What you need to know about cardio

Summary

Life Kit Podcast Summary: "What You Need to Know About Cardio"

Release Date: January 13, 2025 Host: Marielle Segarra Guest: Dr. Jane Morgan, Cardiologist and Vice President of Medical Affairs for Hello Heart

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Introduction

In the January 13, 2025 episode of Life Kit, host Marielle Segarra delves into the crucial topic of cardio—the type of exercise that elevates your heart rate and plays a significant role in preventing heart disease. With heart disease being the leading cause of death in America, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths in 2022, and the number one killer of women in the U.S., understanding cardio's impact on heart health is more important than ever.

The Importance of Cardio

Marielle opens the discussion by highlighting alarming statistics about heart disease in America. She introduces Dr. Jane Morgan, a renowned cardiologist, who emphasizes the gravity of heart disease even when considering other major health issues like breast cancer.

Dr. Jane Morgan [00:37]: "Add breast cancer and bring in all the other cancers of the body and add them to breast cancer, heart disease is still number one."

Dr. Morgan explains that cardio exercises are essentially activities that increase your heart rate, thereby strengthening the heart muscle and enhancing cardiovascular health.

Dr. Jane Morgan [01:06]: "That's really what people mean when they say cardio. They mean to increase your heart rate and to get that heart rate up such that your heart is really pumping."

Exercise Guidelines

Marielle discusses the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) guidelines for adult exercise, which recommend:

• Strength Training: Twice a week (e.g., weightlifting, Pilates, bodyweight exercises).
• Cardio Exercise:
  • 150 minutes of moderate-intensity OR
  • 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity OR
  • A combination of both per week.

However, Dr. Morgan acknowledges that adhering strictly to these guidelines can be overwhelming.

Dr. Jane Morgan [03:52]: "And I often like to talk with people and tell them to simply pick an activity that they like to do and then to do that at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes. That's really the sweet spot of where we need to be, about 150 minutes of exercise."

She emphasizes the importance of consistent movement, stating, "Our bodies are made to move. Our bodies are really not made for the way that we live now, and that's why we are developing a lot of these chronic diseases."

Measuring Heart Rate and Intensity

Understanding how to measure heart rate is essential for effective cardio workouts. Dr. Morgan outlines two primary methods:

1. Using Wearable Devices: Rings, wristwatches, and gym equipment with heart rate sensors can provide real-time heart rate data.

   Dr. Jane Morgan [04:44]: "A lot of the monitors that you can wear, either the rings or the wristwatches, any of those types of monitors can certainly measure your heart rate."

2. Manual Measurement:

   • Place two fingertips next to the windpipe.
   • Count the beats for 60 seconds to determine beats per minute (BPM).

Dr. Morgan explains the concept of maximum heart rate (MHR) and target heart rate zone:

• Maximum Heart Rate: Calculated as 220 minus your age.

  Dr. Jane Morgan [05:47]: "So it's really 220 number 220 minus your age."

• Target Heart Rate: 50-85% of MHR for optimal cardio benefits.

  Dr. Jane Morgan [06:18]: "So again, taking that example of the person who's 30 years old and we're taking 220 minus 30, that gives you 190. And then you take about 85% of that."

This range ensures that you're exercising at a level that is both safe and effective for improving cardiovascular health.

Types of Cardio Activities

Marielle and Dr. Morgan explore various activities that qualify as cardio, emphasizing the importance of choosing exercises that one enjoys to ensure consistency.

Dr. Jane Morgan [07:17]: "Any number of things. So, you know, you can pick whatever you think. So swimming, biking, hiking, running, tennis, any number of things can really get your heart rate up."

Walking is highlighted as an accessible and beneficial form of cardio:

Dr. Jane Morgan [07:55]: "So here's the thing about walking. Any pace of walking that you do provides some cardiovascular benefit and decreases your risk of stroke."

She advocates for walking at a pace that challenges you enough that speaking becomes difficult, which is a practical indicator of reaching the cardio zone.

Benefits of Cardio

The episode underscores the multifaceted benefits of regular cardio exercise beyond heart health:

• Weight Management: Helps in burning calories and maintaining a healthy weight.
• Blood Pressure: Keeps blood pressure levels in check.
• Diabetes Management: Aids in controlling blood sugar levels.
• Sleep Quality: Improves overall sleep patterns.
• Longevity and Quality of Life: Enhances lifespan and the ability to engage in daily activities with vigor.

Dr. Jane Morgan [09:18]: "Exercise is the prevention tool to decrease long term heart disease. It decreases your weight, keeps your weight down, keeps your blood pressure lower, helps you in management of diabetes, helps to improve sleep quality."

Additional Tips: Exercise Snacking

For those struggling to find a continuous 30-minute window for exercise, Dr. Morgan introduces the concept of exercise snacking:

Dr. Jane Morgan [11:19]: "So three or four times a day, take a five or ten minute break and just do some type of exercise, even if it's going up and down the stairs or doing some deep knee bends or walking around the block."

This approach breaks down exercise into manageable chunks, making it easier to incorporate into a busy schedule and still achieve the recommended weekly exercise goals.

Key Takeaways

Marielle concludes the episode with a concise recap of the main points discussed:

1. Cardio Defined: Cardio involves activities that raise your heart rate without necessarily pushing you to your limits.

2. Monitoring Intensity: Use heart rate to gauge workout intensity. Calculate your MHR (220 minus your age) and aim for 50-85% of that number during exercise.

3. Variety of Activities: From walking and dancing to hiking and roller skating, numerous activities count as cardio. Choose what you enjoy to maintain consistency.

4. Health Benefits: Regular cardio reduces the risk of heart disease, manages weight, lowers blood pressure, and contributes to overall longevity and quality of life.

Additionally, Marielle emphasizes that maintaining heart health through cardio enables individuals to engage in other enriching activities, thereby enhancing overall well-being.

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Final Notes:

For listeners eager to explore more about physical fitness and health, Life Kit offers other episodes on topics such as weightlifting and hydration. Stay informed and take proactive steps towards a healthier life by tuning into Life Kit and incorporating cardio into your daily routine.

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Produced by Claire Marie Schneider with contributions from Beck Harlan, Malika Garibaldi, Meghan Keane, Beth Donovan, and the production team. Engineering support by James Willits and Becky Brown, with special thanks to Christopher Tanayan and Evelina Graver.

Transcript

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[Marielle Segarra]

You're listening to Life Kit from npr. Hey everybody, it's Marielle. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in America, accounting for 1 in 5 deaths in 2022. It's also the number one killer of women in the U.S. even if you.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

Add breast cancer and bring in all the other cancers of the body and add them to breast cancer, heart disease is still number one.

[Marielle Segarra]

That's Dr. Jane Morgan. She's a cardiologist and vice president of medical affairs for hello Heart. It's an app you can use to track your cardiovascular health. So those stark numbers bring me to the point of today's episode. We're talking about cardio, the kind of exercise that gets your heart rate up and can help prevent heart disease.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

That's really what people mean when they say cardio. They mean to increase your heart rate and to get that heart rate up such that your heart is really pumping.

[Marielle Segarra]

I personally have always wondered what counts as cardio, how intense it needs to be to get the benefits, how much of it you should be doing every day or week, whether you can break it up into short bursts or you need to do at least, you know, know, half an hour at a time. On this episode of Life Kit, I talk with Dr. Morgan about all of that and more.

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[Marielle Segarra]

The U.S. department of Health and Human Services puts out guidelines for how much exercise adults should be getting every week. They recommend that you do strength training twice a week. That could be weightlifting or Pilates, body weight exercises, even chores like carrying grocery bags. And then they recommend some type of cardio, specifically 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, or some combination of the two every week. And we'll get into what those terms mean. But Dr. Morgan says sometimes it's hard to get all that done and you might get overwhelmed if you're trying to keep track to that extent.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

And I often like to talk with people and tell them to simply pick an activity that they like to do and then to do that at least five times a week for at least 30 minutes. That's really the sweet spot of where we need to be, about 150 minutes of exercise. And the key is to really make certain that we are moving. Our bodies are made to move. Our bodies are really not made for the way that we live now, and that's why we are developing a lot of these chronic diseases. Our bodies are made to be in motion.

[Marielle Segarra]

Takeaway 1 Cardio, simply put, is getting your heart rate up. That doesn't mean you have to push yourself to the limit every time you're working out.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

You can have cardio without high intensity exercising.

[Marielle Segarra]

And how can you measure that? Like, how do you know that you're getting into the cardio zone?

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

A lot of the monitors that you can wear, either the rings or the wristwatches, any of those types of monitors can certainly measure your heart rate sometimes, depending on what kind of gym you're in. If you are holding onto handrails or things that can be sensors on there as well that can that can monitor your heart rate and give you that information back in real time.

[Marielle Segarra]

You can also track your heart rate the old fashioned way by finding your pulse and counting the number of beats per minute. You'll place two fingertips along the side of your neck next to your windpipe until you feel your artery pulsating. Set a timer for 60 seconds and count the number of beats. That tells you your current heart rate, how fast Your heart is beating. Takeaway 2. You'll use your heart rate to figure out how intensely you're exercising and whether you're pushing yourself hard enough or maybe too hard. Your maximum heart rate is an upper limit. It's the estimated highest number of beats per minute that your heart can safely handle. And you can calculate it with a simple formula.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

So it's really 220 number 220 minus your age. So if you're 30 years old, your maximum heart rate would be 190. Is 220 minus 30. Okay, if you're 50, it would be 220 minus 50. Your maximum heart rate would be 170.

[Marielle Segarra]

But you're not actually aiming for that heart rate when you work out. Instead, you want to aim for your target rate, which is about 50 to 85% of your max heart rate.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

So again, taking that example of the person who's 30 years old and we're taking 220 minus 30, that gives you 190. And then you take about 85% of that. So it can be 50 to 85%. Not an exact science.

[Marielle Segarra]

The lower end of that range would be considered moderate intensity exercise, and the higher end would be vigorous exercise. So that's like the. That's your sweet spot for cardio.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

That's the sweet spot for cardio. Again, when we're talking about cardio, we're talking about really exercising until the point that your heart is really, really pumping. And we have to remember that our hearts are made of, of the same kind of muscle that's in our legs and in our arms. So when you are getting exercise, you're actually exercising your heart as well. That's why the heart is called a muscle.

[Marielle Segarra]

So what sorts of things can get your heart rate up to that target zone for cardio?

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

Oh, my gosh. Any number of things. So, you know, you can pick whatever you think. So swimming, biking, hiking, running, tennis, any number of things can really get your heart rate up. And that's why I often say, pick an activity that you like and do it. So generally what we say is if you're having difficulty speaking while you're doing the exercise, that's what cardio is.

[Marielle Segarra]

What about walking? Like, how fast really do you have to walk to be actually getting cardio?

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

So here's the thing about walking. Any pace of walking that you do provides some cardiovascular benefit and decreases your risk of stroke. However, we have found that the faster your pace, the more you're able to decrease your cardiovascular risk. So the baseline is anything is Good. So walking, I think is excellent. Everyone can do it at their own pace. You can do it alone, you can do it in pairs, you can do it in groups, you can walk fast, you can walk slow. But whatever you're doing, you will get cardio benefit from it. I am a really big fan of walking.

[Marielle Segarra]

Takeaway. Three lots of things can be considered cardio. Walking to the subway, doing yard work, chasing your kids around, going up the stairs, dancing, hiking, jogging, roller skating. Basically anything that gets your heart pumping and into that target heart rate zone. How high your heart rate goes during these activities will depend on your body and your conditioning. Now, you don't necessarily have to measure your heart rate every time you do one of these activities. You can get a baseline and then maybe you check in every few months to see if that's changed. Let's talk more about the benefits of cardio. Why should we be doing this? Why should we be really working out the muscle of our heart and getting it pumping more quickly, regularly?

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

Exercise is the prevention tool to decrease long term heart disease. It decreases your weight, keeps your weight down, keeps your blood pressure lower, helps you in management of diabetes, helps to improve sleep quality. I speak about this a lot. The benefits of long term exercise. You do not have to push yourself to exhaustion every day, but you must get up and do something.

[Marielle Segarra]

What is it about exercise and cardio specifically that is so good for the heart?

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

We can develop plaques along the arteries of our heart and these plaques, if they get big enough, can block the artery and stop the blood flow to the heart, which means there's no oxygen getting to the heart. And that's what we call a heart attack. So that part of your heart would be under stress and if you don't get medical attention quickly, it would die. Exercising decreases the likelihood that those types of plaques will develop because it burns calories, burns cholesterol. Those plaques are built by cholesterol primarily and platelets. And so we can decrease those plaques that atherosclerosis that tends to stud the arteries of our heart and and cause those slow heart attacks.

[Marielle Segarra]

Takeaway 4. Cardio is crucial to heart health. And if you can keep your heart healthy, that means you can keep up with other important activities that help with your longevity.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

If you can keep your body in motion and keep moving and working, certainly with cardio especially, it adds to longevity. It also adds to your quality of life.

[Marielle Segarra]

By the way, Dr. Morgan says, if you're trying to get 30 minutes of exercise in a day, you don't need to do it all in one go. You can try something called exercise snacking instead.

[Dr. Jane Morgan]

So three or four times a day, take a five or ten minute break and just do some type of exercise, even if it's going up and down the stairs or doing some deep knee bends or walking around the block. Those are called exercise snacks and that shows long term that that increases your metabolism and also contributes to longevity.

[Marielle Segarra]

That was cardiologist Dr. Jane Morgan. All right, it's time for a recap. Takeaway 1. Cardio is about getting your heart pumping. You don't necessarily need to hit your limit every time you do it. Takeaway 2. You can use your heart rate to monitor your cardio intensity. To calculate your max heart rate, take the number 220 and subtract your age. Then then aim for 50 to 85% of that number when you're working out. Takeaway 3 Lots of things count as cardio jumping rope, speed walking, dancing. Find the movement that gets your heart rate up. And Takeaway 4 cardio is a great way to lower your risk of heart disease and it can also help you stay healthy and vibrant so you can do other activities that help you live longer. For more Life Kit, check out our other episodes. We have one on how to lift weights and another on hydration. You can find [e-mail] LifeKit and if you love Life Kit and you just cannot get enough, subscribe to our [e-mail] LifeKitnewsletter Also, we love hearing from you, so if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, email [e-mail] this episode of Life Kit was produced by Claire Marie Schneider. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malika Garibaldi. Meghan Keane is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andy Tagle, Margaret Serino and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering support comes from James Willits and Becky Brown. Special thanks to Christopher Tanayan and Evelina Graver. I'm Mariel Segarra. Thanks for listening.

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