upper limit

is there an upper heart rate set on the pacemaker and can this be altered for effective weight loss exercise?

3 Comments

Faster Heart Rate

by SMITTY - 2013-10-24 06:10:58


Hello LizB,

Your pacemaker has two set points when you get it. A low point and a high point, One is a low setting and that is the one at which the PM starts to work should your heart rate drop below that setting. The PM continues to monitor your heart rate and steps in anytime it detects a heart rate that will go below that low setting.. However when your heart rate gets higher than the high set point the PM becomes a monitor only and will not raise your heart rate above that level.

There are some of us that need the PM to help raise our heart rate for some activities. In my case my low set point is 80 BPM low and a high of 110 BPM. The PM has a feature called a rate response and if I'm doing something (exercise for example) that requires a heart rate higher than 110 my rate response will be activated and give me that increased rate.

It is dr. option, but most of us get our PM with the rate response deactivated for various reasons. If you think you need the help of the rate response for a higher heart rate talk to your dr. He knows the particulars of your heart and is the one to decide if you should have your rate response activated.

Good luck,

Smitty

exercise

by Tracey_E - 2013-10-24 08:10:38

I can only speak for myself, but the charts with target heart rate, etc, mean nothing to me since I've been paced. I push until I am sweating and breathing hard, where it's difficult to speak but I'm breathing too hard to sing. I try to stay there for at least 20 min. Some days my hr is at 130, other days it's 160. You want your upper limit to be about 10 bpm above where you tend to get when working out hard.

That number varies for each of us, and how to best program the pm to support exercise varies also depending on how we pace. Why do you have it? You may beat on your own when you get your rate up, in which case it doesn't matter how high the pm will pace you because you're not pacing. If you have av block, your sinus node goes up normally but you need the pm to pace the ventricles to keep up. It will only pace as high as the upper limit so in my case my upper limit is 170. If your sinus rate doesn't go up with activity, then you need rate response programmed to get your rate up sufficiently.

First thing to do is go exercise and see how you feel. If you feel good, then your upper limit is fine where it is. If you get tired too easily, dizzy, legs turn to lead, then it's time to see what the pm is doing when you exert and adjust accordinglyy.

I have no upper limit

by valley01 - 2013-10-25 09:10:36

I'm still very new to all of this but I can tell you after reviewing my home monitor results my doctor removed my upper limit completely at my 3 week check-up this week so I won't have any problems during exercise/running.

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