The Effects of Isometric Muscle Contraction on Heart Rate (fc) and Blood Pressure in the Human

The Effects of Isometric Muscle Contraction on Heart Rate (fc) and Blood Pressure in the Human

Discussion

Enoch and Amaechi were the two subjects of our study. The novel finding in this study is that the changes in blood pressure during MVC markedly affect the frequency response of the contractions arc. Readings from Table 1 suggests that the blood pressure is high while the heart rate is low. The normal range for blood pressure is 120/80 while the range for heart rate is 70. High blood pressure can lead to increased danger for heart stroke or paralysis. A Resting Heart Rate anywhere in the range of 60 - 90 is considered in the normal range. Many factors influence heart rate. These include emotions, temperatures, position or posture (sitting, standing, lying down), and body size.

Considering the fact that heart rate itself is one related component of blood pressure, the achieved differentiation is striking. The present data offer strong evidence for operant autonomic conditioning in man on a par with comparable demonstrations of the specificity of conditioning in rats paralyzed by curare Alternative explanations offered to account for instrumental changes in visceral function, such as autonomic arousal, cognitive mediation, or differential habituation to stimuli and reinforcers, are unnecessary. The specificity demonstrated in this paper suggests that operant modifications of one autonomic response need not require or result in an overall change in autonomic arousal. As for cognitive mediation, one would have to assume, for example, that certain thoughts elicit directional changes specific to blood pressure in one case or to heart rate in another (or other functions uniquely manipulated), an assumption not justified at this time. Neither is an habituation argument cogent if, given the same stimuli and reinforcers, heart rate decreases and blood pressure stays the same in one instance, or heart rate decreases and blood pressure increases in another. This is not to say that central nervous processes are not involved in differentiation of several autonomic functions, as observed in this study. The physiologic mechanism of this specificity needs to be further investigated.

Table 2 results suggest that maximum forced can be produced in 1st attempt. Later attempts cannot produce force greater than the first attempt.

From Table 3, we can derive that at 30% maximal voluntary contraction prior to rest, three blood pressure readings suggests that blood pressure is inversely proportional to heart rate i.e. with increasing blood pressure, the heart rate gets decreased and vice versa.

Table 4 leads us to evaluate that as the time passes by, increase in blood pressure leads to increasing heart rate. On the first minute, blood pressure was 143/102 with 94 as heart rate. The blood pressure increased to 165/104 on fifth minute with heart rate of 111.

Enoch's blood pressure at rest prior to carrying out a sustained contraction at 10%.50% and 70% MVC randomly shows an inversely proportionate trend. This means that with increasing blood pressure, heart rate decreases ...