Cardio….?
I joined a gym today and after ten minutes of jogging on the treadmill, I was physically sick. I was nauseas and I began to cold sweat… it literally took me five minutes for my heart rate to return to normal…then I was faint and dizzy.
My trainer thinks it is due to my lack of training, which I am not sure about as I do salsa and tons of pilates. I however have a cardiac arrythmia and am asthmatic… my doctor thinks that it is not life threatening…but if my heart or respirtory problems are the cause of my issue with cardio… how can I control it?
There are a lot of things that could cause that, being out of shape is one of them.
Also in the mix could be low blood sugar, low blood pressure, your arrythmia or asthma….
Ordinarily I’d say it sounds like low blood sugar, but given your cardiac issue, this really is something you ought to discuss with your doctor. Hopefully he’s got a bit of sports medicine experience.
Since you know you have asthma, it sounds like it’s an exercise induced asthma attack. Happens to me and my daughter when she plays too hard. You might just need to slow it down a bit and do fast walking on the treadmill instead of jogging and concentrate on weight training.
If you have a cardiac arrhythmia as well as asthma, should you not have told your trainer first?
Hard to sue a gym if you have dropped dead, and then people later found out you have pre-existing conditions.
Just saying a cardiac arrhythmia does not help people to solve your problems. There are so many types, and some are ok while others are serious and precludes you from strenous exercise.
If you have asthma, what sort of frequency of need for use of bronchodilators? This can also affect the level of exercise you are allowed to do safely. Most asthmatics will require use of their bronchodilator before starting strenous exercise.
Your doctor can organise a Lung Function Test to work out the severity of your asthma, as well as the lung capacity for exercise activity. You should review your asthma medications with the doctor if you have not done so for the past 3 months.
Your doctor should organise both a resting EKG as well as an exercise EKG to be done to see what type of arrhythmias you have at rest or develop with exercise.
If you don’t want to spend the next 3 months seeing doctors and sitting in labs like a guinea pig, start off doing something simple in the gym. Like walking on a treadmill is still exercise!
dont over do it.
take it easy the next few days
take a aspirn to.
call doctor if worse
Start with walking on the treadmill, slow.
Use a heart monitor, and take a nice gradual warmup.
check your heart rate minute by minute, you should not need to breathe hard EVER while exercising. Before increasing the rate or incline on the treadmill, make sure your heart stays at the same rate for about three minutes. Then go ahead and speed up a little.
The good news is that 5 minutes to return to normal is good. 10 minutes is considered good. But coming down 30 beats a minute in the first 2 minutes is also desired.
I suspect you want to avoid the arrythmia. DO check with your doctor.
If starting, you don’t need a trainer. You need patience with yourself. Walk, and gradually walk faster. Consider running or jogging in a few months if you can’t stand to walk fast any more and have tons of energy. Then still use a heart rate monitor.
It could be because you are out of shape but there are also other reasons for the symptoms that you wrote about.
One thing I would do is check with my personal MD about my arrhythmia and find out what it would do to me. Your MD will know your history and could give you a better answer than your trainer. Worse comes to worse your MD could refer you to a heart doctor who would / could hook you up to a heart monitor and put you on a treadmill. If it is your arrhythmia, then he would be able to see exactly what is happening.
If you get a clean bill of health from the heart doctor then address your asthma issue. Possibly you might need to hit your inhaler before you work out and keep one close by during the work out.
Depending on your age, jogging might not be the best way to start an exercise program with the medical conditions that you stated. Maybe you might want to start a bit slower and walk instead of jog. Walking is less stressful on your joints and burns close to the same amount of calories. If you are trying to sustain a safe elevated heart rate then use the incline button on the treadmill.