Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

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cathyf
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Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by cathyf » Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:37 am

This is one of those common sense ideas that I'm surprised I've never seen any discussion of...

Long ago (when dinosaurs walked the earth) when I took high school anatomy & physiology, we did a lab once. In the lab, you would take your lab partner's resting pulse, and then the partner would jog in place for 3 minutes, and then you'd take the pulse again. Being an out-of-shape nerd back then (some things never change) my pulse went from about 90 to about 175 after jogging for about 30 seconds. My lab partner was a nationally ranked figure skater who hit the rink every morning at 5am, and hers went from 54 to 57. I learned in college bio that when you physically exert yourself and your whole body needs more oxygen, that happens in two ways. First of all, your pulse rate goes up while you breathe faster. The blood circulates faster, delivering more oxygen over time, while you have to breathe faster/harder to get the oxygen into your blood faster. The other effect is that you only use a fraction of your red blood cells while resting, so you have a reserve capacity for when you are active.

One of the main mechanisms of sustained exercise is that over time your body increases the amount of red blood cells that you have, so that you have a deeper reserve before having to go with the faster heart and heavy breathing to support your muscles. (If you've ever heard of "blood doping" -- that's where an athlete banks red blood cells and then injects them right before a match.) This is why my athlete lab partner didn't need to breathe much more heavily and her heart didn't need to beat much harder to deliver a bunch of extra oxygen to her cells.

But, anyway, it would seem to me that regular aerobic exercise should be on all of our lists. If your blood oxygen is desaturating to 80%, wouldn't you rather have 80% of an athlete's oxygen rather than 80% of a couch potato's oxygen? It's all about the reserves, baby...

...getting out of my chair to jog around the office now...

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BlackSpinner
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by BlackSpinner » Wed Sep 17, 2014 10:54 am

Lots of us were very physically fit when we first got OSA. When you stop breathing there is no O2 getting in this is different from being not fit. Your skater would desat just as quickly as you would. The effect would be just as damaging.

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palerider
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by palerider » Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:11 am

oxygen starved organs, heart damage, stress hormones at 80% are probably going to be as bad no matter how much jogging you do.

however, interesting theory, see if you can dig up some scientific studies to support or disprove it...

report back

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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by jnk » Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:21 am

Heck no! Being physically fit never helped nobody with nuthin'!

Oh, wait. Let me amend that . . .

Every human being on the planet (or in space, if that's your thing) must, OSA or not, pay close attention to diet and exercise. Failing to do so is folly. For anyone and everyone. Even the bedridden with intravenous feedings need to move what they can when they can and monitor intake. It's just plain necessary and is the nature of human existence.

Within reason, increasing physical fitness should help, not harm, anything negative about one's health.

IMO.

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VVV
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by VVV » Wed Sep 17, 2014 11:34 am

If your blood oxygen is desaturating to 80%, wouldn't you rather have 80% of an athlete's oxygen rather than 80% of a couch potato's oxygen? It's all about the reserves, baby
As one who is in the gym or on the road on my bicycle four to five times per week, my reaction is,

WTF????

Get a CPAP and keep your SpO2 97+% all night long.
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palerider
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by palerider » Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:02 pm

VVV wrote:
palerider wrote:oxygen starved organs, heart damage, stress hormones at 80%

... brain damage, sleep deprivation, gherlin/leptin out of balance, insulin underproduction and on and on.
I didn't have the time, or patience for a comprehensive list

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Julie
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by Julie » Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:02 pm

But don't forget, while the theory is excellent and we should all get more exercise, many, if not most of us here are older and have all kinds of physical problems, not all of which were a result of lack of exercise and not all of which respond positively to it. There are generally some that can be done by most of us some of the time, but that's not to say we're going to be athletes any time soon... not in the real world... so a little bit of common sense needs to be used when deciding we can all simply work out and reach the 02 levels athletes do.

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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by ChicagoGranny » Wed Sep 17, 2014 12:09 pm

PailRider wrote:I didn't have the time, or patience for a comprehensive list
oxygen starved organs, heart damage, stress hormones at 80%

... brain damage, sleep deprivation, gherlin/leptin out of balance, insulin underproduction ...

... lack of patience, feeling of being pressed for time, ...

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palerider
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by palerider » Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:21 pm

VVV wrote:
ChicagoGranny wrote:
PailRider wrote:I didn't have the time, or patience for a comprehensive list
oxygen starved organs, heart damage, stress hormones at 80%
... brain damage, sleep deprivation, gherlin/leptin out of balance, insulin underproduction ...
... lack of patience, feeling of being pressed for time, ...
... taking shortcuts, unable to handle comprehensive reading ...
I see y'alls lips movin, but all I hear is blah blah blah

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palerider
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Re: Increasing physical fitness to minimize effects of desats

Post by palerider » Wed Sep 17, 2014 1:41 pm

VVV wrote:Sorry for piling on Pale.. PailRider(?).
oh, that's ok, granny and her love of picking on me is infectuous.
VVV wrote:I do like many of your posts.
thanks, but don't tell anybody, you'll make enemies here with talk like that

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