Cardiac Rehab questions

[schuss]

Harry - my dad is in the middle of the same thing - stent in the LAD from a 97% blockage. The biggest key is one you're recognizing - go slow and don't overdo it. You need to be low on watts and effort. He said most of his rehab has been them yelling at him to slow down. Keep it up! If someone yells at you for being slow, fuck em,

[old goat]

Just remember the old joke about the young bull elk and the old one.

[Harry]

Last week I did 30 minutes walking slowly keeping my HR at 85 to 90. Took Sunday off and went fishing. This week I’m upping it to 45 minutes, still slow, still keeping at 85 to 90 bpm.


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[Harry]

Harry - my dad is in the middle of the same thing - stent in the LAD from a 97% blockage. The biggest key is one you're recognizing - go slow and don't overdo it. You need to be low on watts and effort. He said most of his rehab has been them yelling at him to slow down. Keep it up! If someone yells at you for being slow, fuck em,

Wow, vibes to your Dad. I was feeling bad at 88 percent blocked, I can’t imagine 97 percent !

I know Dr OG said don’t get hung up on HR, but I found paying attention to my HR Monitor on my wrist is the only way to keep going slow. Otherwise I speed way up.


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[Dantheman]

I know Dr OG said don’t get hung up on HR, but I found paying attention to my HR Monitor on my wrist is the only way to keep going slow. Otherwise I speed way up.

One way to keep your intensity down is to keep your mouth closed and only breathe through your nose. This worked really well for me last year while recovering from a pretty significant head injury.

[abraham]

One way to keep your intensity down is to keep your mouth closed and only breathe through your nose. This worked really well for me last year while recovering from a pretty significant head injury.

Wearing a mask outside let's you put a piece of tape on your lips to force the issue. I spent some time doing that last year to see how fast I could go while only breathing through my nose.

[Dantheman]

Over time I was definitely able to move more air through my nose. It seems crazy but I actually feel like my sinuses expanded some. Unless I'm pushing the pace hard I don't need to open my mouth.

[old goat]

One way to keep your intensity down is to keep your mouth closed and only breathe through your nose. This worked really well for me last year while recovering from a pretty significant head injury.

That's good advice. Besides controlling activity level nose breathing hydrates the air before it hits the lungs and keeps the covid out.

The PT had me breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Or was it the other way around? Or you can get all yoga and breath in one nostril and out the other. Or through the eyeballs.

[Harry]

End of Rehab Week 3.

Six days of 45 minute walks, still slow keeping HR at 90 or below.

Took Sunday off.

Also added in lap swimming on Tue & Thur. Harder to keep HR down though. Did 1,000 meters both times. (40 lengths of 25m pool). Stopped every 200m (8 lengths) to check HR. It was 110-115, so I rested 2-3 minutes for it to come down to 90. Then another 200m and repeat.

Overall feeling real good. Excited about having such a good recovery.

Any input from the experts is welcome.


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[grinch]

Good work Harry. Sounds like youre getting a good feel on where you are and need to be. A favorite racer of mine recently said she's enjoying just going out and doing what she likes on a particular day without her heart rate monitor. Im sure she's used it tons and especially for her base fitness this year but she's so in tune with her body and able to stand back and evaluate where she is and what she's doing. Atm she's still pushing crazy hard when she feels it but from years with a structure and hr monitor she can tell when she needs to chill or push. I often say its better to get 7 hrs of training over 7 days then to get 7hrs of training in one day despite having 6 more days in the week. Spreading it out allows your body to heal/recover overnight and make bigger gains in the long run and avoid overtraining and injury.
The adding in the swimming reminds me that i always like keeping it fresh and mixing it up. Consistency is the goal and keeping it fresh and fun really helps that. A lot more fun at that endurance pace too.
Atm its mainly biking for me but i always change the routes and types of riding to keep it fresh. Nothing dampens the fun and consistency like doing too much or the same thing everyday over and over

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[old goat]

Harry, I think you could let your heart rate go higher as long as you're not having any chest, lightheadedness, skipping or irregular heartbeats the impression I got when you posted that you thought you fuct up was that your heart was handling it ok but that your overall conditioning was the limiting factor. I think you could focus more on how you feel the evening or the next day after exercise and not as much on heart rate. Your heart is used to functioning with not enough blood--now that it's getting all the blood it needs it's loving it. I'm not saying to shoot for a heart rate of 160 tomorrow, but OK to let it go over 90 and gradually increase it over time.

[skifishbum]

wanker humpday i hope your healin well bump
the old man had ticker surgery again monday
plugged the hole and another bonus one they found
doin good staid with us a day or 2 and is headed back home

[abraham]

Bump, hope things are improving.

My dad had a treadmill test a week ago, was told he has to have surgery to look inside and maybe do something this week. Hoping it's not a big deal but I've had a business with him for the last 10 years, feeling a bit guilty since just before covid I was planning on hiring someone so he could work less, or choose to work on the things that interested him with a buffer from some of the stress.

[abraham]

I sprung for an Apple Watch 6 last winter because it is FDA certified to detect AFIB. It’s allowed me to collect a lot of data to share with my doc. I could have tracked bouts and heart rate manually but the watch also recorded ECGs so he could see the variations in rhythm. There’s quite a few apps that can track and analyze heart rate trends. I still use a chest strap to connect to my bike computer but I’d just use the watch if I didn’t already have the computer. If you’re considering one, the 7 will be announced next week so wait a few days and you can get new features or save on the 6.

I was diagnosed with afib a few years back. My cardiologist told me about these. They are great. Medical grade ekg and you can save the outputs and share with your dr. Best $150.00 I have spent

https://www.kardia.com/kardiamobile6l/

I think my dad has AFib, if I understand it correctly at least. He doesn't get a good heart rate measurement except by EKG? His doctor had him do some short walks then took measurements and said that was a thing. Evidently this was ~10 years ago, but it would have been good to know about. From what I know so far he has a noisy heart rate, but the noise in the signal can be seen in the EKG plot and ignored. Or something like that. Does this seen right?

I'm looking at picking up a HR monitor of some type so he can have some feedback. I don't see why he'd need to have live data if it's going to be noisy, but I figure if I can get the data some filtering would give useful if not exactly correct information. Is this dumb?

The good news is he got a stent put in during his surgery and should be good to ski this season.

[old goat]

Easiest thing to do is to just feel his pulse. Atrial fibrillation is described as irregularly irregular. That is, the pulses are different times apart and there is no apparent pattern. A regularly irregular rhythm example would be 3 equally spaced beats and then a pause (skipped beat).

I can't tell from your description if he has a fib or what exactly the doctor was saying. In a fib and some other rhythm problems not every electrical heart beat will produce a pulse you can feel or that a home blood pressure cuff, finger pulse oximeter, or other device can detect, so the heart rate on EKG will be higher than that detected by any of those other methods.

Skipped beats are usually but not always harmless. As long as the atria of the heart are beating, whether regular or not, blood clots won't form. I assume he is still under a doctor's care and his heart rhythm is being checked from time to time. If he has stayed away from the doc because of Covid it sounds like seeing the doc would be a good idea. (My cardiologist wants to check my rhythm--I had a fib for a month or two after heart surgery and get occasional other abnormal rhythms; I don't go because I can check my own rhythm, but I did that for a living.)

[abraham]

Thanks, I don't know what the issue is exactly but I'm trying to find out so I can be useful. It's a bit of an inversion in expected roles though and not straightforward to get answers right now. It's complicated by the fact that I have a business with him. The immediate problem requiring the stent was caught with a treadmill test that, yes, was put off last year.