Panic Ectopics and Exercise

I am a 42 year old male who is very anxious about his health, though to everyone else I appear well and healthy.

I got a couple of periods of Atrial Heart Fibrulation a while back but my heart went back to normal. I had lots of tests done and these were all normal.

I panic when I get ectopic beats. I know these can be normal but my doctor panicked me when he said I shouldn't get these during exercise and if I did it could be serious. Now when I go for a run I become super aware of my heart beating.

I think it jumped yesterday once when jogging very lightly when not out of breath at all and once today when stopping for a minute after running.

If I run hard I don't notice anything at all wrong.

Please help could do with some reassurance

Thanks

Hi

I think you are just oversensitve to every heartbeat. The fact that you have been checked out and it all came back fine is your answer. I do a lot of running and other types of exercise and went through a phase where I was getting arm and chest pains while exercising. I mentioned this to my doctor and he said that if there were true problems with my heart then it would be impossible to exercise through it. It was all down to my over sensitive reactions to every sound and feeling coming from my body and nothing to do with physical problems. You even say it yourself - if you run hard you tend not to notice it at all.

No doubt when you start your run you have trained your mind into believing that you will hear your heart skip a beat and it is a case of trying to get out of this way of thinking. I did and the feelings went away