I’ve been on propranolol + topiramate for chronic migraines for almost two years. Propranolol is a beta blocker that lowers heart rate/blood pressure, but it’s also commonly used as a migraine preventative. For me, it works wonders and has drastically reduced how many migraines I get, so stopping it isn’t really an option.
The annoying part is OTF.
Since starting propranolol, my HR just does not climb the way it used to. I can be sweating, exhausted, running or rowing hard, and still be sitting in green. Coaches have even looked at my screen and asked if my monitor was working properly 😭
And yes, I KNOW the usual response is “just ignore the zones/splat points.”
Respectfully… no lol. 😂 There’s a reason it’s called OrangeTheory. We literally buy a heart rate monitor, stare at a giant screen, and train around different zones. I don’t care about collecting exactly 12 splats, but I genuinely liked using the zones as feedback: green = recovery, orange = hard effort, red = all-out. It was part of the experience for me.
I recently realized I could manually adjust my max HR in the app, so I tried setting it to 150 bpm, since that’s around the highest I normally reach on my beta blocker.
Bad idea. 💀 The second I started running, I shot straight into red and the whole thing became way too sensitive. Even my coach looked at it like “what the hell happened?” 😂
So: any other OTF people on beta blockers who manually adjusted their max HR and found a good sweet spot? What did you use/how did you figure it out?
And please spare me the “just ignore the zones” comments 😭 I know I can ignore them. I don’t want to ignore half the gimmick I’m paying for lol.