Regular exercise is a key component of a healthy lifestyle and one of the best habits for preserving heart health. With so many benefits, it’s an underutilized prescription for health. Cardiovascular exercise, such as running or cycling, strengthens the heart and increases blood flow, which can reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure. Plus, physical activity helps decrease cholesterol levels and improve circulation, both of which are critical for heart health.
Aside from its physical benefits, exercise also has mental health benefits. Regular exercise releases endorphins, which are the body’s natural feel-good chemicals that give a greater sense of well-being. These endorphins fight stress, anxiety, and depression, and improve mood. Plus, exercise helps improve cognitive function, including memory and focus. So, exercise benefits your brain and your heart (along with other organs).
But what happens to your heart when you stop exercising? Let’s explore the impact of stopping exercise on our heart health, and what steps you can take to mitigate them.
What Is Detraining?
First, let’s define what we mean by “detraining.” Detraining refers to the loss of physiological adaptations that result from regular exercise when you stop exercising or significantly reduce your activity levels. This can happen for a variety of reasons, including injury, illness, or simply losing motivation.
Detraining is a medical term that describes what happens when you stop working out. Our bodies are amazing at adapting to the stresses we put them through, like lifting weights or running long distances. But, if you suddenly stop exercising, those adaptations start to disappear. It’s like the old saying “use it or lose it” – if we don’t use our muscles and cardiovascular system, they won’t stay as strong and efficient as they were when we were active.
One of the most common reasons detraining happens is in response to injury. A serious injury involving the lower body, like a torn tendon or fracture, can mean you’re off your feet for weeks until healing occurs. So how does this change in activity level affect your heart?
When You Stop Exercising, You Lose Adaptations to Exercise
One of the main physiological adaptations that occur with regular exercise is an improvement in cardiovascular function. When you exercise, your heart pumps blood more efficiently, delivering oxygen and nutrients to your working muscles more effectively. Improved cardiovascular function is one of the key reasons why regular exercise is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. There are others too, like reductions in blood pressure, beneficial changes to blood lipids, and reduced inflammation that explain some of exercise’s heart-health benefits.
But what happens to your heart when you stop exercising? Detraining can have a significant impact on your cardiovascular health. Within 1 to 8 weeks of suspended training, your blood volume, stroke volume, and cardiac output can decrease, and your heart muscle size can shrink over time. These changes can occur quite quickly, meaning it’s important to stay active and consistent with your exercise routine to maintain good cardiovascular health.
Heart Functionality Declines in Response to Detraining Too
If you stop exercising for 4-8 weeks, your body will lose its ability to pump as much blood, due to a drop in stroke volume. This means the amount of blood your heart can pump with each beat, and the total quantity of blood your muscles and organs receive declines. Short-term inactivity can also lower your fitness level, as your body becomes less efficient at using oxygen. Even just two weeks of not exercising can lead to a noticeable drop in your cardiovascular fitness.
One of the benefits of cardiovascular exercise is it helps relax the walls of arteries, leading to a drop in blood pressure. In fact, many cardiologists recommend aerobic exercise for treatment of hypertension, although it doesn’t always eliminate the need for blood pressure medications. As you might expect, blood pressure starts to rise again within a few weeks of stopping aerobic exercise.
Minimizing the Cardiovascular Effects of Detraining
So, what can you do to minimize the negative effects of detraining on your cardiovascular health? The best approach is to try to maintain physical activity even if you can’t maintain your regular exercise routine.
For example, if you’ve been running regularly but you must take a break due to injury, you might switch to lower-impact activities like cycling or swimming to maintain your cardiovascular fitness. The exercises you’re able to do safely will depend on your injury.
Also, note that the negative effects of detraining can be more pronounced in individuals who are already at risk for cardiovascular disease. This includes individuals with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or a family history of heart disease. If you fall into this category, try to maintain some level of physical activity even if you can’t maintain your regular exercise routine. You want to protect against the effects of sitting too much.
Along with maintaining physical activity, it’s also important to pay attention to your diet and other lifestyle factors that can impact your cardiovascular health. This includes lifestyle habits like getting quality sleep, managing stress, and eating a whole-food, heart-healthy diet.
Conclusion
Exercise is an important component of cardiovascular health, but you can lose the benefits rather quickly after you stop. Detraining can lead to a rapid decline in cardiovascular function, even in individuals who have been exercising regularly for years. To minimize the negative effects of detraining on your cardiovascular health, try to maintain some level of physical activity even when you can’t continue your regular exercise routine, pay attention to your diet and other lifestyle factors that can impact your cardiovascular health, and speak with your healthcare provider about what activities it’s safe to do while injured.
References:
- Petek BJ, Groezinger EY, Pedlar CR, Baggish AL. Cardiac effects of detraining in athletes: A narrative review. Ann Phys Rehabil Med. 2022 Jun;65(4):101581. doi: 10.1016/j.rehab.2021.101581. Epub 2021 Nov 19. PMID: 34624549.
- Antihypertensive Effects of Exercise Among Those With Resistant Hypertension (2023). Available at: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.111.00126 (Accessed: 7 April 2023).
- “Prescribed Detraining: Effects on Cardiac Structure, Cardiac ….” 23 Aug. 2021, https://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2021/08/23/12/42/prescribed-detraining.
- Mujika I, Padilla S. Detraining: loss of training-induced physiological and performance adaptations. Part I: short-term insufficient training stimulus. Sports Med. 2000 Aug;30(2):79-87. doi: 10.2165/00007256-200030020-00002. PMID: 10966148.
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