Heart Rate Experiment: A Study of the Effects of Chronic Smoking on Resting Heart Rate
Student Name
Grand Canyon University: Bio 202 Lab
October 20, 2015
Abstract
Heart rate is an important health factor affected by most factors that produce a change in the body physically. Heart rate varies among individuals according to many factors, one including whether or not an individual identifies as a chronic smoker. Smoking is the largest contributing detriment to preventable deaths. Smoking causes many cardiovascular and coronary heart diseases that have been proven through many studies to correlate strongly with heart rate response (“Smoking-Suppressed Heart Rate Recovery in Young Male College Students Who Regularly Exercised”, 2015). This study evaluates a group of individuals and their resting heart rates and how those averages vary between smokers and non-smokers. The hypothesis is that individuals who smoke at least 3-5 times a week have an overall higher resting heart rate than those who do not. This speculation was proven wrong as the results maintained a consistent correlation with a decrease in resting heart rate among those who smoked. This result is due to a number of things, mostly pertaining the decrease in overall cardiac function in those who inhale nicotine on a regular basis.
Heart Rate Experiment: A Study of the Effects of Chronic Smoking on Resting Heart Rate
Introduction
Heart rate is another name for the pulse of the heart, described as the speed of the heartbeat taken by the number of contractions of the heart per a unit of time, usually a minute. The heart rate is established by pacemaker cells, which lie in the sinoatrial node in the right atrium of the heart. Heart rate varies among individuals according to their body’s physical needs and changes according to many factors that affect the body such as physical exercise, sleep, anxiety, stress, illness, drugs and eating habits. Because of the...