Is it okay to have a slow heartbeat, what is a slow heartbeat

Sometimes it's normal for older people and athletes to have a heart rate of less than 60 beats per minute, and if you don't have any other discomfort, it should be okay to slow down. In addition, if you want to measure whether your slow heartbeat is normal, you can measure whether your heart rate when you are quiet is similar to your heart rate after exercising or after climbing a tall building.

If a person's heart beats less than 60 times per minute, it is "slow heartbeat", also known as "bradycardia". Normal people or athletes may appear, especially athletes, because regular exercise increases the contraction force of the heart, and the output of blood per beat increases, which is enough for the needs of various organs of the body, so the heartbeat of 50-60 times per minute is enough. However, if the heartbeat is only 30-40 beats per minute, it may be abnormal, and the cause should be investigated.

There are three common causes of slow heartbeat: The first is vagus nerve hyperfunction, which has a nerve center in the medulla of the brain that regulates cardiovascular activity. This center can have the function of suppressing the heartbeat or speeding up the heartbeat.

The vagus nerve is the nerve fiber that is emitted by this center, which is used to innervate the heartbeat and other functions. When the vagus nerve is excited, its terminals can release a substance called "acetylcholine" that acts as a depressant to the heart, slowing the heartbeat. The heart rate caused by "hyperactivity" is mostly regular, although the heartbeat is slow, it is rarely less than 30-40 beats per minute, and normal people, including the elderly, can appear.

The second type of slow heartbeat is called "sick sinus syndrome", or "sick sinus" for short. This is a pathological cardiac manifestation whose pathological changes occur mainly at the pacemaker of the heartbeat ——— the sinus node. The common ** is coronary heart disease, cardiomyopathy and degenerative diseases of the cardiac conduction system in the elderly.

Patients with "sick sinus" have a very slow heartbeat, sometimes only 30-40 beats per minute. The third is the slow heartbeat caused by severe atrioventricular block, that is, the impulse wave sent by the original pacemaker sinus node cannot be transmitted to the atrioventricular node and is blocked, at this time the ventricle has to compensate for its own impulses, so the heartbeat is very slow, once complete atrioventricular block occurs, when the heartbeat is less than 20 times per minute, dizziness, and even fainting and convulsions can occur due to the obvious decline in cardiac blood output that directly affects the cerebral blood supply, which is a serious attack of Ass syndrome. Most of the causes of severe conduction block are organic lesions of the heart itself, such as coronary heart disease, myocardial lesions, or advanced severe changes in some heart diseases.

In short, when the heart beats slowly, it should be considered mainly from the main causes such as "hyperactivity", "sinus disease" and severe conduction block, and it can also be found through a detailed medical history and electrocardiogram examination to find the cause of slow heartbeat, so that it can be targeted.