OK, that may sound more dramatic than needs be, but I have always had this weird thing with my heart. (Could be a nerve between my heart and chest muscle, but it feels like a heart thing)
Ever since I was a little kid, every once in a while my heart does this little “jumpy thing”. It’s tough to describe, but the best I could say is it feels like my heart will almost skip a beat or ‘vibrate’ a bit in the middle of a beat.
I’m not overly concerned, like I said I can remember this happening when I was a little kid watching ‘Spider-Man’ on the basement carpet, and it still happens every once in a while now (some 28 years later).
Does anyone else get this?
I looked around the net but couldn’t find much. I looked at ‘Heart Murmur’, but that seems to be more of a sound than a feeling.
Lots of people get these (up to 14% of people at one general medical clinic). Most people’s hearts skip the occasional beat and you tend to notice the heavy, following one that compensates for that. These can also be caused by hyperthyroidism, anxiety and heart rhythms called “premature ventricular contractions” and “paroxysmal superventricualr tachycardia”.
In summary, these are usually benign, but if cause for concern see a doctor and get a (Holter) monitor to check out your heart rhythms for a day or two.
I took my wife to the Emergency Room because her heart started skipping a beat (we found out later it’s actually an extra beat or contracting to early). They just looked at us like “why are you bothering us with this?” and said it’s very common, especially in women. They sent us home.
I’ve had the same thing since I was a kid–happens once in awhile. But about 1.5 years ago it started happening a lot. I went to a heart doctor, had all these tests, and of course it would never happen during a test. Not even when I wore the halter thing for 24 hours.
The heart doctor put me on a beta blocker, atenolol. The palpitations went back to every once in awhile. Then after a year he decided to wean me off of it. The palpitations started again. I finally got serious about stopping the caffeine, which he kept telling me to do and I kept saying I was “trying.” I had a five-day headache, but it finally went away, and the palpitations stopped.
I have started caffeine back, just a little bit here and there. (Tea and chocolate or two of my favorite things in the whole world.)
Anyway, that is my saga. The palpitations never hurt at all, it just scared me.
The same kind of thing has been happening to me over the past few months. At first it would be very minor but there have also been days where it would happen a lot. Something else has been happening that I havn’t seen you guys talk about. Let me know if you’ve also experienced this: When trying to go to sleep, I’d get like a feeling of lightness in my chest and then a similar extra beat but then I would–without my control–take a huge gasp for air and get an adrenaline rush. Incidentally, have you guys found that you get these palpitations more when your going to sleep? peace
Count me in… This happens to me about once a year and has been occuring for the past 10 years or so (I’m 34). It always happens when I am trying to go to sleep and have just about dozed off. It wakes me up, but I do not take a huge gasp of air or get an adrenaline rush. I just wake up, say WTF, and it passes in about 30 seconds.
Maybe one of our resident doctors can give some input on this.
I too will mention this to my doc next visit. Since it happens so infrequently I doubt the doctor could ever monitor an occurance.
My “little flutter” turned out to be a mitral valve prolapse, or as I call it, a sticky wicket. One of my heart valves occasionally doesn’t open on time, causing the blood to pool back into the heart.
Mine is more serious. It was causing me to faint occasionally. Nevertheless, you may want to get it checked out.