Exercise = Healthy heart, but why Stress = Unhealthy heart, even though they both make your heart beat faster?

Question

When you exercise, your heart beats faster and exercises the heart muscles making your heart healthy.
But why when you get stressed similarly heart beats faster, but this has negative affects leading to an unhealthy heart??

Answer 1

Exercise makes blood PUMP through your heart. Stress SQUEEZES your heart muscle and holding it, hindering the proper pumping mechanism of blood through your body which is very bad!

I found this out while being a test subject in a health experiment with college students.

They asked me to relax and then they asked me to tense my muscles. They had me talk about positive things and then negative things.

Later they showed me the heart print out.... normal vs tensed. When I tensed my muscles (it tenses your heart) and instead of having a normal heart beat with space in between the beats the lines were straight up and down, so close together there was absolutely no space inbetween. It is like clenching your heart. This does not get oxygen pumping through your body and getting it to your organs.

He showed me the print out and told me this is what tension does to your heart and why it's important to relax! A great study!

Answer 2

It's not really to do with the heart beat causing good or bad health, that is just a side effect. It's the chemicals that are released which affect health.

Stress causes the release of adrenalin (which makes the heart beat faster), cortisone, cortisol etc etc from the adrenal glands which affect many organs in negative ways. For example, long term release of cortisone depletes the immune system and the adrenal glands also produce sex hormones so menstrual problems can occur, loss of libido etc..

Exercise causes the release of endorphins which elevate mood, blood flows faster to the muscles (so heart beats faster) which helps move the lymph and circulation, which keeps you healthy.

This is a general idea, but obviously very simplified!

Best wishes.

Answer 3

Essentially, exercise IS stressing the heart. The key difference that people miss, is that in order for any muscle to become stronger it needs to be stressed, AND THEN given the appropriate time to recover and rebuild. Therefore good exercise makes your heart healthier.

However, the stress you're talking about as bad, is something that is caused by emotion & not physical exercise, and is usually a continuous thing that affects the entire nervous system and immune systems as well as your muscles (including the heart).

Therefore there is no recovery time, AND many of the interrelated systems that the heart would rely on for effective recovery & rebuilding in order to get stronger, have their resources not fully available to the heart to aid recovery.

Answer 4

I'm going to try to answer this as best as possible.

Having your heart beat faster from stress isn't the same as exercise. With exercise, say 30 minutes or so, you're achieving an aerobic workout. The sweat, shortness of breath, and whatnot. With stress however, very rarely do you find yourself sweating and saying "wow, what a workout." Unless you're throwing things around and punching the walls and stuff from stress, it's not the same. Stress also raises your blood pressure and causes you to eat more, thus making you gain weight. I may be completely off, but this is my guess.

Answer 5

I think its more to do with WHY your heart is beating faster in each case. When you are stressed your body releases hormones such as cortisol. These make your blood pump faster but also do other things that end up making your arteries blocked up (can't remeber what: somehting to do with the metabolism of fat though). This isn't the case when you excersie. Therefore, it is the stress hormones rather than the heart beating faster itself that makes your arteries block up, and then you get an unhealthy heart. I think.

Answer 6

As I understand the situation...energy needs work to do. When you exercise, you give your body's energy something to do- you work your muscles. When you are stressed, your body makes energy- along with special enzymes and whatnot- but the energy- along with all its chemical components- has no work to do. Body chemistry is fairly complex; too much to describe here. The crux of the matter is that if your body gears up to do something and then doesn't do it, that creates stress and it's bad for you. That's why I'm a drummer. If I get energized and I don't have anything else to do, I wallop some drums for a while.

Answer 7

hi there stress is such a different heart beat trust me you can not compare the 2 stress is a pain in the heart and sex and health is a function of the blood circulation to the heart brain etc stress is the worst killer in the world today so if you are under a lot of it then i suggest lots and lots of gym cardiac and sex thank you for your support kerry

Answer 8

Stress does make your heart beat faster but also stress floods your body with a lot of damaging stuff like excess adrenalin which your body will hate if it stays in the system for a long time.

Exercise floods the body with beter hormones like seratonin, the 'happy' hormone.

Answer 9

Stress releases fatty acids and glucose into the bloodstream. These can be converted into natural fat and cholesterol and deposited on arterial walls (arteriosclerosis). These deposits create resistance to the blood flow through the arteries, and contribute to high blood pressure.
Stress increases your risk of heart attack and death from heart disease.

Answer 10

exercise temporily increases heart rate in a bid to fuel anerobic and aerobic metabolism. Stress causes prolonged high blood pressure which puts you at increased risk of embolism and blood vessel occlusion.