I had them in my midtwenties as well. My pulse would go ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump . . . KA-THUNK!!! . . . ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump . . . If I was wearing a silky shirt with the fabric resting against my skin, you could SEE it jump. :eek: Damn straight it was scary.
I had a battery of tests and everything came back normal. Doc said, “Paroxysmal atrial tachycardia [which basically means occasional irregular beats in the upper chambers of the heart]; lay off the caffeine.” At the time I was consuming mass quantities of Coca-Cola. I duly laid off the Coke, and that particular form hasn’t come back.
A few years ago I had palpitations that seemed to be stress-related; it turned out that I had a slight thyroid imbalance that eventually went away. I may have taken medication for a brief period; I don’t recall.
Me too…I went back to my cardiologist (I have AV-node reentrant tachycardia) because anything wonky with my heart is concerning to me. They hooked me up to a Holter monitor and said, yeah, it’s normal, don’t worry about it. BTW you still have AVRT, which you know.
I was similarly weirded out but I guess it’s not a big deal. To me it always felt like my heart dropped a bit and then did an extra beat to make up for it. MD said it was stress related and to work out more, to get my heart accustomed to the adrenaline or something like that.
I started having them about 20 years ago, in my 40s. It’s exactly like the OP describes, a missed beat followed by a strong one, plus a strange feeling in my chest, up into my throat. It started happening once or twice a year, and got progressively more frequent until many times a day. There was a period in which it was happening more than once a minute. Lately, though, I’m not experiencing it more than a few times a day.
I’m not as thin or active as I should be, and caffeine doesn’t seem to affect it. I have noticed, however, that it seems to happen when I’m at rest, both mentally and physically . . . watching tv or falling asleep in bed.
I surprised at how common this is, and I’m really glad you all are sharing your stories. I knew I wasn’t dying (probably), but I didn’t know how common this was. Nice to know we’re not alone!
Also, I’m irritated that I missed an ‘n’ in the title of the thread. Humph.
Yep, I have it too, but I haven’t noticed it lately. Most often I’d notice it when falling asleep, and it would bug me. It would happen about every 5th beat or so, but my doctor said (like everyone else’s) that this is most likely normal and not to worry about it until it became much more frequent. I haven’t paid too much attention lately; perhaps I should.
What’s happening more frequently is the pounding. Every once in a while (like once a month, maybe?) there’ll be a period of time where my heart speeds up and just pounds for 5-10 seconds. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! wham! and done. This bothers me more, and I’ll be asking my doctor about it at my next physical. Which will probably be in March - I’m waiting to schedule it until I hear she’s off of her maternity leave. I’m kind of hoping that it’s just Charlie really getting the slacker guys’ attention.
I’m 33, 15 pounds overweight, and definitely not as fit as I could be - I’ve been a couch potato lately and need to start working out again.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, I once failed blood donation thanks to a racy pulse, which I was sure was due to drinking lots of Mountain Dew for lunch that day. I went to my GP, who found that my heart was very irregular. I got put on a Holter also (fun thing) and it was found that I had a fairly bad case of atrial fibrillation. One attempt to reboot my heart failed, and I was lined up for another, but a medicine I was given fixed the problem in the three days before my last doctor visit and being put on the table. They canceled the procedure, and I’ve been fine since.
The danger is that blood pools in your heart because it is not pumped adequately due to the arhythmia, which leads to an increased risk of stroke. I’ve been on Coumadin ever since, and go once a month to get my INR checked. (Just this morning, in fact.)
I still feel it once in a while - it feels like my cellphone on vibrate mode just went off - but otherwise I’m fine. I’m also old enough so that it is of concern, though my blood pressure is excellent and always has been.
I lived with AFib for may years. Like Voyager, mine was discovered when I tried to give blood. Many doctors haven’t stayed current with the literature and continue to treat it as a nuisance condition. It does, however, significantly raise the risk of stroke due to the pooling and clotting of the blood.
It also can have a significant impact on quality of life. In my case a prolonged session (and I had some that literally lasted weeks) would make me not only feel tired and generally like crap, but would make me feel like I’d lost 30 IQ points. I had half a dozen or so cardioversions (rebooting with paddles). Sometimes they worked for a period of weeks; sometimes they were effective for only a matter of hours. The coumadin reduced the risk of stroke, but not the other effects. The other drugs were pretty much ineffective. I finally had a procedure called a cardioablation. A catheter is inserted into one of the atria. The catheter is used to burn and scar the interior of the atrium to inhibit the ‘wild’ electrical impulses that cause the fib. (On a bad day, my resting pulse rate could hit 200.) That’s kind of procedure that folks like Tony Blair, Bill Bradley and (I suspect) the Maple Leafs’ goaltender have had. It actually took three tries (6 to 9 months apart) for that procedure to work, but I’ve now been fib free for about 5 years. (And I don’t have to take coumadin any more either.)
I had not one, not 2, but 3 cardiologists tell me that having skipped beats more than occasionally can be benign, but it can also be a sign that there is some blockage in an artery.
Yep, I developed an arrythmia a while ago–it probably happens a couple of times a week. I did a stress test and it only happens when I’m at rest, so they aren’t worried about it, but I’m keeping an eye on it.
ETA: I’m strong and in good health, have decent endurance, but I should lose some weight.
I just turned thirty and am in pretty good shape and I get those weird beats when I’m pregnant or if I haven’t been getting enough sleep. That’s also when I get the restless legs feeling, so I think it’s all tied to temporary circulation glitches.
I’ve had the same thing happen for ages - since my teen years. I find it happens more often if I’ve lost a lot of sleep, had too much caffeine or if my period’s about to start.
August of 2008 I was at my doctor and they had trouble taking my pulse (I was 39). They gave me an ekg and saw extra beats. Sent it to cardiologist who scheduled me for a stress test. During the test they kept looking at me funny, asking how I felt. I felt fatigued more so than I thought I should. I had had trouble all summer with exercising-couldn’t get up the motivation to bicycle, out of breath walking stairs. I thought I was just out of shape and was trying to get back into shape; indeed I had taken a 20 mile bike ride the week before my Doctor’s visit and had felt good.
They told me that my heart momentarily went up to 220 bpm during the test and made me an appointment with an electro-cardiologist in Pittsburgh (Allegheny General). This Doctor called me and said “yes, we need to see you, but not in the office, in the hospital.” The extra beats and the tachycardia were ventricular which I learned was bad. I had a 4 hour long attempt to perform a cardiac ablationon the bad area (catheter put up into heart through the thighs and they measure the electric charge and burn the affected area) but unfortunately they couldn’t find the offending part of my heart. No matter how much adrenaline they gave me my heart beat in a perfect sinus rhythm until I came out of sedation at which time it jumped back into its habit of extra beats. They tried drugs until it went back into sinus rhythm (lidocaine was what worked) and gave me anti-seizure drugs (dilantin) which they said worked like the lodicaine in pill form.
For about a month I was fine on the drugs and one day I was walking across campus at work and had a dizzy spell. I felt my pulse and couldn’t for the life of me figure out if I had those extra beats. I wonder about how you guys feel the odd beats, I never really felt them. Anyway I didn’t feel right and made my way to the hospital and found that my resting heart rate had jumped to about 130 bpm. I was like a sideshow, everyone wanted to see this guy with the Ventricular tachycardia who was perfectly conscious and not seemingly in discomfort. Honestly I barely noticed except for looking at the monitor.
They sent me back to Pittsburgh and during my stay (I roomed with a 90 year old WWII vet who lived with his great-grandsons(!) but that’s another story) I would often get a knock on the bathroom door because when I got up my HR went up to like 170 and they were afraid I might pass out. But they learned to ignore this.
The electro-cardiologist gave me this choice: They could attempt another ablation and if it didn’t work they would send me to Cleveland Clinic where they specialize in this sort of thing to have it done again or they just could send me to Cleveland in the first place. I chose the latter and took a nice helicopter ride. There they did the catheter in Cleveland as well as the outside of the heart (it’s easier to do the inside because they can get there through the arteries). They put a needle under your sternum, through the diaphragm to get to the outside of the heart. They tried to do it with only local anesthetic but that didn’t work out for me so they did put me under. I did see the catheter in my heart at the beginning and end when I woke up (they use a fluoroscope).
Sorry for the length of this post. Anyway they fixed it. They tell me that I can ride roller coasters and such, stating that I’m basically fixed though I’m at risk of it happening again. It’s more than a year and I’m fine and have had no incidents. I play racquetball 3-5 times a week and biked 1200 miles last summer. Enjoy not needing surgery for your problem. As far as surgery goes it’s pretty easy but I don’t recommend it if you don’t need it.
Started having them in my teens. I’ll get them several a minute, three or four times a day, for maybe a week, and only about two weeks a year. Loading up on caffeine or sugar can trigger it. It’s obnoxious, but not painful.
Me too. Afib runs in my family. My dad (87) has a pacemaker, my brother (56) has had 2 ablations. So far for me (47) the medication, Flecainide acetate, is working very well.
I started having skipped beats like that right after the time my dad almost died from a heart attack. They scared me silly, and still scare the crap out of me sometimes. They hooked me up to a heart monitor for a couple of weeks and the doctor said I was fine, even though I was having them five or six times a day.
I spoke to one of my coworkers about them. She is a retired nurse, and used to have them too, but she’s 66 now and doesn’t think they’ll kill me
I’m 32, run three times a week and walk everywhere since I don’t have a car. Frankly I’m overweight, but I had that heart monitor when I was thin and the weight gain hasn’t seemed to have changed the frequency one bit. One thing that will almost guarantee that I will get them is consuming anything with high sugar. Sugar is very bad for me in a lot of ways but I can’t seem to stop!
I call those my “heart hiccups.” I’ve had them on and off for years, and my docs said they were just PVCs as described upthread. I get them maaaaybe once a week or so for a beat or two, unless I’m pregnant–then they’re making their annoying presence known on and off all day. SO annoying. They were so uncomfortable in my last pregnancy, I couldn’t rest lying flat on my back. OB and GP docs both agreed their increase in frequency was due to all the cardiovascular chnages that go with pregnancy (doubling blood volume, creating a new blood supply network, etc.). I had them fairly frequently from around20-22 weeks with my first, and about from 5 weeks-26 weeks (boo!) with my second.
I would also add that skipped/extra/louder solitary heartbeat triggers a solitary cough with me. I posted a question about this, and QtM posited that it might be that the weird heartbeat stimulates the vagus nerve.
