I’ve even seen “increased risk of stroke” caused by this increase in heart rate. Something is not adding up here, why such a big difference?
In: 20
The increased heart rate in exercise is a byproduct of needing more oxygen. This need for more oxygen through exercise causes your body to slowly adapt by doing things such as:
(1) *widening your blood vessels* (why athletes have lower blood pressures)
(2) *increasing blood vessels to organs* (which decreases the work your heart needs to put in, lowering your resting heart rate)
(3) *building certain muscles to increase efficiency in energy usage* (increasing endurance).
Obviously this is far oversimplified and these various exercise benefits depends on what type of exercise you’re doing.
The heart rate increase itself is not necessarily the healthy part of exercise but rather it’s a sign that your body is being pushed enough for the healthy things to happen.
Drugs by themselves don’t do any of this “good exercise stuff” and only chemically increases your heart rate. Increased heart rate always puts strain on the heart, but in exercise, at least the blood vessels widen so you get more blood flow to the heart to keep up with the increased demand. That doesn’t happen with drugs.
Instead, another effect of some drugs (like cocaine) is that it “tightens” the blood vessels including the vessels to your heart and to the brain. This decreases blood flow to the heart. The increase in heart metabolism from the high heart rate but decrease in blood flow causes increase risk of heart attacks.
The tightening of blood vessels also causes decrease in blood flow to the brain which leads to increase risk of stroke.
As anything in this subreddit, I had to oversimplify things a lot so feel free to ask questions if something doesn’t make sense.
Source: Medical degree and bachelors in Human Biology
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