Do you know what your heart does? Your heart is an important part of your body that pumps blood all around you. When your heart pumps, it sends oxygen and good things to your body and takes away bad things. Heart rate is like how fast your heart beats while resting heart rate is how fast your heart beats when you’re not doing anything. Everyone’s heart beats differently, and it can change as you grow up, exercising, or drinking alcohol. Checking your heart rate can help you know if you are healthy or if you need help from a doctor.
When you’re all calm and not moving around, your heart rate should be between 60 and 100 beats per minute (bpm). When you’re younger, your heart might beat faster.
It’s important to keep track of your heart rate and make sure it’s in the right range. You can figure out the fastest your heart should ever beat by calculating 220 minus your age. As a general guide, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have published a table to show the target heart rate zone for different ages.
| Age | Normal Resting Heart Rate (bpm) |
|---|---|
| 0 to 1 month old | 70 to 190 |
| 1 to 11 months old | 80 to 160 |
| 1 to 2 years old | 80 to 130 |
| 3 to 4 years old | 80 to 120 |
| 5 to 6 years old | 75 to 115 |
| 7 to 9 years old | 70 to 110 |
| 10 years old and above(including adults and seniors) | 60 to 100 |
| Highly trained athletes | 40 to 60 |
When you’re walking or doing something that’s not too hard, your heart should beat between 50% and 70% of the fastest it can go. When you’re running or exercising, it should beat between 70% and 85% of the fastest it can go.
Now that you know what your heart rate should be, let’s talk about how to check it.
There are many ways to do it, but the easiest way is to do it by yourself.
Here are the best places to locate your pulse:
To check your heart rate, all you need to do is put two fingers on one of the pulse points mentioned above and count how many times you feel your heart beat for 1 minute. You can also count for 30 seconds and then times 2. If you want to find out your resting heart rate, you should sit still for at least 10 minutes before counting. This helps your heart to calm and relax.
If you don’t want to count your heartbeats by yourself, our remote health monitoring solution, Vitals™, can do this measurement for you in just 30 seconds by using the camera on your phone or tablet.
If you check your heart rate and it’s not in the right range, don’t worry. Sometimes your heart beats faster or slower depending on what you’re doing. But if your heart rate is always higher than average when you’re just sitting still, you might want to talk to your doctor. If your heart is not working well, your body might not get enough blood it needs to work properly.
When your heart beats too fast, it’s called tachycardia. This can happen when you’re really stressed, infection or not getting enough oxygen. If you don’t get help, it can cause other problems like a stroke or blood clots. In contrast, when your heart beats too slow, it’s called bradycardia. This happens more often to highly-trained athletes, adults above 65 or if you are on certain medicine. It’s also possible to be born with it if your parents have it too.
Usually, when people’s hearts beat too fast or too slow, they don’t feel anything weird. But sometimes, you might have those potential symptoms, including:
If you ever feel any of the things we talked about and you’re worried about your heart, you should go see the doctor. This is the best way to get your answers and find out treatable problems early.
Vitals™, powered by PanopticAI, is an award-winning camera-based health and wellness monitoring solution that makes measuring, interpreting, and managing personal health contactless, affordable, and as easy as smiling at a camera. Built on state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and signal processing, Vitals™ delivers comprehensive digital biomarkers with medical-grade accuracy in under 30 seconds. It can be installed on common consumer devices and used remotely or in person, revolutionising remote healthcare, personal wellness, and much more.
