Health, 2017, 9, 425-434 http://www.scirp.org/journal/health ISSN Online: 1949-5005 ISSN Print: 1949-4998 DOI: 10.4236/health.2017.93030 March 10, 2017 The Effect of Cardiovascular Responses after Aerobic Exercise in Menstrual Cycle Joonsung Park, Mi-Song Kim, Hosung Nho, Kyung-Ae Kim, Jong-Kyung Kim, Hyun-Min Choi * Graduate School of Physical Education, Kyung Hee University, Yongin, South Korea Abstract Purpose: We investigated the effect of menstrual cycle on the cardiovascular responses during recovery period from exercise. 10 healthy women were par- ticipated in the early follicular phase (EP: low estrogen and low progesterone: 1 - 4 days) and the late follicular phase (LP: high estrogen and low progeste- rone: 10 - 13 days) during menstrual cycle. Methods: All subjects completed a graded cycling exercise testing to determine the relative exercise intensity. All subjects were assessed systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), stroke volume (SV), car- diac output (CO), and total vascular conductance (TVC) at resting and during recovery period from moderated cycling exercise during EP and LP. Results: During EP, compared with LP, resting SBP and MAP were higher and TVC was lower (p < 0.05). During recovery from exercise, SBP and MAP were higher and TVC lower during EP compared with LP (p < 0.05). There were no differences in HR, SV and CO in both phases. Conclusions: This study could be increased the peripheral vasoconstriction in low estrogen levels. And during early follicu- lar phase with low estrogen level, it may maintain an increased blood pressure during recovery period following cycling. We suggest that the timing of the menstrual cycle should be considered when measuring blood pressure during clinical exercise testing. Keywords Early Follicular Phase, Late Follicular Phase, Estrogen, Cardiovascular Response, Healthy Women 1. Introduction Menopause intensifies the risk of cardiovascular disease drastically in women com- pared with men of the same age by increasing low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDLC) levels and blood pressure [1]. For this reason, measures have been devised How to cite this paper: Park, J., Kim, M.-S., Nho, H., Kim, K.-A., Kim, J.-K. and Choi, H.-M. (2017) The Effect of Cardiova- scular Responses after Aerobic Exercise in Menstrual Cycle. Health, 9, 425-434. https://doi.org/10.4236/health.2017.93030 Received: January 8, 2017 Accepted: March 7, 2017 Published: March 10, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access