According to a just-released 20-year-long study of 50,000 adult Norwegians, there’s a pretty easy way – you do this sitting down and what can be easier that that? – to help you figure out if you really should be more active to lower your risk of dying of a heart attack: all you have to is sit down quietly for a few minutes and take your resting pulse rate.
A “normal” resting pulse rate is between 60 and 70 (give or take a few beats), so if your resting pulse rate stays steadily over say 80, chances are, according to this study, that you have an increased risk of dying from a heart attack, and the higher your average resting pulse rate is, this study found, the higher the heart attack risk.
But before everyone reading this panics over a slightly fast heart rate, remember that this is just a general measure, it’s not specific to any individual, and even better, even if your resting pulse rate is high, there’s a very good chance that you can offset much of that increased risk of suffering a heart attack just by doing regular exercise.
Anyone up for a jog?
