why is increased heart rate considered dangerous when it comes as a side effect of drugs (ie cocaine, marijuana) but considered beneficial and necessary when caused by aerobic exercise?

Question

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

Answer 1

Increases heart rate always increases the chance of stroke or heart attacks. When out of shape people join aerobic classes and push themselves too hard they often have medical issues. It’s a very common thing in cycling classes because the out of shape people are too embarrassed to stop or slow down. Increased heart rate from panic/stress are a similar issue to doing drugs. You aren’t physically exerting yourself so it’s not like you can just stop running to lower your heart rate. Someone panicking and having a heart rate spiking can suffer from a heart attack due to the increase in heart rate.

The better shape you are in aerobically, the more efficient your heart is. Your resting heart rate my be 70-80bpm while mine is 60bpm. If we both ran on a treadmill for 30 minutes at the same speed, my heart rate could be 100bpm and yours is 180bpm. Even after stopping, a more conditioned person’s heart rate will lower back down to their resting heart rate quicker.

In terms of doing drugs, your heart rate isn’t increasing due to your physical exertion but due to chemicals in your body. If my heart rate gets too high from exercise, I can slow down or stop to get it back to a healthy range. If you’re sitting on your ass not moving at all and your heart rate is spiking to over 200bpm, you’re pretty fucked because there isn’t anything you can do to slow it down except maybe meditating/calming yourself if it’s due to panic.

Another thing to keep in mind is increasing your heart rate regularly through exercise is strengthening your heart so it’s more acclimated to the stress of high heart rates. Some out of shape person who doesn’t doing any sort of exercise especially aerobic exercise is going to have a weaker heart that isn’t strong enough to sustain a high heart rate for an extended period of time.

Here’s an article that kind of goes into target heart rate ranges for running. Doesn’t really give much of a scientific explanation to your question but it might give a better idea of good and bad heart rate ranges: https://www.healthline.com/health/running-heart-rate#ideal-rate