HR drop on walking

[MedMystery]

Does anyone get a heart rate decrease on walking? My hr sits at 120 standing still, but when walking a short distance drops to 95. As soon as I stop it goes back to 120. Lying down it drops to 60.

Does anyone else experience anying similar?

[Sarah Tee]

I don’t know whether this is the explanation for what you have observed, but standing still is often more strenuous than walking for people with orthostatic intolerance disorders. (And for healthy people too, but they don’t usually notice it until they have been standing for a lot longer.)

When we walk, our body uses “muscle pumps” to help get a good blood flow and return blood from the legs to the heart. When we stand still, these muscle pumps aren’t as active, unless we know the tricks of shifting our weight from leg to leg and tensing and releasing the large leg and buttock muscles.

[Water Lover]

Echoing what @Sarah Tee said. I’m recently diagnosed with POTS, and in trying to figure out what was going on with me it took a bit to realize the orthostatic piece because I had learned over years to compensate for this by standing still as little as possible. The HR increase with stillness/drop with walking is very much a pattern for me. I notice it when I’m walking my dog: when he stops for more than a couple of seconds to smell something, I can see on my Apple Watch that my HR starts to rise; as soon as we’re moving again, it starts back down. A difference of 20-25 BPM sounds similar to what I often see, though it can be less than that on a good day (or on an especially bad day, when moving doesn’t help as much).

[MikeO]

Hmm...never really tested this. I can say when my blood pressure drops my hr rate goes up or at times it does not (nOH piece of me). We have seen sudden hr spikes when i was in cardio rehab and on the treadmill i would go from 98 to 139 just out of the blue and come back down. I also don't stand still very often and also always keep moving more like rocking back and forth or constantainly crossing my legs. sure i have learned to intuitively to do this over the years.