24 Hour ECG

Hi Anne, how do we live with these palpitations and flutters you ask. Well, every time it happens I do get scared, can't understand why suddenly I am anxious enough to cause them when actually I am just making the bed or sitting in the garden with no special stress. I do find the belly breathing works for me. It is the opposite to what you want to do, which is gulp air, but it tells your body there is nothing to fear as you are breathing deeply and then the heart goes back to normal. I will post an extract from the web page I found which explained this. It may work for you and the others on this thread.

Here's the extract: 

A Breathing Exercise

to Calm Panic Attacks

Here's a simple breathing exercise that will restore your comfortable breathing and soothe many of the physical symptoms of a panic attack.

You may have already tried deep breathing and not had much success in soothing your panic symptoms. The reason for that is that most descriptions of deep breathing leave out a critical step. I'm going to show you how to do it right.

A simple, but powerful, technique

If you have Panic Disorder or Social Phobia, this deep breathing exercise may be the single most important coping technique I can show you. It's also useful with other anxiety disorders in which the physical symptoms are less prominent, but still present. Comfortable, deep breathing is the key to relaxation. All the the traditional relaxation methods (yoga, meditation, hypnosis) place a central emphasis on breathing.

I can't catch my breath!

Feeling like "I can't catch my breath!" is probably the most common of all panic symptoms. Your breathing feels labored, you strain to take a deep breath, you fear you're not going to get it - and the harder you try, the worse it feels!

When you feel short of breath, it doesn't mean you're not getting enough air. In fact, people will often say "I can't catch my breath", and this shows that they're getting air, because we talk by making air vibrate. If you're talking, you're breathing! It's not a dangerous symptom.

But it does get people very scared, and it produces other uncomfortable physical symptoms, so it's worth your while to be able to correct it.

You've probably already had it told to you, and you've probably also read it as well, that what you need to do is "take a deep breath". If you're like most people, that advice hasn't helped you much. It's good advice, but it's incomplete. It doesn't tell you how to take a deep breath. A good breathing exercise should tell you how to take a deep breath, and that's what I'm going to do.

Here's the Key

When you feel like you can't catch your breath, it's because you forgot to do something.

You forgot to exhale.

That's right. Before you can take a deep breath, you have to give one away. Why? Because, when you've been breathing in a short, shallow manner (from your chest), if you try and take a deep inhale, you just can't do it. All you can do is take a more labored, shallow breath from your chest. That will give you all the air you need, but it won't feel good.

Go ahead, try that now and see what I mean. Put one hand on your chest, the other on your belly. Breathe very shallowly from your chest a few times, then try to take a deep breath. I think you'll find that, when you inhale, you use your chest muscles, rather than your diaphragm, or belly.

When you breathe in this shallow manner, you get all the air you need to live, but you can also get other symptoms which add to your panic.

You get chest pain or heaviness, because you've tightened the muscles of your chest to an uncomfortable degree. (The chest pain people feel in a panic attack isn't from the heart, it's from the muscles of the chest). You feel lightheaded or dizzy, because shallow breathing can produce the same sensations as hyperventilation. You also get a more rapid heartbeat, and maybe numbness or tingling in the extremities as well.

All from breathing short and shallow!

One of the very first things I ask my patients with panic disorder to do is to learn and practice belly breathing. I recommend it to you as well. Here's the breathing exercise.

Belly Breathing Exercise

1. Place one hand just above your belt line, and the other on your chest, right over the breastbone. You can use your hands as a simple biofeedback device. Your hands will tell you what part of your body, and what muscles, you are using to breathe.

2. Open your mouth and gently sigh, as if someone had just told you something really annoying. As you do, let your shoulders and the muscles of your upper body relax, down, with the exhale. The point of the sigh is not to completely empty your lungs. It's just to relax the muscles of your upper body.

3. Close your mouth and pause for a few seconds.

4. Keep your mouth closed and inhale slowly through your nose by pushing your stomach out. The movement of your stomach precedes the inhalation by just the tiniest fraction of a second, because it's this motion which is pulling the air in. When you've inhaled as much air as you can comfortably (without throwing your upper body into it), just stop. You're finished with that inhale.

5. Pause. How long? You decide. I'm not going to give you a specific count, because everybody counts at a different rate, and everybody has different size lungs. Pause briefly for whatever time feels comfortable. However, be aware that when you breathe this way, you are taking larger breaths than you're used to. For this reason, it's necessary to breathe more slowly than you're used to. If you breathe at the same rate you use with your small, shallow breaths, you will probably feel a little lightheaded from over breathing, and it might make you yawn. Neither is harmful. They're just signals to slow down. Follow them!

6. Open your mouth. Exhale through your mouth by pulling your belly in.

7. Pause.

8. Continue with Steps 4-7. 

Anne, yes it does work for me. I have found myself with a sudden panic attack when out shopping or sitting in traffic and I make myself do this, whilst focusing on one object such as a tree outside. It does melt away the panic and palpitations. Before I found this advice, I was doing shallow breathing and when I couldn't catch my breath during a panic attack, I was hyperventilating, which this guide shows is the worst thing you can do. Keep practicing it until it is second nature. If you can't stop anxiety/panic, at least you can make the episodes go away faster this way. Knowing it works once means you feel safer already.

Anne, I have sent you a PM to inbox

I had 24 hour ecg mine toke 3 days to come bk I was like omg y has it come back so soon what's wrong with it they said 3 weeks to me it was a waiting game came bk normal I have really bad anxiety omg words carnt describe it I still don't think it's anxiety I think there's something really wrong with me carnt love my day to day life at all I was on sertraline I felt ok then they put me on citalapram omg I feel worse been on it over 2 month its make me worse now there lowing my dose to put me bk on sertraline.is anyone's mind always on the heart mine is xx