Ways to monitor your health while hiking

Hiking, one of the popularly known cardio exercises, is particularly done by individuals aiming to either lose weight or maintain an already acquired shape. Whatever the motivational factor maybe, where people look forward to reaping benefits from it, concerns are raised about monitoring its adverse effects on the human body. Several strategies and equipment have surfaced as ‘must-knows’ for hiking lovers to get acquainted with, out of which a few have been briefly discussed as under.

Danger in exceeding your safe heart rate zone

When someone does a strenuous exercise (hiking, as in our case), the muscles involved need an extra intake of oxygenated blood to keep moving. Thus to meet this requirement, the heart pumps faster than usual; first, pumping deoxygenated blood to the lungs for oxygenation, and secondly, when pumping the received oxygenated blood to the rest of the body. However, there’s a limit for it to pump faster, after which it isn’t safe to exert strain on it. Apart from a manual method, specific devices can also be handy in monitoring existing heart rate and even saturation level.

• The manual way:
  There’s a popularly used formula where an individual’s age is subtracted from a standard maximum of 200. As a result, what comes out is the heart rate that shouldn’t be crossed to avoid any health risks.
• The technical way or the highway:
  Technology has always been introducing innovative devices to reduce human effort and time, so is the case with devices like smartwatches, commonly known as blood pressure watches. Apart from connecting an individual to their phones (hence notifying them of recently received messages and calls), they can monitor heart rate/ pulse, saturation level, and even blood pressure at a given time.

Monitoring the Water Loss

It’s very natural to sweat profusely as you hike. It’s the body’s mechanism to cool things down. But the excessive loss of water is not suitable for the body, so you need to monitor your hydration status from time to time. To do that, pinch some skin, preferably from your hand, forming a triangle. Hold it for some time, and then release it to see how quickly it retains its previous form. The more it takes time to do so, the more dehydrated your body is.

Keep a check on muscle strain

Too much of everything causes trauma, and the same is the case with putting excessive strain on muscles involved in hiking. Muscle tension is the state in which a muscle remains in a semi contracted position for a time longer than usual. It usually limits movement. However, if exercise is continued with tensed muscles, long term damage can occur. Luckily, with technological advancements on their rise, experiments have been conducted on creating wearable devices that could monitor and detect muscle tension by using Electromyography sensors.
Before heading out, you must know these hacks or have these portable devices to save your time and health.