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The Effect Of Exercise On The Heart

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The Effect of Exercise on the Heart
By Kathryn Ho

Abstract
The literature on the effects of exercise of cardiac output maintains the idea that exercise should affect cardiac output- pulse rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, QRS-pulse lag, P-T and T-P intervals, because of increased heart rate. For our experiment, we tested this theory by measuring our cardiac output before and after some rigorous exercise. We measured the individual cardiac output and then combined the data to compose a class-wide data average. We compared the results of the experiment to what we expected, which was that exercise does affect our heart. Our data from this experiment supported the notion that exercise does, in fact, change cardiac output.

Introduction
Homeostasis is the process of maintaining ideal conditions and being able to stabilize those conditions. When we exercise, our muscles require more oxygen to work. Guyton (1985) says that our blood flow increases dramatically to our muscles during exercise to about 20 L/min, compared to that of 1 L/min when we are resting. Usually, our precapillary sphincters to our capillaries in our muscles are contracted to about 20-25% open, restricting the amount of blood flow that goes to the muscles. When we become more active and the muscles require more oxygen, the precapillary sphincters dilate so all of them are open, and the blood flows to the muscles, giving them the oxygen they need to keep up with the demanding actions we
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