Skipped beats that are getting worse.
Posted , 5 users are following.
So I've been having a lot more skipped beats lately than usual, and I'm not exactly sure why.
Just as a brief history, I first started having palpitations about 4 years ago and went to the doctors a few times to try and figure out what was going on. I didn't find anything from the doctors, but discovered that cutting back on salty meals helped tremendously. I stopped eating a lot of salty foods and have been fine until recently. The last 2 years I've had a lot of random health problems that I haven't been able to figure out the cause of, and then the last 3 months I started having really bad skipped beats during sexual activity. I've cut out salt and a lot of sexual activity in order to stop the PVC. While this has helped, a few days ago they started happening again. This time it has not been triggered by sexual activity and I've still had very little sodium in my diet.
I can not find any cause for my palpitations now, and they are occurring quiet often and in repetition. My heart will sometimes skip a beat when I breathe in, and then it will continue to do so until I move around or stand up. Sometimes it will skip a beat 5 or 6 times before I finally have to get up so it will stop. Most times the skipped beats are triggered by movement, by my breathing in, or from eating or drinking something. When it occurs after eating, it normally happens within a minute or two, so I don't think it's the food i'm eating, especially since drinking water also seems to cause them to occur. Unfortunately when they start occurring when I breathe in, they will continue to occur every time I breathe in. I've also had some chest pain, some burning sensations, and trouble breathing the last few days on and off as well.
Just as some extra information, I had an echocardiogram and ECG along with a month long even monitor at the beginning of last year, and I was told everything looked normal.
Any information or advice would be appreciated. I apologize for the poor wording of this post.
0 likes, 19 replies
tony52050 sc123
Posted
Clearly something has changed, with chest pain, a burning sensation and trouble breathing. I think they are worth contacting your doctor who, if like ours won't see you but will hold a telephone conversation that can put your mind at rest.
If you can then safely disregard any other emerging problems we can then concentrate on your ectopics
sc123 tony52050
Posted
Yeah, I don't know if It's really anything to worry about or not. The palpitations would happen after I started having trouble breathing/chest pains. This would also usually happen after I would eat though, so it makes me think it might be related to something I ate, but I didn't eat anything new. I almost hate to ask the doctor about this because I know that I'll be told that it's normal. Especially after having those tests done last year.
jx41870 sc123
Posted
I'm going through something similar - have been for years, it gets worse, then it gets better.
How's your blood pressure? My heart rhythm issues often get worse with high BP.
The next diagnostic step is typically to have you wear a "Holter" monitor, I've done this several times over the past 20 years (!), the newest version is basically a thumb drive with wings, they stick it on your shoulder for a week, then you mail it somewhere for someone to read! An "AI" computer then reads over it and tries to give a diagnosis.
But every time I've done this, including most recently, the diagnosis is, "Oh, a few PACs and PVCs, don't worry about it everyone gets them", which just does not correspond to my subjective experience.
So, the hopeful element here is that, indeed, you can have a lot of skipped beats and the doctors tell you nothing, and I guess it doesn't kill you, either.
There aren't really any good drugs for it, but beta blockers sometimes help - they help me.
Hope that helps you!
sc123 jx41870
Posted
I think I might have a correlation between my blood pressure going up and palpitations. Today when I had an episode of ectopic beats for 10 minutes straight, my blood pressure was 170/120. I've never seen my diastolic pressure that high before. That may be why this episode occurred, but it was really bad. Continuous skipped beats for almost a whole 10 minutes, even while my heart was racing.
tony52050 sc123
Posted
Have you changed your diet at all, for example to lose weight or have become a Vegan? Do you have indigestion problems?
mark09497 tony52050
Posted
I noticed that my digestion has slowed and had diarrhea and small stool the past 2 weeks with a bloated stomach. However it could be the additional carbs in my diet.
sc123 tony52050
Posted
I haven't been trying to lose weight, actually I'm quiet underweight. I've been eating more avacados and bananas to get more potassium in my diet, although it hasn't been a significant amount of either one (maybe one extra banana or half an avacado). It's weird though how these episodes usually happen after I eat (within just a few seconds to a few minutes). I ate some cereal this morning and actually started having ectopic beats that kept going and going and it actually lasted for almost 10 minutes, even when my heart started racing, my ectopic beats went on and my heart was beating erratically. I went to the doctor but they wouldn't do any tests, just put me back on blood pressure medicine. I'm hoping this is nothing, because that long episode of palpitations was very scary.
mark09497 sc123
Posted
My experience and condition is very similar, and have a sinus pause which was caught on the monitor in the ER. Sent the Holter few days ago, and waiting for the nuclear stress test. Like you the echo came back normal 3 months ago. Sleep seems to reset my heart beats because if I wake up with skip beats, it will be for the whole day intermittantly . Some days I just dont have any. I think as long as the skip doesnt last too long (1 second) a pacemaker is not necessary.
I feel similar things when I eat or drink. Heart seems to spasm when I eat, and afterwards. I asked a dr about this and was told to see a GI to examine the vagus nerve.
Small sample size, but exercise seems to be a catalyst to skipped beats the next day. Alcohol too.
Im going to see if cutting salt helps, so thanks for that.
sc123 mark09497
Posted
O yeah, cutting back on salt helped me for years, it was a night and day difference. I'm not sure why I have such a high sensitivity to salt, but I guess some people can tolerate lots of sodium and some people can't. Yeah this has me very concerned because I had skipped beats that lasted almost 10 minutes straight today, and the doctor refused to do any tests. I tried calling my cardiologist but he's out of town, so the nurse told me to start taking my blood pressure medicine again. That may be enough to help me, because at the time that this happened, my blood pressure was 170/120. It was extremely high, although it isn't usually this high, it just spiked for some reason. Normally my blood pressure is about 145/98 so it's possible that it's spiking enough to cause palpitations for me. I'm hoping this helps.
sc123
Posted
Since I started taking this blood pressure medicine today to try and get my blood pressure down to prevent these ectopic beats, my blood pressure has dropped from it's normal about 148/98 to about 120/73. I'm wondering if it's normal to see such a large drop so quickly. Hopefully it doesn't drop more by tomorrow.
tony52050 sc123
Posted
My blood pressure is typically 140/80 in the morning and 150/85 in the afternoon. 98 seems pretty high.
I suspect that eating (!) and stress causes problems, but on the other hand these ectopics often seem to arrive out of the blue for no good reason.
I wonder if we are looking for cause and effect too quickly?
For example if we were overweight and unfit and joined the gym, worked out 3 times a week and started a diet, we wouldn't expect to see a result the same day, but any changes would take several weeks.
So perhaps our ectopics were caused by things we did yesterday, or last week, or last month, or they may be residual from problems we had years ago (IBS for digestion or Shingles for stress ) and some current event retriggers them in the form of an ectopic, as stress and digestion seem to be common factors.?
It would be good to do a proper study using the actual real life cases on this site as research seems to be lacking and Doctors seem to be quite dismissive.
sc123 tony52050
Posted
O yeah, I agree. I don't really think that eating these foods are the root cause, but I just think it may be triggering the palpitations. I definitely think there's something else going on, but I'm just not sure what. So far though, the blood pressure medicine has been helping. I've had 2 ectopics the last 4 days compared to about 30 - 40 a day before (not to mention the arrhythmia that lasted for 10 minutes).
I definitely need to dig deeper and try to figure out more. Even if this significantly helps my ectopic beats, there's still something going on that needs to be addressed, even if it is just my high blood pressure. I need to work on that more for sure. Although, I do usually work out everyday and eat well so I'm a little confused as to why my blood pressure has been real high. I definitely could do better though still.
I'm not sure what to think. I really hope this blood pressure medicine continues to keep the ectopic beats at bay though.
tony52050 sc123
Posted
May I ask what is your current Blood pressure now you have been taking the medicine for a few more days? It was pretty high then dropped a lot.
Yes, I think BP is a factor (one of many?) but perhaps controlling it once it has been high-potentially for a long time -may be shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
If however reducing BP at ANY time has a big effect -either stopping them or at least reducing their frequency-then that is worth knowing. There seem to be few studies on this.
sc123 tony52050
Edited
My blood pressure has been about 114/68 in the mornings and around 125/76 in the evenings. It's still been much lower now. I had one ectopic beat about an hour ago and my blood pressure was 149/88 when I checked it, but I think that's because the ectopic beat spooked me. It went down pretty quickly after that. In general, it has been considerably better, and any ectopics that I've had have been isolated (not having multiple in a short period of time anymore).
My blood pressure hasn't really been bad until recently. I took blood pressure medicine for years before because I have kidney disease (I have been in remission for a long time) and my blood pressure was just slightly high and so I was taking that just to protect my kidneys. I stopped taking that about 2 years ago and it didn't start getting really high until maybe 5 or 6 months ago. So I haven't had a whole lot of trouble with high blood pressure, I've only taken blood pressure medicine because of my kidneys. I'm not sure why my blood pressure has been so high recently.
tony52050 sc123
Posted
That's quite a dramatic change in your blood pressure presumably as a direct result of the medicine. So it appears that you had lots of ectopics when your BP was high and they have reduced as has your BP.
The question of course is WHY did your BP increase and seemingly caused your recent problems?
You said you were underweight-certainly not overweight. Less exercise? Different diet? More stress?
sc123 tony52050
Posted
I'm not sure really, but I've been trying to exercise everyday to stay active. I'm not sure that I exercise quiet enough. I've had a lot of palpitations again today and i'm not sure why. My blood pressure has still been lower than it was before, but higher than it's been since I started taking this medicine. I don't know why it's been so much worse today but this is ruining my life.. I'm so afraid to do anything. Any sort of movement/physical activity causes palpitations for me now.