Why is it healthy to strain your heart through exercise, but unhealthy to strain it through stress, caffeine, nicotine etc? What is the difference between these kinds of cardiac strain?
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Stress, caffeine and nicotine basically cause your heart to work harder, but without the rest of the body helping it. YOu can imagine your body like a car: you started it with a cold engine and floored the accelerator while standing still. The oil pump barely works yet, there isn’t enough cooling, and the turbocharger can’t collect as much air: just the pistons working very hard.
While exercising, it is a car to be operated as it is designed: getting enough air to cool itself, the oil pump making sure everything is well lubricated, and the engine gets enough air so it can fully burn the gasoline. Everything working in tandem.
Same with your body. When you exercise, hormones flood your blood, making sure to get enough oxygen, your storage releases sugar to help your heart and muscles get enough energy. The blood flow speeds up, and your kidneys and livers switch to a higher gear to filter out waste. Your lungs are expanding, making sure the generated extra CO2 can leave the blood. Muscles in your body works in tandem with your heart helping to pump blood around your body.
Our body is evolved for this. The whole system is built around to move and excercise (to escape, fight and hunt, but still) Stress and chemicals only works your heart which is not really designed to handle this kind of pressure alone.
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