: if cardio builds up your heart muscles, then wouldn’t a racing heart due to anxiety etc. build up cardiovascular strength over time?
In: 13
Yeah, caffeine doesn’t do anything but make your heart work harder without building any sustenance. Cardio is engaging your muscles, therefore causing oxygen to flow and build muscle when it metabolizes with food.
The way I understand it, cardio causes your body to produce more red blood cells allowing for more efficient oxygen transportation. Thus your heart doesn’t have to work as hard.
In addition to strengthening the heart, cardio exercises also makes the rest of the body more efficient too.
Vessels, lungs, muscles etc all work more efficiently from the benefits of cardio. So even when not working out, the heart doesn’t have to work as hard. Caffeine doesn’t improve these other systems as much.
Some caffeine intake has been shown in some studies to benefit heart health but it’s far from a definite answer. The study has issues with self reporting and other control factors but there may be a link, though not as strong as taking a walk or jog.
Cardio doesn’t build up your heart muscle by forcing it to work harder, surprisingly it does the opposite because your leg motions act as a secondary ‘pump’ mechanism to push blood back up towards your heart. On top of that, your body becomes more efficient at red blood cell productiobm so these both lead to better and more efficient oxygen transportation in general.
It IS true that the harder your heart works, the more it will build muscle like any other muscle… but there’s one significant difference. Instead of muscle growing outwards, which it can’t do due to lack of room/bone in the way, it will grow inwards, which creates much smaller blood vessels, which in turn can lead to higher blood pressure, easier vessel-blocking blood clots, etc. Not good!
Source: Am fat guy, diagnosed with enlarged heart. Daily exercise is actually one of the treatments as the heart has to work less to push blood around when your legs are contributing to the process (walking/running/etc causes your lower extremities to push blood back up towards the heart. Kind of like a second rhythm to help with circulation. Biology is COOL.)
In addition to the other points made so far: **duration.**
I can’t jog non-stop for more than 20 mins or so. If I did, it would go past the benefits of exercise and be *bad* for my heart due to overwork.
When’s the last time you were anxious for only 20 minutes then fine? Do you take breaks between sets of anxiety and allow your heart recovery time, like you would with a muscle you were exercising? No! At least when I’m anxious, it can be for hours or days. A *constantly* elevated heart rate for hours with no breaks isn’t a beneficial form of exercise, the same way running for 8 hours nonstop wouldn’t be good for your heart or doing 600 arm curls in 1 set wouldn’t be good for your arms.
thank you to all who has commented, i appreciate it. it was all very helpful and explained in a way that i understood. (i am autistic)
Latest Answers