Watching baseball on TV and a commercial came on. A woman was walking down the street and fell suddenly into a manhole. I wasn’t paying much attention, but her fall suprised me, and I felt that lurching sensation in my chest that often accompanies a shock.
I get it fairly often. My husband doesn’t think he’s ever felt it. I’ve seen plenty of references to it in books and movies, so I don’t think it’s just me.
But what is the actual physical mechanism?
From what I remember in cardiology class, it can be what’s called PVC (premature ventricular contraction). It means that the heart contraction, instead of starting at the place it should start (sino atrial node?), starts instead at the ventricles, and they contract just before they should.
Having them frequently causes trouble (cuz your heart is beating in a way it shouldn’t). Only one weird contraction and then return to normalcy… not a problem.
This might be the same thing that I get. My heart skips a beat, and the two beats preceding and following the skipped one are very pronounced, accompanied by a weird feeling that’s hard to describe.
I always figured it was due to a sudden release of adrenaline, but I have nothing to back it up.
Me, too.
jsgoddess, the sensation you’re describing is the “fight or flight” response to sudden stress. It’s one of the few instinctual behaviors people still posess.
What is exactly happening is, you see an image or hear a noise or smell an odor your brian interprets as a threat. The brain sends signals to the pituitary and adrenal glands to release chemicals to dialate the eyes, dialate the blood vessels in the extremeties, and constrict those in the gut, increase heart and respiratory rates. All this happens in a split second. When the heart rate bumps up that quickly, you could have an abnormal beat, which you might feel, but more likely, the sensation is just from the quick changes.