Cardiorespiratory fitness and heart rate recovery in obese premenopausal women

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 1min, which may indicate reduced parasympathetic reactivation. Post-exercise HRR at 60s (HRR60) increased from 21.3±6.2 to 27.8±10.2bpm in the intervention group compared with a smaller reduction (26.8±12.3 to 24.5±9.9bpm) 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 VO 2peak was evident in the lifestyle group (21.6 to 23.6mL/kg/min) compared with a modest reduction in the controls (22.6 to 21.6mL/kg/min; test for interaction, P=0.001). Clinically obese healthy premenopausal women achieved significant improvements in HRR60 and V̇O 2peak following a 3-month intensive lifestyle intervention. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons A/S