Back in March, I looked at a
study using resting heart rate (RHR) to predict cardiovascular fitness w/o exercise. Then
last month, I looked at another
study using RHR to predict mortality. So I thought I'd point out a
prospective observational study published in this month's European Heart Journal in which the
authors linked increased night-time heart rate to greater all-cause & cardiovascular mortality.
The authors arrived at their conclusion by following 653 men & women (avg 64yo) who had completed a 48 hour
Holter recording of their heart's electrocardiographic activity. RHR (avg 73bpm), 24hr heart rate (76bpm), and night-time heart rate (66bpm) were all calculated from the recordings but after taking into account the usual confounders, only night-time heart rate was statistically significant at just over 6yrs (avg 76mo). Of note RHR & 24hr heart rate were also linked to all-cause mortality but not as well as night-time heart rate in predicting cardiac events.
Ok, so you can't set your alarm to wake you up at 1AM, 2AM & 3AM in order to measure your heart rate for 15 minutes, on two separate nights. That's where this monitoring comes in handy. But regardless of whether you can measure or not, you can certainly make a difference by improving your cardiorespiratory fitness via exercise. And as we learned
last week, high intensity interval training is an excellent way to improve fitness as measured by oxygen consumption (VO2 max).
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