How to have a healthy resting heart rate

A healthy resting heart rate should be measured first thing in the morning  before you get out of bed after a usual night's sleep. By this I mean you were not up throughout the night, as frequent interruptions to sleep is thought to increase your healthy resting heart rate.

A healthy resting heart rate is thought to be around 70 heart beats a minute for a man and 75 heart beats a minute for a woman. Typically resting heart rates may vary between 40 -100 heart beats per minute. Athletes will also have much lower healthy resting heat rates as their heart is more efficient at pumping blood around the body.

It is very easy to measure your own healthy resting heart rate by measuring your pulse on your wrist using your index and middle fingers on the opposite hand. After finding a pulse you should count the number of beats for 60 seconds. For greater accuracy you can measure your pulse for several 60 second periods and take the average, to get your resting heart rate.

 A healthy resting heart rate means less risk of heart disease including heart attack.  There are several things you can do in order to lower your resting heart rate such as :-

• Avoid insomnia

Get at least 8 hours sleep every night as less sleep or frequent disturbances to your sleep pattern over a prolonger period of time will lead to you having a slightly higher than average resting heart rate.

• Exercise

Try and exercise daily. Thirty minutes brisk walking every day is a great aerobic workout for the heart, which will improve your heart health and lower your resting heart rate.  Make exercise more fun by varying the types if exercise you do, try swimming, poledancing, surfing.

• Relax

If you have a high pressure job or are a worrier then you need to have some 'me' time where you can chill out and relax. Yoga is great for this, as is a quiet walk along the beach.