Exercise is supposed to be good for the heart – how does forcing a finite organ to work harder not just wear it out faster?
In: Biology
By ‘finite’ I’m guessing you mean the often quoted statistic that [our hearts beat a certain number of times before they conk out.] (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.sciencealert.com/relationship-between-heart-beat-and-life-expectancy/amp)
There’s two things here. First of all, others have touched on ‘resting heart rate’. The better shape your heart is in, the less frequently it has to beat when you’re at rest. So if we were counting heartbeats, then the heartbeats you ‘spend’ working out, you’ll generally make up for while resting.
That said, the number of heartbeats isn’t what determines when your heart stops working. However, your heart rate is very very tied to your overall health. So you can think of your heart rate as a kind of predictive timer.
Say I use Google maps to figure out how long it’ll take me to get to work. It predicts half an hour. It knows this because it’s synced up with all the things that will speed me up or slow me down. I get to work half an hour later. Google maps’ time prediction didn’t help me *get* to work. It just predicted.
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