Why does your heart beat faster as you inhale and slower as you exhale?

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Why does your heart beat faster as you inhale and slower as you exhale?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Breathing in expands your rib cage, and in turn removes pressure on major blood vessels like the vena cava. This briefly lowers your blood pressure and your heart responds by pumping slightly faster

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s actually the opposite.

Breathing in is achieved by expanding your rib cage, which causes the pressure inside your chest to decrease, so it sucks air from outside, through your mouth, into your lungs.

This decreased pressure also means blood can flow back to your heart more easily, so your heart receives more blood.

When our heart is filled with more blood, it has to pump out more blood too, otherwise it would all accumulate inside the heart and start to create backpressure. Blood pressure actually increases, so your heart rate has to fall, so that the total volume of blood pumped out per minute remains the same.

So heart rate goes down when breathing in, and up when breathing out.

Source; I’ve measured many people’s heart rates. Also, I studied this.