Cardiac arrhythmias - are you obsessed with them?

[Junot]

I dread them every single day, every single hour, every single minute... When I wake up, when I go for a walk, while I'm exercizing, in short: all the time. Doctors doesn't seem to understand what it's like to feel a fast, strong and seemingly irregular and erratic heartbeat pounding in the chest. So strong that I can sense without palpation my carotid artery pulse and a strong muscular tension on the left half of the thorax. All that and nausea, dizziness, bloated stomach, urge to evacuate, hot flushes, shortness of breath and even ringing in the ears sometimes. What is this? I have a hard time believing this is all panic/anxiety and I fear that doctors will only realize the truth when it will be too late. I went to my GP and he disregarded all my complaints, told me I'm anxious and that I should resume the Prozac I had quit in April... I asked him for exams and I got nothing. At least he could have prescribed me some heart exams just to calm me down, to reassure me. But apparently he has no idea of how dreadful this is. I am wondering if any of you feel like this as well...

[Female healthanxiety]

Obsessed.com!

I am thinking every second of every minute! it drives me nuttttttttttttts!!!

I am the same - I have had HA over my heart since I was 18 and I am now 31!

xxx

[Dolphin8808]

Yup yup and yup! All anxiety, crazy right? I have had so many tests and am told I have a nice strong heart. woohoo, but I still get the crazy odd beats, scary as hell no doubt. I understand your fear!

[Junot]

Thanks to both of you for your inputs. Sometimes I'm feeling quite alright and all of a sudden I feel like one strong fling or shock in my heart and my body reactively jumps and all comes back to normal immediately. It's as if I was in ER and was given an electric shock with a defibrillator... What is this? Have you guys ever experienced this? I'm going to ask to my doctor but I think sometimes they don't tell us the whole truth so I'd like to hear your thoughts and from your experiences. Thanks.

[Female healthanxiety]

Your describing what sounds like an ectoic heartbeat!:flowers:

Nothing to worry about xx

[nomorepanic]

Have you read this:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/articles/palpitations/

[Junot]

Thank you female healthanxiety.
Nomorepanic, I have but when I feel that horror I forget everything and I think I'm going to die. Can't break this cycle.

[Dolphin8808]

Yup female... that is what I have as well! It feels like a super strong hard beat that knocks your socks off! Very odd feeling and very uncomfortable. I get them as well Junot.

[NotCool]

I have been getting them for years, at completely random times. They bother me the most during exercise.

[Junot]

Yesterday while I was shopping I felt all of a sudden nauseated and right after that a slight flutter on the left of my chest. It didn't last longer than 1 minute and a half. I'm starting to be afraid to leave home because this is becoming too frequent. I will have a holter done even without my GPs' prescription and then I will see a cardiologist. In case there is something wrong I will rub it in his face. Do you also feel nausea along with the weird heart symptoms?

[jacobean]

Hi Junot. I've had heart palpitations for years. They are sooo random. I used to get them at night when trying to sleep, all night. Drove me insane. As I've gotten older they tend to happen now when I get up quickly, exertion like walking up the stairs - I'll get a few beats at the top. After eating. During times of stress/upset. With alcohol sometimes. After a meal (a biggie for me so I think food is related somehow). And with some meds and fever/illness.

I have been told I have an 'excitable' heart. That it's not anything dangerous just unpleasant and to get on with life. Generally they don't bother me. I don't like them lol and am happier in periods when they are mild or have gone away but I am not so bothered by them that I take meds for them or anything despite having a scrip for beta blockers - I never take them. (But then my meds phobia is much more serious than my health phobia lol).

The only time they scare me is when I get trigemeny - which is runs of threes and takes your breath away some and when on medications, because I start to panic about the meds and that they will make new, dangerous ones.

I also have had experiecnes of tachycardia. Twice observed in a hospital setting when I was ill. I felt like I was having my usual palpitations - the famous eptopic beats - but never endingly. Then the nurses picked up a fast heart rate so performed an ecg, which was fine. But the heart rate stayed elevated. This shows that when I am ill I can get tachycardic which to me feels like endless palpitations but is probably not and is instead a fast rate. that scares me as it feels different to my everyday palpitations and comes at a time when I already feeling rotten.

But for my everyday ones I tend not to worry. I've had them years and am still here so I figure I've got to live with them and relax about them.

I have a friend who is a GP and she gets them, sometimes many, many in a day and says she doesn't worry about them at all. She says they are harmless and that actually the meds and procedures to treat them are more bothersome than the beats themselves medically speaking. But of course if we can't stand the extra beats then maybe we need the meds purely for our peace of mind.

[Jw123]

Hi, just reading your posts, I also suffer from terrible health anxiety to do with my heart. I get worried because I think my resting heart rate is too slow at 60 bpm, then worried because even though I feel so anxious it's still only 70 ish. Surely it should be faster, I must have an undiagnosed heart block! I used to go to the gym 4 or 5 times a week but now am too scared. I'm convinced I'm going to have sudden adult death. I've had an ECG and routine bloods, all normal. Feel like I'm going mad, it's ruining my life and CBT isn't helping. Oh, and I'm a nurse!!wish I knew what the answer was to stop us all feeling like this....

[Cags48]

I have all those symptoms and a few more to boot I also had a low iron reading which made me even more panicky , at the moment I have low back pain and in my buttocks and really bad flatulence along with blurred vision and spaced out feeling ........oh and I have dreadful palpitations but I've been told that's due to my low iron

[Junot]

Hi jacobean, thanks for your input and for sharing your experience. I'm glad that at least you've been told what you have. Doctors just tell me "it's all okay with your heart", but what I feel is quite the opposite. If it was perfectly healthy I guess I wouldn't feel palpitations nor would I rush to the hospital tachycardic (sometimes with more than 140 beats per minute) feeling like I'm going to die (add all the anxiety/panic symptoms). What they usually say is that even though my heart may beat faster than normal sometimes, it beats normally (sinusal rhythm), so there's no arryhthmia to worry about, even though I feel it beating irregularly. The problem is: when I arrive at the hospital and when the ECG is finally performed (because I'm never classified as a very urgent case) I'm already recovering, not in the peak of the crisis where my heart seems to want to jump out of my chest! How do they expect to find something wrong with my heart when they perform the ECG only 2 hours after the peak of the crisis?

Hi Jw123, thanks for your reply. I used to have high rest heart rates until I started taking a beta-blocker. My rest heart rate would be between 90 to 100 bpm and would escalate to 120-140 whenever I had a crisis. Now it normally ranges from 60 to 80 bpm and when it gets higher than 80 bpm it's usually when I'm feeling anxious or panicking (which is becoming more and more recurrent). I would like to try CBT because I've tried almost every psychiatric medicines so far and after 7 years I'm still battling with this. My biggest fear is cardiac arrest/sudden death due to ventricular fibrillation so I get very anxious when I do exercise (which I'm doing in order to lose the weight I gained thanks to antidepressants). Many of my worst crisis were when I was doing exercises (usually walking at a fast pace for 1 hour).

Hi Cags48, thanks for sharing. Apparently my iron is okay. When I go to the hospital they usually measure my blood sodium, potassium and other ions with physiological activity the heart muscle. But then again, when I finally get those tests done I'm not anymore in the peak of the crisis, so how will they know... It's exasperating.

[Jw123]

Hi Junot, I feel your pain, sounds like we're worrying about the same thing. I'd love to get my running shoes back on but am far too scared. Can you access CBT? I've had 5 sessions, I can see and understand the logic but it takes time and practice for it to work. I'm hoping it will all click into place soon. I've also been reading some of Clare Weekes' work, it's quite dated but still has some good advice and reasoning. Best wishes to you.