Can anybody help with my palpitations

[fisher]

i have been fine for 2 yrs really but i started with a chest infection last week and when i cough really hard my heart goes fast which has brought my being scared of my heart back again,thats been my anxiety yrs ago,i was in work today and i work on a ward in a hospital and i had just run the shop come back and sat down for my break and when i got up i could notice my heart more like palpitations then it started going fast and took awhile to slow down,do u think u can bring them on yourself??

[artaud]

fine for 2 yrs... but i started with a chest infection last week and when i cough really hard my heart goes fast which has brought my being scared of my heart ..again, thats been my anxiety yrs ago

It's best to discus such concerns with your doctor. From my lifelong benign arrhythmia, everything makes it worse. I can't smoke, drink alcohol, or take cold pills that speed up my heart, etc. Colds, viruses. etc. aggravate mine, it is often the first sign I have of getting sick, and, having an infection often causes your heart rate to increase.

I've had a series of arrhythmias over the years, occasional tachycardia, frequent premature beats, etc. I advise people to see a doctor if the arrhythmia occurs for the first time, or if they have an arrhythmia and the symptoms worsen. I'm used to premature beats, probably had 35 while I was writing this, but when I developed a really racing beat, just popped up to say 150 beats a minute all of a sudden, I went to the doctors. After testing, I found out I was having short episodes of PSVT, but no one was worried.

[SSMommy]

I agree with what Artaud has said. It is best to consult a doctor. For many years I experienced palpitations and it wasn't until my 3rd holter monitor that the caught the arrythmia on a test. After my daughter I ended up in the ER with them and now take beta blockers to control it. I'm not saying you have a heart arrythmia but it is important to be your own advocate if you feel something isn't right. That said some rapid beating is normal with panic attacks. When I started to experience the arrythmia that was sustained I KNEW the difference. I could not breathe and collapsed at least once. It will not slow on its own with breathing or relaxation and that is a huge difference. If nothing else for peace of mind, it is worth having them do a check to make sure there are no concerns. Palpitations are such an annoying anxiety inducing thing so I sympathize with you. Know that you are not alone!

[fisher]

Oh right,well i am 40 now but when i was 28 i had a heart scan chest xray ecg 24hr tape and just found ectopics,then i started having anxiety when i was 30 so i went private and had another heart scan and ecg and 24 hr tape all fine,i was scared of anxiety which made my heart go fast so thought in my head there was something up,then when i was 37 i complained about palps to my doctor and i had a stress test all fine so now i am starting to worry again:((

[artaud]

i am starting to worry again:((

Reason enough to visit the doctor again.

Ectopics are incredibly common, I used to post on an arrhythmia forum, a have hundreds to thousands a day, but other members had 10,000 per day and still were not treated for it. In the absense of organic disease of the heart and with an otherwise normal EKG, they really aren't usually a problem. But a doctor must make the determination. My wife worked for a cardiologist and a great deal of the patients are seen for arrhythmias, mostly benign.

The interesting thing is that not everyone can feel them. I had a coworker that developed an arrhythmia due to heart disease. When he returned to work, I asked if I could take his pulse. OMG, there was no order to it, ectopics all over the place. Yet he was cleared by his doctor, cleared by the plant doctor, eventually retired and is alive and well today.

Best to get checked by a doctor and reassured. I take atenolol (beta-blocker) slows the heart, and usually reduces the number of ectopics. Adrenaline is a pain, any agitation and my heart's all over the place.

[Enduronman]

Atenolol ^^ is awesome...but it has been shown to lower T levels so watch that part of it bruh..

[artaud]

I find what you say very interesting because if i check my pulse when really stressed it beats away and then takes a break and just stops.

The heart is comprised of cells that contract in response to electrical stimulation. Usually, the heart's natural pacemaker, the SA Node (Sino Atrial), fires and causes the heart muscles to contract (there's also the AV Node, but it does the same thing for the bottom of the heart).

Heart muscle cells can get irritated, and when they do, they can actually generate a small electrical charge that discharges and causes the rest of the heart to follow suit. This is known as a "Premature Contraction". Since the SA Node didn't fire when planned, the heart has to wait for the next natural beat to occur. This wait is known as a Compensatory Pause. Since the heart is taking longer to contract again due to the premature beat, it fills with a little more blood than usual. When the next normal beat occurs, and the heart contracts, we might feel a bang as it clears this extra blood.

There are other types of arrhythmias and this explanation would not work for those. But the feeling like it stops is probably the compensatory pause. We don't feel the premature beat, or so I've been told, we just feel the pause.

In any case, have a doctor verify that everything is OK. It couldn't hurt ;-)