What Your Heart Rate Says About Your Health & Longevity
In today’s world of fitness tracking, we’re surrounded by data: heart rate variability, sleep quality, stress scores, breathing rates, and more. With tools like smartphones, smartwatches, and advanced wearables like the Oura Ring, Strava, and Whoop, monitoring our health has never been easier.
Amidst all these data points, one metric stands out for its simplicity and powerful connection to overall health: resting heart rate (RHR). While heart rate is often viewed as a measure of fitness, your resting heart rate (RHR) also offers insight into how efficiently your heart and body function—and can even provide clues about your longevity. The best part? By adopting a few lifestyle habits, you can improve your RHR and support a longer, healthier life.
Understanding Heart Rate: What Is It, Really?
Heart rate refers to the number of times your heart beats per minute (bpm). This number fluctuates depending on your body’s activity level, rising when you’re active to meet the demands of your muscles and lowering at rest to conserve energy.
Your RHR, measured when you’re calm and inactive, reflects your heart’s baseline performance. For most adults, a healthy RHR falls between 50 and 100 bpm, but lower RHRs often indicate a stronger, more efficient heart that requires less effort to circulate blood and better overall health.
How A Lower Resting Heart Rate Benefits You
RHR acts as a barometer for your heart’s efficiency. When your heart is healthy and well-conditioned, it requires fewer beats per minute to circulate blood effectively, reducing strain on your cardiovascular system. A lower RHR is linked to better cardiovascular health, a reduced risk of chronic disease, and increased longevity.
Research consistently highlights RHR as a key predictor of long-term health. Studies show that with each 10 bpm reduction in RHR mortality risk can drop by as much as 16%. For example, individuals with RHRs between 51–80 bpm have a 40–50% lower risk of premature death compared to those with RHRs above 90 bpm. Every beat saved by a more efficient heart means less overall strain, translating into better health over time.
The ideal RHR range for longevity tends to fall between 50 and 70 bpm, where the heart’s efficiency is optimized to support long-term resilience. For both men and women, maintaining a lower RHR is an achievable goal that not only improves cardiovascular health but can also contribute to a longer, healthier life. This evidence underscores the importance of RHR as more than just a fitness goal—it’s a cornerstone of lifelong health.
Why Physical Activity is Key to a Healthier Heart Rate
Fortunately, we can improve our resting heart rate, and the best way to improve it is through regular physical activity. Each time you exercise—whether it’s a brisk walk, a jog, or a strength workout—you’re giving your heart a workout that helps make it stronger and more efficient. As your heart becomes better conditioned, it needs fewer beats per minute to meet the body’s needs, leading to a naturally lower RHR over time.
Inactivity, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. A sedentary lifestyle prevents your heart from receiving the conditioning it needs to function efficiently. As a result, it has to work harder to perform basic functions, leading to a higher RHR and greater strain on the cardiovascular system. Regular physical activity keeps your heart strong and helps to lower RHR naturally, making it one of the most effective steps you can take for long-term health.
How to Improve Your Resting Heart Rate: Exercise and Emotional Health
If we want to improve our resting heart rate we can do two things. We can make our heart stronger through physical activity- which then allows the heart to be more efficient when we are resting and we can actively engage our brain to get our heart to relax and pump more efficiently in a relaxed state by engaging in mindfulness activities like meditation, deep breathing and yoga.
Many times people fall into one of two categories when it comes to improving their resting heart rate. Those that are very happy to do the training and physical activity to improve the strength of the heart, but don’t want to incorporate mindfulness training into their routine and those that are happy to do the mindfulness activities but pushback on the physical activities. I don’t know why this is the case but it’s something I see over and over again. This is me telling you to try and incorporate both.
1. Prioritize Physical Activity
Regular aerobic exercises like walking, jogging, cycling, and swimming help condition the heart, making it stronger and more efficient. This means that over time, your heart can pump more blood with each beat, allowing it to work less when you’re at rest. Strength training also plays a role, supporting overall cardiovascular function and endurance. You can check out our blog here if you don’t know where to start when starting a movement routine.
2. Manage Emotional Wellness
Stress and anxiety can elevate RHR, even when you’re at rest. Practices like mindfulness, meditation, quality sleep, and relaxation techniques can help reduce stress levels, benefiting your RHR and overall heart health. Taking care of your emotional health provides your heart with the opportunity to work efficiently, without unnecessary strain.
Incorporating these habits into your lifestyle can help you achieve a healthier RHR, supporting your heart and cardiovascular health for years to come.
Gender Differences in Resting Heart Rate: What to Consider
While a healthy RHR is beneficial for everyone, research shows that men and women have slight differences in their average RHRs. Women typically have a slightly higher RHR, averaging around 70 bpm compared to 68 bpm in men. This difference is due to several physiological factors, including smaller heart size, hormonal influences, and metabolic rate differences.
It’s important to recognize that while these variations exist, they are relatively small, and the benefits of an optimized RHR are equally significant for everyone. For both men and women, maintaining an RHR within the optimal range—typically between 50 and 70 bpm—supports long-term cardiovascular health and resilience. For women, tracking RHR can also provide early insights into cardiovascular health, as research suggests that elevated RHR in women may indicate potential health issues before other symptoms appear.
Take Control of Your Heart Health
Your resting heart rate is more than just a number—it’s a powerful measure of cardiovascular efficiency and resilience. A lower RHR signals a heart that’s strong, efficient, and ready to support your overall well-being. By embracing regular exercise, managing stress, and understanding your unique physiology, you can make meaningful improvements to your RHR, enhancing your heart health and supporting a longer, healthier life.
References
Balban MY, Neri E, Kogon MM, et al. Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Rep Med. 2023;4(1):100895. doi:10.1016/j.xcrm.2022.100895
Just five minutes of daily breathwork exercises, particularly "cyclic sighing" (which emphasizes prolonged exhales), was found to be more effective at improving mood and reducing breathing rate than traditional mindfulness meditation. In a month-long study of 114 participants, those doing cyclic sighing showed the greatest increases in positive emotions and largest decreases in respiratory rate, while all breathing techniques (including box breathing and cyclic hyperventilation) produced improvements in mood and reduced anxiety compared to mindfulness meditation. This discovery suggests that simple, brief breathing exercises - especially those emphasizing extended exhales - could offer an accessible, time-efficient tool for improving emotional wellbeing and physiological calm, potentially providing a practical alternative to longer meditation practices for stress management.
Jensen MT, Suadicani P, Hein HO, Gyntelberg F. Elevated resting heart rate, physical fitness and all-cause mortality: a 16-year follow-up in the Copenhagen Male Study. Heart. 2013;99(12):882-887. doi:10.1136/heartjnl-2012-303375
A 16-year study of nearly 3,000 healthy middle-aged men found that having an elevated resting heart rate significantly increases mortality risk, even after accounting for physical fitness levels and other cardiovascular risk factors. The data showed that men with resting heart rates above 90 beats per minute had a threefold higher risk of death compared to those with rates below 50 beats per minute, and each 10-beat increase in resting heart rate was associated with a 16% higher mortality risk. These findings suggest that resting heart rate could be an important vital sign for predicting longevity - not just a reflection of physical fitness as previously thought - making it a simple yet powerful tool for identifying people who might need closer medical monitoring or lifestyle interventions to reduce their risk of early death.
Mohammad Karimi Moridani, Pargol Yousefi and Anahita Safavi Sohi, The Effect of Meditation on Regulation of Heart Rate. Am J Biomed Sci & Res. 2021 - 12(2). AJBSR.MS.ID.001736. DOI: 10.34297/AJBSR.2021.12.001736.
Meditation has been shown to significantly reduce heart rate and make heart rhythms more regular, indicating its positive effects on heart rate regulation. According to the study's data analysis comparing before and during meditation states, the mean heart rate decreased from 81.52 to 78.01 beats per minute during meditation, and heart rate fluctuations (measured by standard deviation) dropped substantially from 11.65 to 7.58, showing more stable heart rhythms. These findings suggest meditation could be a simple yet effective tool for preventing cardiovascular disease and managing mental health conditions like anxiety and depression, particularly given that psychological stress is a major risk factor for heart problems and meditation requires no special equipment or significant financial investment.
O'Keefe, J. H., O'Keefe, E. L., Eckert, R., & Lavie, C. J. (2023). Training Strategies to Optimize Cardiovascular Durability and Life Expectancy. Missouri medicine, 120(2), 155–162.
This research reveals that moderate physical activity, like walking or gardening, is actually better for longevity than vigorous exercise, with higher doses of moderate activity continuing to improve life expectancy while the benefits of intense exercise plateau after about 150 minutes per week. This finding comes from a landmark Harvard study of over 116,000 people tracked for 30 years, which found that high levels of moderate exercise reduced cardiovascular death risk about twice as effectively as high levels of vigorous exercise, challenging the "more is better" assumption for intense workouts. These results suggest that for optimal longevity, people should focus on consistent moderate activities like walking, gardening, or social sports rather than pushing themselves to do large amounts of strenuous exercise - a finding that makes longer, healthier lives more accessible since moderate activity is easier to maintain and carries lower risk of injury or burnout.
Reimers AK, Knapp G, Reimers CD. Effects of Exercise on the Resting Heart Rate: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Interventional Studies. J Clin Med. 2018;7(12):503. Published 2018 Dec 1. doi:10.3390/jcm7120503
Regular exercise, particularly endurance training and yoga, can significantly lower resting heart rate by about 3-8 beats per minute in healthy individuals. This finding comes from a comprehensive analysis of 191 studies involving nearly 13,000 participants, where the effects were strongest in endurance training (reducing heart rate by up to 9% in men) and yoga practices (reducing heart rate by up to 5.5%). Since elevated resting heart rate is associated with increased mortality risk - with each 10 beat per minute increase linked to 17% higher mortality - these exercise-induced reductions could potentially contribute to longer life expectancy, though more research is needed to confirm the direct relationship.
Zeidan F, Johnson SK, Gordon NS, Goolkasian P. Effects of brief and sham mindfulness meditation on mood and cardiovascular variables. J Altern Complement Med. 2010;16(8):867-873. doi:10.1089/acm.2009.0321
Just three 20-minute sessions of mindfulness meditation training (1 hour total over 3 days) was found to significantly reduce negative mood and heart rate compared to both sham meditation and no meditation. In a controlled study of 82 college students, the meditation group showed an 88% drop in negative mood (compared to only 32% in the sham group and 34% in the control group), and demonstrated the strongest effect on heart rate reduction (effect size 0.52 compared to 0.36 for sham and 0.23 for controls), though interestingly there were no significant effects on blood pressure. These findings suggest that even very brief meditation practice - as little as one hour total - can provide immediate psychological and physiological benefits, making mindfulness meditation a potentially accessible stress-reduction tool for people who cannot commit to traditional 8-week meditation programs.