What causes low heart beat?

If you’re someone who considers their heart rate to be important, (and let’s face it, even if you don’t think about your heart, it’s still beating right now) then when your smart watch tells you that your heartbeat is running at a slower-than-normal pace, alarm bells will start ringing in your head.

So what can cause low heart beat? Here are some potential reasons:

Sleep

Most people sleep between 7 and 9 hours a night, but during this time their body transitions from an active state to a restful one. As such, the rate of operations within the body decreases – including the heart rate which naturally slows down. So next time someone says they were stunned by how slow their heartbeat was while asleep last night… tell them it’s actually okay!

Exercise

It might seem counter-intuitive that exercise could lead to lower beats per minute (BPM), but hear us out: when exercising regularly and with sufficient intensity over prolonged periods of time (much like natural selection for survival), there may come a point where resting BPM stubbornly refuses to pick itself up off the floor. This phenomenon has been coined as ‘athlete’s bradycardia,’ where endurance athletes have caused morphological changes in the structure of their heart that work together with repeated strong contractions of said muscle – reducing BPM at rest.

While not necessarily harmful on its own accord research has found it common in combination with other problems such as Syncope (‘temporary loss of consciousness’ – yep I didn’t know either).

If only gym-equipment used less energy than humans!

Temperature

We’re going temperature hot here… err cold- really cold actually… temperatures so low they give Eskimos anxiety! Low temps often induce hypothermia (when core temp drops below normal levels) slowing down bodily functions and hormonal systems needed for circulation leaving numerous organs vulnerable.

The heart is no exception to the rule giving a poor perfusion (the flow of blood through an organ hence how it is supplied with nutrients) which therefore slows regenerative power in this particular system down. Talk about watching ice melt!

Medications

Certain medications, such as beta-blockers like Propranolol used to treat high blood pressure are known for having bradycardia effects as part of their mechanism: beta blockers suppress heart rate by blocking the event of natural chemicals stimulate faster beating and contraction. This means that they can inhibit the body’s free will reaction to changes such as standing up very quickly- sudden increase in biological workings require coinciding increase in the volume and speed of oxygenated blood required for proper balance – make sense?

There are so many different types out there than I’ve had hot dinners – let alone ‘brand name’ ones, that keeping track could bring sweat out even quicker than alphabetizes do… Clonidine patches anyone?

Old age

I’m afraid although we have come a long way culturally from times where our elders were revered(talking here mostly pre-Twitter days), biologically speaking getting older has its unfortunate drawbacks. (Did you know that some people were born before microwave ovens?! Jokes aside.) Stay tuned…

Genetics

Yep, looks like your performance may not be all on you after-all! Endemic conditions caused by microbiological parasites (try saying that five times fast!) called Chagas disease interfere with normal contracts within various cardiac tissues slowing beats while others may be affected due to electrical diseases related genes or hereditary chemical imbalances…/what goes around comes around/.

This might sound concerning at first but fear not my friend! Medical evaluation is paramount especially if peers reveal common occurrences since certain tricky diagnoses come up only when looking side-by-side comparison with other similar outcomes. And someone said school wasn’t useful!

What do you think of all this? Heart-beat slowing down doesn’t always scream impending danger, but it is good practice to stay aware of the possible reasons behind drastic changes in your BPM to avoid quickly jumping into a panic-induced reaction.

So…next time Siri or Alexa say “hey did you know”? Let them take over that much-needed trivia area while we got heart-rates covered!

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