m so glad that you mentioned anxiety and stress because we look at that more and more as a risk for heart disease. Doctor, does all of the recommended amount of exercise have to be done at once? Can it be split up? It’s 150 minutes. For some people, that sounds like a lot and so does it all have to be done at the same time, daily?
Dr. Nair: Oh God, absolutely not. So, it’s 150 minutes of moderate intensity or half of that, 75 minutes of high intensity. So, like I said, moderate intensity is 50-75% of your maximum heartrate. That’s all we need. What I usually recommend is do that – if you do 30 minutes a day, five days a week that gets you to 150. That’s good enough, right? If you want to do it three days a week for 50 minutes, that’s good enough. Now typically, we like from a heart standpoint, I like to get those 30 minutes to be continuous because that improves your cardiovascular conditioning.
And there are a lot of folks who can’t do that 30 minutes continuously. Maybe you can only do 10 minutes, that’s all you can do. And that’s okay. What you want to do over time, is slowly build up that where you can do that 30 minutes continuously. Now most of the recommendations for aerobic exercise say you don’t even have to do 30 minutes continuously. You want to do 10 minutes – break you know 10-10-10 in a day, that’s fine. And that’s fine for regular aerobic exercise. But from a cardiac standpoint; what I’m looking for from a heart standpoint what we like is that cardiovascular conditioning. So, that’s that continuously where you are doing that 30 minutes continuously, where your heartrate comes up and stays up there. That is building cardiovascular conditioning.
And one of the things you will notice as you start doing more and more is that you will see change in your heartrate. What I describe is I mean a lot of us now have Apple Watch or Android Watch, a lot of us have Fit Bit, a lot of these variable technologies that are – kind of let us know what your heartrate is and things like that. So, for example, the more cardiovascular exercise you do, the more aerobic exercise you do; you will notice that your resting heartrate gets lower. Because that tells me your conditioning is getting better. So, there are a lot of changes that happen that if you can do it for a longer time, that’s better. But if you can’t, you know what, I’ll take something over nothing.
Host: Dr. Nair, are there some exercise warning signs? Things that you would like listeners to know about, red flags. If they begin an exercise program, or they are really trying to reduce their risk of heart disease; what things should we look out for?
Dr. Nair: Okay. So, first of all, I usually tell patients if you are not regularly exercising, before you start exercising; you see your physician, your primary care physician, your cardiologist, whoever, talk to them and they can give you some advice as far as if you are having some symptoms of things to watch out for. But typically, if you start having symptoms on exertion and that’s usually what I look at. Now if you are having shortness of breath even sitting; that’s a different issue. That needs to be checked out, but if you are not having any symptoms at rest and you are able to go about doing your normal life, the normal things like grocery shopping, walking the malls without any symptoms; then what I’d start looking at the next step is are you having symptoms on exertion. So, let’s say you start walking on a flat ground and after walking about 20-30 minutes, or walking about five minutes you start having chest pain, chest tightness or you start getting shortness of breath on exertion. Those are warning symptoms that need to be – I don’t want to say warning – those are concerning symptoms that should be evaluated first by your physician to see what’s going on. Then, symptoms like if you are getting lightheaded, dizziness, same problem where you would fall down. And obviously, if you – the final one is if you are having – when you start exerting yourself, you start passing out, that’s also a concerning symptom. So, those are the main symptoms on exertion that need to be checked out before you start a new exercise regimen.
Host: Such important information. Doctor, wrap it up for us with your best advice about the types of exercise, you mentioned aerobics and people hear about all the different types that are out there and whether daily tasks, sweeping your kitchen floor, vacuuming, mowing the lawn; whether those can count as exercise to reduce that risk of heart disease. What is it you want listeners to take home from this segment?
Dr. Nair: Great question. So, those daily activities do not count for your exercise as far as prevention. When I ask patients, they say oh yeah, I walk all day for my work. That’s not what I’m looking for. What we are looking for – what I’m looking for is a continuous program for like 30 minutes that continuous program where you are doing something the whole 20-30 minutes. So, things like elliptical, walking, swimming, bicycling, rowing, step aerobics, Zumba classes, something where you are doing an actual dedicated exercise program for those continuous 30 minutes every day. That’s what I’m looking for and those will help you. If you are able to do that; it will help you live longer.
Host: Really, so important for people to hear. Thank you so much Dr. Nair for being on with us today and really so clearly laying out for us the importance of exercise and physical activity and decreasing our risk of heart disease. It’s great information. To learn more about BayCare’s Heart and Vascular Services, please visit BayCareHeart.org, that’s BayCareHeart.org. You’re listening to BayCare HealthChat. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.