Correlating heart rate and perceived exertion during aerobic exercise in Alzheimer's disease

Older adults reap many health benefits from aerobic exercise training; however, little is known about how to monitor the training responses in older adults with Alzheimer's disease. The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the correlation of objectively measured heart rate and subjectively reported perceived exertion during aerobic exercise training in four older men with advanced Alzheimer's disease from a pilot study that used a one-group pre- and post-test design. During training (three times per week for 8 weeks), the participants' heart rate and perceived exertion were assessed by a trained exercise trainer every 5 min by using the Polar heart rate monitor and the Borg's Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale, respectively. There were 596 heart rate-perceived exertion data pairs. The results show that the Pearson's r for the heart rate and perceived exertion was 0.457 (significant at 0.01, two-tailed), controlling for age, education, exercise session, and cognition. We conclude that the Borg's Rating of Perceived Exertion Scale itself might be insufficient for monitoring the exercise responses in older men with advanced Alzheimer's disease. Future studies are needed to further examine the utility of this scale in this population.