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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I might be completely wrong here, please correct me guys, but here goes.
People who strain their heart with stimulant abuse or stress have a 24/7 high heart rate / high blood pressure. This hurts the whole cardiovascular system, the heart, and other organs.
People who use stimulants moderately (i.e only during the day, think “your morning adderall pill”), or athletes that train during the day, even every day, well that’s only 8 hours a day. The other 16 hours are rest and sleep.
Stress probably isn’t bad for you if you manage to be stressed only 6-8 hours a day and then relaxed. But that’s not how stress works, usually you’ll be stressed 24/7 even at night.
Stimulants aren’t bad for you if you take them once in the morning and be done with it. If you go on a 5 day binge and sleep 2 hours a night, your body won’t be happy.
That being said, anything that increases your blood pressure is bad for you, but it’s not nearly as bad to have it elevated a few hours during the day VS all the time.
Also sports have extra benefits.
Exercise or cardio increases the efficiency of your stroke volume. Your heart naturally adapts and in some cases grows. Usually the left ventricle. Your cardiac output at rest is the same. It’s how much blood is being pumped in a minute. (Cardiac output=heart rate x stroke volume). Now you see if cardiac output is the same and your stroke volume (blood ejected per pump) increases, your heart rate has to decrease at rest. So for the strain you put in for that 30-60+ minute of cardio, it pays off in the long run. The opposite happens when someone gets older.(not talking about exercise) You will notice their heart rate naturally increases because their stroke volume gets lower over time as the heart ages. There are a ton of other positive factors you can even go into.
Med student here
This is a great question. Cardiovascular health actually has more to do with your body’s ability to supply its tissues with oxygen than having a ‘strong heart’. The point of exercise is that you are increasing your bodies need for oxygen to its tissues and it has to get better at extracting it from your blood. This can happen in several ways like the heart becoming more efficient at pumping blood or vessels getting better at supplying your organs.
Nicotine, caffeine, and stress all stimulate your heart to beat harder and faster when you’re at rest without the increased need for oxygen. This is a good effect at the wrong time because the rest of your body isn’t expecting it and doesn’t prepare itself, leading to long term damage overtime.
In conclusion: Using lots of energy trains your body to get better at sending oxygen to your organs, and makes your organs get better at extracting what it needs.
The secret to cardiovascular health is heart rate + muscles moving and needing oxygen.
If these two things don’t happen at the same time you get damage to your vessels, organs, etc.
My dad was an avid runner and biker but his heart still gave out on him…so I really am conflicted. We feel as if he over stressed his heart from excessive exercise for his age.
Ironically the promoted ad at the top of this post before the comments / replies is an ad for red bull
I had also been told that feeling adrenaline in situations where you’re not in need of adrenaline (like playing a video game) is also unhealthy, makes sense
Pretty much what everyone else said, I do have one addition:
It also has a lot to do with the chemicals that are released during both stress and exercise. Exercise gives endorphins while stress give cortisone which isn’t good for your body including your heart.
Your heart is a muscle and imagine it went to the gym every day and lifted weights and got really really buff. Its strong but cant really move around due to excess size. This is your heart after years of drug stimulation
The simple answer is that bodies are complicated. Exercising doesn’t just make your heart pump faster, it also effects your veins and lungs and brain and pretty much every part of your body in a different way than just getting the heart pumping fast from a stimulant. Really there are a lot of tiny biological processes, hormones and various chemical reactions, that exercising causes that end up directing your body to strengthen the heart, among other things, in a good way. People often think of getting healthy in some way, like exercising, as if they’re doing something to specifically improve their body in some way, like a blacksmith tempering or hammering metal or something. But really you’re mostly just tricking your body into thinking that it needs to use more resources and have more robust systems to survive. All of the things that are ultimately responsible for improving cardiovascular health or muscle gain or fat loss technically have no need for the body to be running or lifting weights to work. If we could remotely trigger those processes somehow you’d still get all the beneficial effects without ever needing to lift a finger. Unfortunately bodies are way to complex and variable for us to do that yet, so for now we gotta keep tricking our body to improve itself!
Something others have not covered:
Health is not just cardio.
Exercise = me feel strong = me feel good and empowered = me get better mental health.
Stress / Nicotine = me feel weak, underpowered to deal with my day = me cope = me get worse mental health, depression.
It is shown by studies that mental states do influence physical health. Immune system strength and variety of health metrics all go down as a result of stress and bad feelings. Your body and mind are closely linked.
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