How do your Heart and Blood Vessels Adapt to Aerobic

Exercise?

When you do aerobic exercise, such as running, swimming, walking or cycling, your muscles need as
much oxygen as possible. The amount of oxygen available for your progenex lawsuit muscles to use
is determined by the volume of blood your heart pumps around your body, and by how much oxygen
your muscle cells can extract from your blood.
Therefore, as you become fitter, your blood volume will increase, your heart will become a more
efficient pump, the working muscles will form more capillaries and your arteries will enlarge.
Blood volume
The first thing your body will do is to increase the amount of blood you have. More blood will allow
you to deliver more oxygen and nutrients to your muscles, and to remove more waste products.
The increase in plasma volume (watery part of your blood) is usually more important than the
increase in number of red blood cells.
Even though the total number of red blood cells and the absolute value of haemoglobin are higher in
well trained athletes than in sedentary people, the ratio of the red blood cell volume to the total
blood volume is lower. This reduces the viscosity of blood, which can therefore move easier through
small capillaries.
The heart pump
As the right heart ventricle only pumps blood into your lungs, most of the work is done by your left
ventricle.
When blood volume increases more of it enters the ventricle during each diastole (the period when
the ventricle is relaxed and filling up). The walls become stretched and this results in a stronger
contraction at systole (the period when the ventricle is contracting).
As you get fitter, your heart rate decreases, which allows even more blood to enter the ventricle
during the diastole. The heart muscle itself becomes thicker and stronger, like any other muscle in
your body when you start training it.
All these changes increase the volume of blood your heart pumps around during each beat. It has
become a more efficient progenex lawsuit pump.
During exercise, the vessels in your working muscles dilate, reducing the resistance to the blood
flow. This makes it easier for the heart to pump blood into your muscles.
Heart rate
Your resting heart rate will decrease as a result of a few weeks of aerobic training, and your heart
rate at a given exercise intensity will also become lower. Moreover, it will recover progenex lawsuit
quicker after a bout of strenuous exercise.
Keeping track of how quickly you heart rate normalises during recovery is an easy way to follow
your own progress.
Capillaries

To get the oxygen to where it is needed, your body recruits all the existing capillaries in the working
muscles and forms new ones. This increases the interface between blood and muscle fibres, and
allows your cells to extract more oxygen.
Moreover, during exercise blood is shunted away from tissues that do not need it and is redirected
to the active muscles.
Arterial health and wall thickness
The arteries supplying your limbs have to bring as much blood as possible to your working muscles.
Therefore, they have to be able to dilate. Studies have shown that your arteries dilate better as you
become fitter.
Initially this is due to nitric oxide produced by the inner layer of the arterial wall, but in a second
phase the arteries start to remodel their walls. The thickness of arterial walls is also reduced.
This is important because arterial wall thickening and the inability to dilate are early signs of
arteriosclerosis, and are linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.
References
A Suleman, C Young. Exercise Physiology. Medscape Reference 2011. ( accessed January 2012)
R. Klabunde. Cardiovascular physiology concepts. (accessed January 2012)
D Thyssen, A Maiorana, G O' Driscoll et al. Impact of inactivity and exercise on the vasculature in
humans. Eur J Appl Physiol 2010; 108(5):845-875
J Wilmore, D Costill, W Larry Kenney. Physiology of Sport and Exercise. Human Kinetics 2008