Can i excersise while taking beta blockers?

Question

My dr has given me a course of beta blockers to take for suspected anxiety. I have had numerous ecg's which say my heart is fine, my dr has examined me and said he is 99% sure my heart is ok and any future tests would come back normal. Just wondering if i can excersise as normal on beta blockers.

Answer 1

Of course you can. Beta Blockers just help to slow the heart.

As far as your doctor's diagnosis, I would still be suspicious of an electrical problem. They are impossible to find unless you are on a monitor while one is occurring. Doctors are too often likely to jump to the "anxiety" answer simply because they have not seen the heart malfunctioning. ECGs would only be able to tell him if you have a prolapse causing an arrhythmia. Even an EKG would only show a problem during an arrhythmia. Anxiety is just too easy of a diagnosis to make when they can't find anything else.

Anyway, beta blockers are an acceptable treatment for some electrical issues too, so you might find yourself doing well on them.

Answer 2

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Can i excersise while taking beta blockers?
My dr has given me a course of beta blockers to take for suspected anxiety. I have had numerous ecg's which say my heart is fine, my dr has examined me and said he is 99% sure my heart is ok and any future tests would come back normal. Just wondering if i can excersise as normal on beta...

Answer 3

Beta Blockers And Exercise

Answer 4

It's good that you're asking these sorts of questions here. It indicates that you want to take an active part in your own care, which should always be encouraged! Hopefully the advice that people give you here will help you form good questions for your doctor the next time you visit.

As others have said, exercise is definitely OK and recommended while taking beta blockers. However, it's good to know that they do, in fact, block your adrenoline response. So while you are probably used to jumping right in with your heart rate responding to adrenoline, you may now require a longer warmup to avoid feeling light headed.

As to taking beta blockers for anxiety, I would be a bit concerned about that over the long haul. They're powerful drugs and you can't just go on and off of them willy nilly. If anxiety is causing your heart to race or go into some form of arrhythmia, then it's worth giving them strong consideration, but I would try to start with the lowest possible dose and only scale up if it didn't seem to be helping. And then, if it doesn't help after reaching target dosage, you need to slowly taper back off of it to avoid rebound problems.

I would not personally resort to beta blockers until I understood the root cause of the problem. Has your doctor tried giving you a 30-day holter monitor? When you feel an episode, you can press a button and then download the data to the doctor. If your doctor doesn't have one of these devices, ask for a referral to a cardiologist who does.

Good luck!

Answer 5

This article will help you out:
f you're taking beta blockers, you shouldn't use target heart rate to judge the intensity of your workout. Beta blockers cause your heart to beat more slowly. This can prevent the increase in heart rate that typically occurs with exercise. As a result, the usual age-adjusted target heart rate doesn't work — because no matter how vigorously you exercise you may never achieve your "target."

There's no precise method for predicting the effect of beta blockers on your heart rate. An exercise stress test can evaluate your exercise capacity on beta blockers and provide an adjusted target heart rate.

If you haven't had an exercise stress test, you can use the perceived exertion scale, which relies on your own judgment of how hard you're working based on effort, breathlessness and fatigue. The scale ranges from 6 (at rest) to 20 (maximal effort). For most workouts, your best bet is to aim for moderate intensity, or a rating between 12 and 14.

So the conclusion is that if without being evaluated by exercise stress test, if you exercise too much the heart will fail to deliver oxygen to the body +vital organs, which can lead you in trouble. Kindly have yourself evaluated to ensure how uch you can exercise.



http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/beta-blockers/AN01224

Answer 6

hi there, Keep phoning the cardiologists secretary this will hurry your appointment along. Dont worry about annoying them, its the only way to speed up the process. I know what you are going through and its not nice. This happened to me several years ago. Im through it all now and off the beta blockers too. Good luck friend x

Answer 7

Anxiety on it's own does not warrant Beta blockers.

Exercise is the BEST natural medication for stress and mental anxiety. Exercise induces the productions of natural in house high dose of endorphins that counter a large Host of illness and diseases.
If you go thru the recognised disease treatment and health directives .... the first line of treatment is diet control, adequate exercise, stress relief; second line of treatment if the first fails to produce results within a justifiable time period.. comes medication.
If investigations claim your heart is OK, start with major lifestyle changes that include exercise; diet meditation (for stress relief) and begin with a wholesome, natural detoxification (non drug; natural medicine).
These and these alone have long term effects.

Answer 8

The answer is "Yes", with a very important proviso. You MUST keep a check of your systolic pressure (thats the top one). If it approaches or exceeds 200mm/Hg then ease off the exercise to a lower level. Beta-blockers slow down the pulse rate and worse, inhibit it from rising properly to meet increasing demand caused by added load.

It is neither theoretically nor clinically, practically, possible to slow the heart rate (or inhibit it from rising properly to meet increased blood-flow demand) wihout inevitably raising systolic pressure for any specific cardiac work output, and it is peaks of systolic pressure which actually cause rupture of blood-vessels.

So exercise by all means, but keep your systolic pressure within reasonable limits. Use a wrist monitor, or better still, an upper-arm monitor as it's more acurate.

P.S.Toprol XL (see "animals"' answer below) is exactly typical of how beta-blocking exacerbates hypertensive pressures.

Answer 9

get a second opinion. I have pvc which i believe is brought on by stess or my adrenal adnoma and put on toprol xl which spiked my blood pressure. transport with a bp 180/120. stopped the meds and my bp 124/78 and headache beginning to fade. I would think anxiety best taken care of with SSRI and ativan. I would walk first and if the beta blocker cases you a problem do not exercise until you get a second opinion

Answer 10

I go to a gym and my doctor put me on beta blockers,am I ok going to the gym?