Saturday 11 June 2005

Pic of the day: Rapid beats ... well, I suppose it is not exactly magic. This screenshot, however, is from the anime Mahou Sensei Negima (Magic Teacher Negi, also known as "Magister Negi Magi".) I just thought it was a funny picture. Plus, the guy reminds me of me when I was young and skinny. ^^

Rest pulses

It is quite ironic, I think: When I first got my pulse watch, my pulse when sitting quietly in front of the computer was 55 beats per minute. It has never been that low later. On a normal day now, it is around 70 beats per minute. This is still not bad for a man of my age, but it is kind of puzzling. Even light exercise should not make your rest pulse higher than before. Admittedly I was not entirely passive before either, but this last month I have definitely walked a lot more in the hilly terrain around here. There have been very few days that I have not walked half an hour or more, in addition to the walking I have to do to get to work and back. I have lost a little weight, my guts are a little flatter and I have less pain in my stomach except from hunger. So I have definitely been exercising, even if lightly. And as a big "thank you" from my body, my rest pulse is now 15 beats per minute higher than before? This is completely opposite of what the books say.

On the other hand, the books (and web sites) also say that your rest pulse will be higher if you have infections in your body. It could of course be that I got my pulse watch on one very lucky day when I didn't have any infections in my body, and that I have had infections ever since. This is not impossible: I almost always have some mild infection in my throat or my sinuses, and often some problems with my digestion. (It is usually more active than I would prefer.) Oh, and I almost forgot to mention my wrist - why was I dictating this you think? So theoretically it could be that my body is always busy defending itself, and that this activity causes the higher rest pulse. But for one month?

A more optimistic hypothesis is that maybe my body is rebuilding itself. When I bought the pulse watch and new jogging shoes, I spent some days reading up on exercise and its effect on the body. I had also picked up a little knowledge from before. According to these sources, exercise is actually a stress on the body. Afterwards the body will repair itself and prepare itself. Therefore it is normal to have a higher rest pulse after exercise. The body is busy converting blood sugar into glycogen to restore the depleted reserves of the muscles and liver. It is moving fat out of the long time depots around my kidneys and guts, refueling the muscle cells. Perhaps a little more muscle mass is added, and new capillaries opened to increase the blood flow. (Although I think that is pretty limited when I don't train harder than this.) And my digestive tract is probably under reconstruction too, to prepare for eating more now that I burn more calories.

This makes a little more sense. But still... for one month? You would think that after one month I would have adapted. I guess I just don't know. I really don't mean to whine about it; I am just honestly surprised and confused that my body doesn't follow the books. But then again, this is me. I could probably not follow a book even if my life depended on it. "Chaos Node" indeed.