Physical activity is good for your body in many ways, including your heart health. When we think of our blood vessels, we rarely appreciate how much they can change throughout our lives. But just think for a moment how it feels to move up a flight of stairs: There were likely times in your life that climbing stairs felt effortless. Does it feel that way today?
You can regain physical capacity and your blood vessels will show it!
Physical activity changes how the heart, lungs, and blood vessels work together. When we give ourselves enough time to recover between workouts, we optimize cardiovascular function. This means higher oxygen delivery capacity, and the result is better fitness.
There are no short-cuts to high levels of fitness. You earn it one workout at a time. You may not be able to see a physical change from one workout to the next, but with each additional workout, blood vessels are gradually adapting!
Your ticker will only adapt to your level of training. This means that slow walking produces changes, but higher intensity workouts stimulate further changes. This helps explain why exercise intensity is a key determinant of fitness. Yes, longer workouts can drive endurance benefits, but the peak fitness we are able to reach is more predicted by workout intensity.
The amount of blood pumped every minute reflects the strength of the heart muscle and the health of it’s own blood supply. Heart pumping ability is directly associated with fitness.
At rest, the heart is only pumping out about 5 liters of blood/minute, but this increases rapidly with vigorous exercise. For example, the average young adults who rarely exercise can pump up to ~25 liters per minute. If they begin exercising, within months to years their heart output can increase by about 40%, up to 35 liters per minute or more.
Yes, an adapted heart muscle explains some of this increase, yet changes to the blood vessels of the heart are also important! Regular workouts improve your coronary arteries that bring oxygenated blood to the heart muscle. (These are the same vessels that fail in most heart attacks.) Research suggests that exercise can enlarge these vessels, and ensures they remain highly sensitive to signs of oxygen debt. This helps them react to physical challenges quicker and delivery oxygen efficiently.
Even a single workout changes your heart function in a favorable way. For instance, one workout can help you achieve a more relaxed heart rate pattern in the hours afterwards.
The vessels that supply the skeletal muscles have an incredible capacity for change. These must rapidly shift blood flow every time you move your body. Some of our blood vessels have muscles lining their opening, so muscle tension in the blood vessel walls adjusts to regulate blood flow and blood pressure. Unlike the pipes of your house, these change size dynamically based on where more blood is needed. Exercise helps us “practice” these adjustments, and practice makes perfect (or at least, significantly improved!)
In addition to shifting blood around using muscles within the blood vessels lining, working muscles send out chemical signals when they need more oxygen. This signal triggers new blood vessels to grow, creating a more dense capillary network throughout your muscles. This signal also induces small vessels (capillaries) within fat tissue. And these help to liberate the energy within fat cells as we burn fat.
One of the outcomes of starting a workout routine is improved blood pressure. The CDC warns that most Americans aged forty and over has high blood pressure, and that physical inactivity is very common. Exercise helps those vessels in ways that make all kinds of movement feel less effortful. For instance, these fast adjustments help us avoid light-headedness upon standing. And, rapid vascular adjustments help to limit the mild burning sensations that can occur in muscles when we are exercising intensely.
Many are ready to embrace more movement in our lives. Those blood vessel improvements happen when we have the courage to push beyond our comfort zone. The truth is that there “has never been a more sedentary population of humans” than right now in Western society! Despite these trends, it is never too late to re-ignite your fitness goals.
Treo can help to fuel your passion. In addition to the science behind the health goal you are pursuing and the option of wellness coaching , we provide the on-demand fitness experience with studio classes that scale to every fitness level. Email info@treowellness.com to find out how you can engage with the Treo Wellness Platform for personalized wellbeing tools and resources.
As Treo’s Global Wellness Researcher, Karlie uses recent research findings to support healthier daily habits. Karlie earned her doctorate in Neuroscience and Behavior and bachelors in Health and Exercise Science.
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