As a heart patient, you experience pain in your chest, weakness, loss of strength and endurance, lack of mobility, and many other problems.
You can improve your heart condition, pain, and weakness by using medication and diet but the after-effects of heart disease can affect your whole lifestyle which can not be altered by medication which can only be improved by proper counseling and doing exercises that can only be done by a skilled physical therapist.
A physical therapist keeps you moving and improves your heart health as well as overall functional activities which are restricted because of your heart problem in many ways which will be discussed below.
Some of the main Heart problems are:
- Heart failure.
- hypertension.
- Valvular heart diseases.
- Cardiomyopathy.
- Coronary artery diseases (CAD).
- Cardiac arrhythmias.
- Angina pectoris.
- Myocardial infarction (MI).
These heart diseases are the leading cause of death all over the world, with almost 339,076 deaths in 2020 due to heart disease according to a U.S. review.
Whenever you experience heart failure, myocardial infarction, angina, angioplasty, heart surgery, and so on, then it must affect you physically as well as mentally. Cardiac rehabilitation can heal you both mentally and physically.
Your cardiologist referred you to a physical therapist for the purpose of improving your health after a heart attack and to further reduce the risk of developing heart disorders.
A physical therapist can improve your cardio health by improving:
- Strength of muscles.
- Endurance of muscles.
- Lower the blood cholesterol and blood pressure.
Basically, physical therapists improve the quality of life of patients through hands-on cardio exercises that’s why they are known as movement experts.
Treatment plan:
So as a physical therapist you must prepare a proper treatment plan for a heart patient according to their disease, specifically whether it is angina, MI, CAD, and so on.
- Education: You educate your patient about physical exercise, its benefits, adverse effects and so on. You can educate him/her about the duration, and intensity of exercise.
You can also modify a patient’s lifestyle for the sake of a healthy lifestyle, informing the patient to self-assess his/her condition before and after the exercises. Does any change occur or not? If no change occurs then you have to change the exercise or intensity of exercise.
- Aerobic exercise:
A physical therapist can improve your cardio health by improving:
- Strength of muscles.
- Endurance of muscles.
- Lower the blood cholesterol and blood pressure.
- Quality of life of patients.
- Aerobic endurance:
Heart patients have low aerobic endurance levels, to improve their health you must have to improve their endurance level.
Initially start the cardiovascular training and activity by doing:
- Walking.
- Jogging.
- Swimming.
- Dancing.
- Aquatic exercises.
“The American heart association recommends 30-minutes of moderate-intensity exercise five days per week.”
b) Aerobic strength training:
Cardiovascular strength is improved by aerobic exercise or cardiovascular activity, some important things you must know about the cardio strengthening:
- Strengthen your heart as well as heart vessels.
- Improve oxygen flow.
- Reduce the further risk of heart diseases.
- Improve your overall body strength.
- Reduce your fat.
- Helps to perform your functional activities.
Strength training can decrease your body fat, which in turn increases the fat on different organs, which in turn decreases obesity which leads to a reduction in the chance of heart disease and speeds up the body metabolic rate.
Strengthening exercises include:
- Free weights like dumbbells.
- Push-ups.
- Squats.
- chin-ups.
“According to the American College of Sports Medicine, at least two non-consecutive days per week of resistance training must be needed.”
Conclusion:
Our world is facing many diseases nowadays but heart diseases are the most common and most of them lead to death of patients. We can control these diseases by taking medicines but these diseases can cause further diseases too, which may lead to further pain in the upper limbs, mobility restriction, and many other problems.
To improve all these and to improve the patient’s health, physical therapists should work here.
Walking, running, aquatic exercise and some other aerobic exercises, pushups, and squats help the patient to improve endurance and strengthen of heart patients.