From my doctor that is. Hopefully someone has dealt with this and can advise me.
Every once in a few years I seem to get a short bout of atrial fibrillation (benign cardiac arrhythmia) that corrects itself in a few hours. A month ago I had it happen again and the cardiologist put me on a channel calcium blocker (Cardia XT) to attempt to prevent it from happening again. All tests show no biological problems with the heart and I was cleared to go back to my normal exercise routine.
One of the side effects of Cardia XT is that it lowers your heart rate. Now I find that the same volume of exercise (cardio) that would have kept me in the 120-140 BPM range now keeps me at a maximum of 115 BPM. So..the question. If I can only obtain 115 BPM (71% of max), am I really doing cardio? Am I in effect really doing my heart and circulatory system any good? You would think that the cardiologist would be able to answer that. :confused:

Really...no-one? :sleep:

sounds like that drug will also lower your max hr. calcium channel blocker will prevent more frequent muscle contraction, thereby decreasing hr and theoretically decreasing max hr. not sure, but seems to make sense physiologically. =)

sounds like that drug will also lower your max hr. calcium channel blocker will prevent more frequent muscle contraction, thereby decreasing hr and theoretically decreasing max hr. not sure, but seems to make sense physiologically. =)

Yes you are correct that it does lower max hr. But how then do I evaluate whether I am working hard enough? I do the same volume of work but my hr is about 15 bpm lower.

A heart transplant might do the trick. Okay, I'm not really a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.

Yes you are correct that it does lower max hr. But how then do I evaluate whether I am working hard enough? I do the same volume of work but my hr is about 15 bpm lower.
if you are 58 years old, your theoretical max hr is 162. so an obtained hr of 130 is approximately 80%. suppose the drug lowers your max hr by... 20 bpm. 115 bpm is still 80%.

if this is really bothering you, you can get your max hr tested. it's very easy to get done. otherwise, if it feels like you are getting a good workout, don't sweat the numbers.

hope this helps!

I have benign arrythmia just like my Dad and his Dad. As you say, it occurs every few years for a short time. So maybe taking a med all the time is overkill...

From my doctor that is. Hopefully someone has dealt with this and can advise me.

You might ask that Andrew M3 guy. He's a cardiology resident who is also a rower.