In order to maintain a healthy life, you need to know how to slow down your heart rate when you’re under stress. This article will give you some techniques that will help you to do it.
With the world becoming such a fast paced one and every day seeming like a competition, the average person’s health has been severely affected, whether they realize it or not. Trying to cram in more than 24 hours in a day, with domestic, career and social responsibilities has made the human body numb to an extent that it does not realize that something is persistently wrong until something goes terribly awry. To avoid such a circumstance, all that has to be done is indulging the body in some simple relaxing activities that will help to slow down your heart rate. This Buzzle article will discuss tips on how you can slow down your heart rate.
Perform Aerobic Exercises
While excess physical exercise is one of the major causes of a fast heart rate, in order to get your heart rate down for the long run, you need to engage your body in regular physical exercise. Note that the keyword here is ‘regular’. Only when your body gets enough and regular aerobic exercise will your blood get enough oxygen, and the circulation will steady up when your body gets used to the workout routine. Yoga also helps in a great way to slow down the heart rate. So practice different Yoga Asanas and slow down your heart rate.
Balance your Diet
You may have heard this piece of advice over and over. A healthy and well-balanced diet is a major contributing factor to a healthy heart. If you’re prone to a very fast heart rate and need to slow it down, you need to make sure that your diet is rich in 3 very important minerals: calcium, magnesium and potassium. Consume foods that are rich in these three minerals, on a regular basis, to make your heart rate reach a normal level and maintain it.
Be Happy
At the risk of sounding philosophical in what may seem like a purely health related issue, there’s one aspect that you simply cannot ignore. Being happy or simply stress free is one of the prerequisites to having a steady heart rate. Physical and mental stress cause your heart to pump blood with extra force. Stress is brought on when you are not happy and could lead to more severe disorders. So make an effort to be content and happy, and your heart rate will come back to normal. Pursue your hobby, visit friends more often, stay at home when you have a long weekend instead of going hiking (unless hiking is aforementioned hobby), watch light hearted movies that make you laugh, read books that are light, spend some alone time once in a while, and see how invigorated you feel!
Get a Massage
Touch therapy is one of the most effective ones when it comes to dealing with physical and mental tension. The process of gently massaging, and in turn relaxing each muscle in your body helps your blood vessels to dilate. When your blood vessels get dilated, they pump blood with lesser force and your heart rate slows down consequently. So getting a gentle body massage now and again at your spa is a good idea if you want to relax your body and mind.
Listen to Music
Everyone who has used this option will vouch for its effectiveness. There is a lot of research that has been conducted to prove that music indeed soothes the mind and body. If you don’t believe it, you can try it out yourself. Pick a song or a particular kind of music that you find calming. Measure your heart rate before you start the exercise. Now, plug in ear phones and play the music on repeat mode for about 45 minutes to an hour. Once the time is up, again check your heart rate. It will have slowed down for sure. Lying down while doing this exercise has proved to be beneficial for a lot of people.
Learn to Meditate
The most widely used (and very rightly so) method of bringing one’s heart rate is meditation. Use different methods of meditation to calm yourself down in a pressure situation and see the wonders that it works for you. There are techniques that involve you to perform an imagery exercise in order to reduce your heart rate and also other techniques like self awareness (literally) that will make you acutely aware of each part of your body, reducing your heart rate in the process.
Regularly indulging in the activities mentioned above will help you to remain calm, composed and be relaxed in pressure situations. Your physical health is of utmost importance if you wish to have a healthy mental self. So keep yourself calm, and slow down your heart rate to feel the difference that it makes. Remember, an extremely slow heart rate is not what you’re working towards. You just need to make sure that it’s normal and does not cause you any major health problems.
