Your body has so much to gain when you stay active. Exercise helps to improve your physical and mental wellbeing, making it one of the key elements of healthy living. Your susceptibility to diseases is minimized when you push your body through activity and the risk of developing conditions like stroke and diabetes are reduced.
Specifically, aerobic exercises do your heart a lot of good. Aerobics improve blood circulation and lower your risk of developing heart disease or heart failure symptoms. It also makes your heart muscle stronger and enhances your stamina to engage in more activities.
Cardiomyopathy and exercise
It is normal to have concerns about exercising if you are struggling with cardiomyopathy. You may wonder whether you'll develop breathing issues. You could also be concerned that your condition can cause your implants to give off a shock, or even increase your risk of arrhythmias. How much exercise can you engage in to benefit your heart?
Your doctor might give you guidelines but you should know that making recommendations about exercise is not always easy. Your kind of cardiomyopathy and its effects are evaluated first, before any suggestions are considered. More importantly, the kind of physical activity you need is something that you find interesting and that will keep your body within its limits.
Exercise causes your body’s oxygen needs to rise so that your muscles can keep going. To match these needs, your breathing goes deeper and faster which in turn spikes your heart rate. As it beats faster, blood pumping increases and that's a lot for work for your heart.
As a result, you might experience symptoms like:
- Light-headedness
- Running out of breath
- Fatigue
- Arrhythmias
- Chest pain
- Temporary loss of consciousness
Therefore, to find the right kind of exercise for your condition, you will have to go through professional exercise tests.
The role of exercise tests for cardiomyopathy patients
In most cases of cardiomyopathy, patients undergo exercise tests such as:
- An exercise ECG using a static bicycle or treadmill to exercise. Doctors may also monitor their breathing at the same time.
- An exercise echocardiogram where heart imaging takes place as they exercise.
- An MRI to determine whether there are any issues with blood flowing from the heart (commonly known as left ventricular outflow tract obstruction). This obstruction occurs in some cardiomyopathies and limits a patient’s capacity to exercise.
The reasons for conducting these tests are numerous. They help to evaluate the heart’s performance and how it holds up during exertion. If symptoms like dizziness and chest pain occur from exercise, these tests will show it too. They also tell whether exercising can put you at risk of cardiac arrest by causing the onset of arrhythmias. Exercise assessments serve as guides for making treatment recommendations, too.
More importantly, since these tests are conducted in a controlled hospital environment, they assist medical professionals to determine the right kinds of physical activities for your daily life.
This scale comprises different parameters, represented by colors:
- Green means zero to very light levels of exertion
- Yellow indicates very light to light levels of exertion
- Orange means slightly hard to hard levels of exertion
- Red means very hard to extremely hard levels of exertion.
For most normal people, the green and yellow zones provide the most benefits to their health, since the exercise levels are relatively light. Even if there is insufficient proof to determine the right degree of exertion for cardiomyopathy patients, workouts that fall in the green and yellow areas are highly suggested. This is because physical activities in the other zones (red and orange) are intense and will put too much strain on the heart.
What is the best kind of workout?
Different factors are considered before your doctor makes a recommendation. The reason is that all cases of cardiomyopathy are unique and affect patients in different ways. Also, professionals require more research to understand how exercise impacts cardiomyopathy before they give concrete advice. It would be in your best interests to follow the instructions of your healthcare provider strictly.
In general cardiomyopathy patients should:
- Steer clear of activities that are intense and competitive
- Take part in recreational exercise
- Never engage in activities that need you to exert yourself or produce sudden energy bursts.
Some forms of workouts that would generally be great for your condition are jogging, skipping, walking, golfing, tennis and light aerobics.
Conclusion
If you’re battling cardiomyopathy, you can benefit from exercise to improve your physical health. Take the right tests and seek medical advice from your medical health provider who will analyze your condition and make the right suggestions. This will ensure that you stay active every day.
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