My wife has taycardia (resting =90-100 bpm; after a very casual 45 min. walk =141 bpm).
Her family says it’s a hereditary condition and that they also have it (None of them exercise at all). Can this condition be overcome through sensible training? Should she gradually increase cardio like a beginner would? I cannot relate to this at all, and was wondering if anyone has any practical advice or insights…
Respectfully,
-TMD99
[quote]TMD99 wrote:
My wife has taycardia (resting =90-100 bpm; after a very casual 45 min. walk =141 bpm).
Her family says it’s a hereditary condition and that they also have it (None of them exercise at all). Can this condition be overcome through sensible training? Should she gradually increase cardio like a beginner would? I cannot relate to this at all, and was wondering if anyone has any practical advice or insights…
Respectfully,
-TMD99[/quote]
First off, this poses an increase risk with high blood pressure. I don’t know too much of the specifics in terms of numbers, but it does run in my family and I know that with high BP can lead to stroke.
My understanding is that this hereditary condition is not improved with exercise-at least that the resting rate will not change, although she might become less likely to have a spike in HR under stress situations. A family member of mine ended up developing a arhythmia and they have put her on HR slowing medication, and blood thinner, and then shocked her back to normal rhythm. She went back out of rhythm during a period of high stress and they did it again and it has held. There was talk of implanting a pacemaker.
I assume that a doctor is involved at this point, and so you wife’s case is probably not as serious. Exercise can help to reduce the high BP-especially if she is currently overweight (???). This would reduce the risk, but not affect the heart rate issues.
I don’t want to alarm you, but I would start by asking you to evaluate 4 things:
Do not treat this condition without a doctor’s advice. Ask a lot of questions. This situation may be very fragile.
I do know that aerobic training has been shown to decrease blood pressure when combined with a healthy diet.
Tacycardia is not a heart condition to mess with. Make sure she sees a cariologist as soon as possible.
Thanks for the help! (We’re going tomorrow)…
Firstly, your wife is borderline tachy if her resting rate is 90-100 bpm. Tachycardia is defined as a resting rate of 100 or above. Secondly, tachy is a symptom not a disease. There are various causes of tachycardia:
There are two main tachyarrhythmias, ventricular tachy (VT) and supra-ventricular tachys (SVT). Generally these are transient (<1min) and will make you feel pretty unwell if they persist for longer, so it’s unlikely these are the cause.
Autonomic disease can cause tachy something like hyperthyroidism is a common cause (over-active thyroid), these are easily tested for and are usually accompanied by unexplained weight-loss.
Reflex tachycardia can also exist, whereby a sudden drop in BP will be compensated for by an increase in HR. This is caused by a vasodepressor form of syncope (unexplained drop in BP) or by a condition called postural othostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) where HR increases when you stand up. Again, these are transient, so are an unlikely cause.
Finally, it may just be physiological. If your wife is very unfit and/or overweight, in order to supply oxygenated blood to her body the heart has to work harder. In this instance, cardio-vascular training and/or weightloss are useful.
It’s important that you rectify the high resting rate as being chronically tachycardic may increase your risk of a heart attack, due to inadequate oxygen supply to the heart via a number of mechanisms that are not really relevant to this forum.
Anyway, hope some of this helps. I am not a doctor (so I would recommend that you see one), but I do work in clinical cardiology.