I woke up in the middle of the night last night – no bad dreams or sudden starts or anything, I just woke up for no discernable reason – and I noticed that my pulse rate was really really high! At least 120 beats per minute!
Usually when I wake up in the morning, my pulse rate is really slow – on the order of 60 beats per minute or less, until I move around enough to be able to feel my pulse accurately. (I can sometimes hear my pulse if I happen to wake up lying on one of my ears, which is how I know it’s really slow after I’ve been sleeping.)
And yet, here I was, sitting in bed, doing nothing but sleeping, and I awoke with a 120 beat-per-minute heart rate. What does that super-fast pulse rate mean? Was I having a heart attack or something?!
Na…your heart was palpitating. Are you under a lot of stress? Also, do you have any sort of anxiety disorder? People are known to get panic attacks in their sleep as well, although from the sounds of it, this sounds like a simple palpitation due to some stress in your life. I used to get them in college during very stressful finals periods.
Of course, if you are very concerned, please talk to a medical professional about this. It could be any of a number of things, but this seems to me the most likely scenerario at the moment. But I don’t know your medical history, I am not a doctor, and even if I were I can’t examing you over the internet.
My physician told me that you can sometimes “reset” your heart to the right pulse when it’s palpitating by bearing down as if you were sitting constipated on a toiled trying to push a big fat turd through. I can’t vouch for whether this works or not, as any palpitations I’ve had since have only lasted a few seconds.
Hmmm … thing is, this accelerated heart rate lasted for longer than just a few seconds. (I’d estimate it lasted at least 10 seconds, maybe 20 or 30, before calming down to more “normal” levels.)
Part of the reason I ask is I just started using … ahem … Minoxydil, and one of the warnings in the little pamphlet that came with it says to stop using it if I get a rapid heart beat. I was wondering whether this little session of fast-heart-beat-asleep was an undesirable side-effect of the Minoxydil, or whether it was just within “normal” parameters for a healthy 36-year-old man. (I have been under some stress lately, but not nearly as much stress as I was under 2 months ago when I had to move and change jobs at the same time.)
(I can sometimes hear my pulse if I happen to wake up lying on one of my ears, which is how I know it’s really slow after I’ve been sleeping.)