Cardio exercises are great for you, but I’m confused. Since the heart is a muscle, does exercising it make it grow bigger, which could lead to heart disease?
My father has a enlarged heart and this question crossed my mind.
In: Biology
Yes it does. However, it takes a LOT of very very intense exercise to get to the point where your heart is so big it’s actually hazardous to your health. Like, Tour De France winner levels.
When you’re exercising, the changes exercise makes to your heart happen at pace with beneficial changes to the way your heart works and gets oxygen and such.
When you’ve got high blood pressure, your heart’s working mega hard just to force blood through skinny little blood vessels so you can function normally. And it’s got to work hard *all* the time. This means it’s got to just be strong, so it gets thicker in a way that decreases the amount of space inside the heart – it pumps less blood per beat.
When youre exercising, the bigger issue is that your hearts got to move more blood around rather than fighting against really high pressure. Physically moving also helps blood move back into the heart from the veins. This means it changes in such a way that it’s going to get thicker, but it’ll also increase the amount of space in there – it can pump more blood per beat.
When you’re fit, your blood is better at carrying oxygen around, your muscles are better at taking it up, you have more blood vessels, lower pressure in them, and you push more blood per beat, so your heart doesn’t actually need to beat as often.
Contrast that with someone who’s unfit; their heart needs to beat faster and harder because they’re not as good at getting oxygen in and out, their blood pressure is high, and their heart has less space in it so it can’t push as much blood per beat.
An unfit persons heart just never gets a break! It has to work really hard 24/7 just to do normal stuff, whereas a fit person’s heart gets to be super chill when they’re not exercising. You can tell then that the unfit persons heart is gonna wear out a lot faster than the fit person’s, even though they’ve both got big hearts.
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