Heartsounds

I just took my pulse, sitting in a chair, a half-hour after drinking a caffeinated pop. 63BPM. Over the last few days, I've taken my resting heartrate, i.e. my BPM just after waking. It averages 57 BPM. I was actually surprised by this. I expected it to be higher. I guess trying to lose some weight and be more consistent in my exercise is bringing it down.

Anyway, following the directions on this page, I calculated my aerobic exercise range, using three different formulae:

• ACSM Low Estimate: (105.0, 157.5)



• ACSM High Estimate: (112.5, 168.75)



• Karvonen Estimate: (116.0, 157.3)

Being lazy, I didn't want to punch all the numbers into a calculator every few months as my resting pulse changed with exercise, or every year as my HRmax went down. So I wrote a program:

#!/bin/env python





def HRmaxLO(age):


return 220 - age





def HRmaxHI(age):


return 210 - (0.5 * age)





def WorkLO(age):


HRmax = HRmaxLO(age)


return (HRmax*0.6, HRmax*0.9)





def WorkHI(age):


HRmax = HRmaxHI(age)


return (HRmax*0.6, HRmax*0.9)





def Karvonen(age, restingPulse):


targetHR = HRmaxLO(age)


delta = targetHR - restingPulse


Low = (delta * 0.5) + restingPulse


Hi = (delta * 0.85) + restingPulse


return (Low, Hi)





if __name__ == "__main__":


myAge = 45


restingPulse = 57





print "Heart Range, Low  Estimate:", WorkLO(myAge)


print "Heart Range, High Estimate:", WorkHI(myAge)


print "Karvonen Range:            ", Karvonen(myAge, restingPulse)

You knew I had to turn this into a computer geek thread sometime, didn't you?