Your heart is responsible for delivering oxygenated blood to your body. It does so by using an elaborate transportation network, consisting of arteries, capillaries and veins. How often your heart beats per minute is called your heart rate. There are changes in your heart rate as you get older, and your heart must adapt to these changes in order to still provide the required amount of blood.
Heart
How quickly your heart beats depends on a variety of factors, including your age, genetic factors, your current cardiovascular shape and the current demand placed on your body. During physical activity, for example, your heart must beat faster in order to deliver a larger amount of oxygen and energy.
Heart Rate
An electrical system regulates the rate at which your heart beats, and according to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, the typical resting heart rate for adults is 60 to 100 beats per minute. Resting heart rate is a term to describe your how often your heart beats while you're at complete rest, either lying down or sitting. Maximum heart rate describes the top rate at which your heart can pump. Both values are given in beats per minute.
Effects of Age
As you get older, your maximum heart rate decreases. This has a direct impact during physical activity. Older people will still see an increase in heart rate during exercise, but the increase is significantly lower. According to the National Institute of Aging, people in their 20s have a maximum heart rate of about 190 to 200 beats per minute, but those in their 80s will have their maximum heart rate drop to 145 beats per minute. As a result, cardiac output, or the amount of blood your heart can deliver to your body during exercise, is significantly lower.
Adjustments
Because older hearts are unable to pump as often, there is more time between heart beats for your heart to fill up with blood. Therefore, there is more blood available to be pumped with each beat. Your left ventricle, which is the component of the heart that pumps the blood out to your body, increases in strength so that it can pump more blood with each beat. The National Institute of Aging states that as you get older, the walls of your left ventricle within the heart increase in thickness because of its strength developments.
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