What is normal heart rate?

What is normal heart rate?

Normal heart rate in an adult at rest is between 60 to 100 beats per minute. But the usual normal heart rate thought of is 72 per minute, because most people have it near that. Heart rate changes as you grow up. In a new born infant it is near 140 per minute. Heart rate also changes with exercise and emotional stress. It increases when you breathe in and decreases when you breath out. So normal heart rate itself is quite variable, leave alone the abnormalities which can occur in disease states.

Heart rate increases with body temperature, with almost 10 beats per minute increase for every degree Fahrenheit. Heart rate rises as a compensatory mechanism when the blood pressure falls, by a reflex mechanism involving the brain. Increase in heart rate with exercise is dependent on how conditioned you are. A person who has been bed ridden for some time with illness will have a rapid rise in heart rate even with mild exertion. This is just due to deconditioning and becomes normal later.

On the contrary, a trained athlete will have a low resting heart rate which is known as athlete’s bradycardia. Brady mean slow, cardia means in relation to the heart. Recovery of heart rate after an exercise is faster in a trained athlete than an untrained person, in whom it takes longer period for it to reach the basal heart rate. Maximum predicted heart rate for one’s age is calculated as 220-age of the person in years.