title: Cardiorespiratory fitness and heart rate recovery in obese premenopausal women.
abstract: Post-exercise heart rate recovery (HRR) has been proposed as a measure of cardiac autonomic dysfunction in apparently healthy adults. We aimed to determine the effects of a lifestyle intervention on HRR among clinically obese premenopausal women. A randomized controlled trial was conducted to investigate the effects of a 3-month non-dieting lifestyle intervention program on cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) and HRR among healthy clinically obese premenopausal women. Thirty-one were randomly assigned to 3-month intensive lifestyle intervention and 31 served as controls. Sixty-one participants performed a maximal treadmill walking test with metabolic gas exchange. Baseline anthropometric measures were closely related to HRR at 1 min, which may indicate reduced parasympathetic reactivation. Post-exercise HRR at 60 s (HRR60) increased from 21.3 ± 6.2 to 27.8 ± 10.2 bpm in the intervention group compared with a smaller reduction (26.8 ± 12.3 to 24.5 ± 9.9 bpm) in controls (test for interaction P = 0.0001). HRR120 showed a significant effect of time (P = 0.0002) with no significant interaction with lifestyle intervention. A significant increase in VO2 peak was evident in the lifestyle group (21.6 to 23.6 mL/kg/min) compared with a modest reduction in the controls (22.6 to 21.6 mL/kg/min; test for interaction, P = 0.001). Clinically obese healthy premenopausal women achieved significant improvements in HRR60 and VO peak following a 3-month intensive lifestyle intervention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Sport, Health and Exercise Science, University of Hull, Hull, UK. s.carroll@hull.ac.uk
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Carroll
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Marshall
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ingle
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Borkoles
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004032:Diet; D015444:Exercise / Q000502:physiology; D005080:Exercise Test; D017079:Exercise Tolerance; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000628:therapy; D010101:Oxygen Consumption; D010353:Patient Education as Topic; D010809:Physical Fitness / Q000502:physiology*; D017697:Premenopause / Q000502:physiology*; D011659:Pulmonary Gas Exchange; D013997:Time Factors