Totally OT: Cardiac Stress news

News: I just passed my cardiac stress test! This was a treadmill test with heart rate up to 140. A cardiologist read the printout and said my heart is fine. YAY!

I still don’t feel 100% but I’m cleared to work out as hard as I want to. I can carry a 30 pound basket of firewood up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath but that wasn’t part of the test. Also I feel weaker than before my surgery.

I still haven’t done formal cardiac rehab because the unit is backed up for months. But cardiac rehab isn’t rocket science. I felt extremely weak and horrible after my surgery on 11/19/25. I have been gradually adding more exercise while monitoring my heart rate, counting my steps and not getting over-tired.

My Fitbit has been helpful in counting my steps and also measuring Active Zone minutes and cardio load where heart rate from 108 - 120 is moderate and counts for one, 120 - 137 is vigorous and counts for 2, and over 137 is peak and counts for 2. (The Fitbit adjusts for age and fitness goal.)

Today’s cardiac stress test had 6 minutes in the moderate zone and 3 minutes in the vigorous zone . Yesterday I did 30 minutes in the moderate zone and 38 minutes in the vigorous and peak zones. That counted for 106 “Zone” minutes and the Fitbit told me to take it easy today to avoid over-training (target cardio load 2 - 14). So the cardiac stress test was “in target” at 7 but was much, much less vigorous than my typical Zumba/ HIIT workout.

The only way to get my strength back is to go back to HIIT (with weights). Now I’m cleared. I didn’t go through all this to end up weaker than before.
YAY!
Wendy

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Out of interest, are you still on beta blockers? Depending upon the degree of “blockade”, if you are, you might need to refocus your lenses a bit with regard to heart rate response and let perceived exertion be your guide…regardless of the numbers on your watch.

I had the devil of a time trying to get class members who were on beta blockers to understand the physiology of heart rate response at higher intensity. I’ve come to the conclusion that a heck of a lot of folk who’re recommending HR ranges (or worse yet, a target heart rate) haven’t, in fact ever worn any HRM type device and wondered why it behaves the way it does.

Yes, I am taking metoprolol (12.5 mg which is 1/2 of the smallest pill they make). I wore a heart monitor for 2 weeks in January.

I always pay attention to my perceived exertion and track both heart rate and blood oxygen saturation. I don’t think the metoprolol is doing much but I try to keep my heart rate in the range of 110 - 130.
Wendy

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Hooray, and congratulations, as you absolutely did not merely flop yourself into the care of expert medical folk; you did this, with expert medical care and support.

That “this” at the end of that last sentence is something crucial to the well-being of us no longer youngsters. Staying happily healthy is a big task past 60 or so. My own body and my doctors both inform me that my decades long struggle with shingles, caused by the chicken pox virus herpes-varicella-zoster, has finally ended in victory for me. I have been deleriously happy over the last four weeks as I have returned to running, skiing, surfing, as well as stretching and weightlifting. I have been very sore muscularly as a result, and what joy it is to feel that sensation again after years of being unable to “push it”.

Almost everyone can prevent shingles by getting the Shingrix vaccine, but not me. If you have not done so, I strongly urge you to do so,

I got my first shingles attack when I was only 8, and the attacks continued ever after, worsening as adolescence set in. My mystic granny brilliantly took me aside and gave me training in meditation and meditative mind practices to ignore/accept the pain and discomfort “because it is just mean virus bugs messing with your nerves.” As I aged the attacks brought not only pain (which I could always surmount, often to finish climbing a peak or….) but also severe incapacitating exhaustion. I could no longer go deep into the mountains, or crew on racing sailboats, without putting myself or others at risk.

I also noticed that attacks seemed to be hitting not only my skin but my intestines and possibly other organs. During attacks my digestive system developed symptoms my Mexican doctor described as “not diarhea not constipation but stuttering guts. Miserable.

After getting vaccinated with Shingrix (two shots) with great hope in 2017, the shingles attacks came back after only three months. After some research and multiple consultation with experts i undertook a counterattack in 2022 with a series of three Shingrix shots closely packed together over five weeks, and then a years long program of focusing my immune system as entirely on shingles as I could, beginning with using multiple anti-fungals to destroy toe, foot, and crevice fungi, going insane with separation and masking in cold/flu season, using my anti-HIV medicines with meticulous timing to get maximum suppression of the HIV virus, and meantime

  1. treating myself like tuberculosis patients in sanatoriums in 1900, with freakish attention on staying rested, very nutririously fed, vitamined, and mineraled, carefully calibrated exercise (no running nor any of my favorite athletic activities), and daily yoga and meditation.
  2. intentionally “pushing” into activity after any month or more with no outbreaks nor the exhaustion that almost always led into outbreaks, basically intentionally provoking an attack when I had reason to believe my immune system had the best chance of successfully focusing only on the herpes zoster virus.
  3. If an attack came I hit it hard and briefly with big dose of the useful but never sufficient anti-viral drug acyclovir (in the more potent form valacyclovir), to end the attack as quickly as possible… Over the past three years, at first slowly then more rapidly and definitively, the attacks became further and further separated in time and weaker. Then they stopped.

My body is now gloriously improving, and last week (escorted by nephews) I was doing black diamond skiing and losing my mind with joy.

Never say die, until it is really ttime to say die….

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Good news! Congratulations! BTW, when I was on medication at first it included a beta blocker later replaced by a calcium channel blocker. After losing 50 pounds or so, no medications at all – eliminated under medical supervision.The doctor told me he had read about the eating right, weight loss regime but had not ever seen it in action. The last drug I got rid of was a statin. I asked the doctor if it was absolutely necessary, “No, but it is a preventive measure.” I said that in that case I would not take it. He did not object. That was maybe eight or ten years ago.

Yesterday I had a great walk in Porto discovering new trails. It’s pretty hilly, maybe more than San Francisco so one gets a strong cardio workout. Interestingly, it also help to enforce intermittent fasting. The body does not have enough resources to digest food and do exercise at the same time so one feels no hunger while walking. I do have one or two beers while I rest up half way through the walk.

At zoos they have signs: “Don’t feed the Animals.” I no longer feed the Pharmaceuticals (just the occasional Ibuprofen tablet). :innocent:

The Captain

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Hi Wendy,

I don’t know you, so this is just general medical advice I have given to similarly situated patients in the past.

Over doing now risks the benefit of what you endured to have a longer active life. Are you training for the Olympics, or do you want another 30 years of a gracefully aging body that meets your desires for engagement and health?

I had a lovely 20 year old slender athletic patient drop dead on the basketball court 6 months after an aortic valve replacement/ aortic aneurysm repair after which he had been counseled “ you’ve bought yourself a longer life, but you are not in the same body you had” “ exercise, live a full life, but basketball is out- too much in surges for a non expansive graft- you can break this”.

Now this may not apply to you, this young man was also diagnosed with Marfan’s simultaneously when I first saw him with his exertional shortness of breath, so he had added vascular tissue weakness complicating his course. However, overtesting a cardiac repair has risks for everyone.

Give yourself time- you will not recover faster by setting yourself back. You’ve had a well considered intervention to prolong your active life. I carry firewood every day, I carry fewer pieces on more round trips to the rick for the past few years with age. The same amount of wood in increments over the day with a lot more listening to the birds and lookin at the stars on each trip.

You have been really impressive in your planning and recovery here, and I can tell you don’t want to see the hospital again in this lifetime. Move forward, but moderate for the best results.

Spot

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@123spot thank you for your very well-said advice. I have damaged myself before by overdoing athletic activities. I sure don’t want to damage my heart and aorta. I will moderate. :slight_smile:
Wendy

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Spot, thanks for the “like.”

The Captain

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Wow! What a story of perseverance!

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