Preceding Research for Estimating the Maximal Fat Oxidation Point through Heart Rate and Heart Rate Variability

Increasing the oxidation of fat through exercise is the recommendable method for weight control. Preceding researches have proposed increase in the usage of fat during exercise in stabilized state and under maximum exertion through aerobic training. However, such researches require additional equipment for gas analysis in order to measure the caloric value or gas exchange of subjects during exercise. Such equipments become highly restrictive for those exercise and cause substantially higher cost. According to this, we have presented the method of estimating the maximal fat oxidation point through changes in LF & HF which reflects changes in heart rate and the autonomic nervous system in order to induce exercise for a less restrictive and efficient fat oxidation than existing methods. We have conducted exercise stress test on subject with similar exercise abilities, and have detected the changes in heart rate and changes in LF & HF by measuring changes in fat oxidation and measuring ECG signals at the same time through a gas analyzer. Changes in heart rate and HRV of the subjects during exercising was detected through only the electrocardiographic signals from exercising and detected the point of maximum fat oxidation that differs from person to person. The experiment was carried out 16 healthy males, and used Modified Bruce Protocol, which is one of the methods of exercise stress test methods that use treadmill. The fat oxidation amount during exercise of all the subjects showed fat oxidation of more than 4Fkcal/min in the exercise intensity from about 5 minutes to 10 minutes. The correlation between the maximal fat oxidation point obtained through gas analysis and the point when 60% starts to be relevant in the range from -0.01 to 0.01 seconds for values of R-R interval from changes in heart rate had correlation coefficients of 0.855 in Kendall’s method and in Spearman’s rho, it showed significant results of it being p<0.01 with 0.950, respectively. Furthermore, in the changes in LF & HF, we have determined the point where the normalized area value starts to become the same as the maximal fat oxidation point, and the correlation here showed 0.620 in Kendall and 0.780 in Spearma of which both showed significant results as p＜0.01.