New peak heart rate for women

220 minus your age?

For women…a thing of the past.

A team at Northwestern University determined that women have a lower peak heart rate (designated in beats per minute)  than men do and require a different formula to calculate their peak heart rate.

The new formula? 206 minus 88% of your age. 

Not quite as simple to calculate when you’re huffing and puffing on your gym’s elliptical!

(Take heart. There’s sure to be an iPhone app out to help you soon.) 

The revised formula comes after researchers looked at 5,437 women in a study that began in 1992. 

Used in an exercise stress test, the peak heart rate formula indicates whether individuals are having a normal or abnormal response to exercise. An abnormal response could indicate a higher risk of death.

It can alert your physician if you need to take precautions or to change your exercise program to get your heart rate’s response into the normal range. 

It’s simple to check the difference…

Let’s say you’re 50. 

Old  formula (220 – your age):

220 – 50 = 170 beats per minute 

New formula (206 – [your age x .88])

206 – 44 = 162 beats per minute

To determine your target heart rate while exercising, you can then multiply your peak heart rate by 65 to 85 percent.

So, this 50-year-old woman may want to keep her heart rate within 105 to 138 beats per minute. (That’s 162 x .65, and 162 x .85.)

Your best bet: Figure out your target heart rate at home (since gym cardio equipment currently does not reflect the gender difference and the read-out you get will be for a man). 

Then refer to your gym’s cardio equipment for your heart rate (HR) to see how you’re doing.

Martha Gulati, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and preventive medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine, is the lead author of the study, which was published June 28 in the journal Circulation. 

For more information, here’s the press release.

Flickr photo, St Peter’s Brighton