Heart rate

[Kez_miller]

All week I've had the "air hunger" situation where most of the time I've been unable to take a deep breath! I worked out that its because I was chest breathing rather than belly breathing! So today I've had very little air hunger and feel a lot less anxious than I have been all week and last week! However that was until I took my heart rate! I took my heart rate and it came up 98bpm but I had just eaten and no alarm bells rang however I've been checking it all night literally every 10-15 minutes and its very rarely dropping below 100!!!!! My usual heart rate even when anxious is between 79-95 depending what kind of day I'm having and I am freaking out like crazy thinking abdominal aneurysm or on the way to having a heart attack because along with this I have a very dull ache in the centre of my mid back! I was having a good day till now :( help someone please :(

[nomorepanic]

I think because you are constantly checking it you are keeping it high to be honest through worry but if it doesn't settle then maybe call a doc for advice tomorrow

[Eek]

If you focus on your heart rate and keep taking it, it will stay high. When I had my first bad panic attack for this bout of health anxiety just over a year ago they clocked my heart rate at 170 in ER. I was hurried through to a cubicle and put on an ECG where it stayed above 120 for ten hours. It finally went down to 100 and they let me go home telling me it was just anxiety. I didn't believe them, of course, so kept taking my heart rate every few minutes and guess what, it stayed above 100.

Now, when I'm relaxed it goes to 60-70 but the second I start worrying about it it's back up again.

While I'm not saying that yours is definitely due to anxiety, I'm saying that worrying about it and taking your heart rate every few minutes will make it stay higher than it normally is.