Arrhythmias

[colormist]

I was talking to my brother the other night and he mentioned how he has to wear a heart monitor for work. I asked him why and he said because of his heart will randomly speed up--humming-bird style. He works in the army as a mechanic (on a US base), so it didn't surprise me that they wanted to monitor him. It did surprise me that they didn't want to find a way to cure/solve/prevent it from happening.

I also had a fast arrhythmia when I was in high school and college. It miraculously went away as soon as I moved away from home, so I attributed it to the environment. During college, because I didn't have health insurance, my mom snuck me into the hospital and had her friend (who echoed hearts) examine mine. She said I had a perfectly healthy heart and we left it at that.

I was not aware of my brother also having a fast arrhythmia, so I thought I'd check here and see if anyone else with HFI has instances of a fast arrhythmia.

You can feel it, so it's not something you wouldn't notice. It feels like you just ran wind-sprints. You'll feel faint and have to sit down (kind of like passing out). Your heart is going super fast. Might be described like a helicopter or hummingbird speed. It usually goes away if you take a few deep breaths and force yourself to relax.

I also had friends in the area we lived in that had similar heart patterns, so it might be the environment. I was beginning to think it was family, work, & school stress.

Edit: I think this particular instance is called a heart palpitation.

[Tammy]

Regina has an unusually fast heartbeat all the time. They had her on a med to slow it down for awhile, but finally just decided that it's normal for her. Besides, with her life style, she really has no stress or physical activities to accelerate it anyway. When they had her hooked onto a monitor one time, they had to raise all the "alert" numbers because it just went off continually, which would scare her and then it'd just beat faster, setting it off even more.

I don't know if she gets what you're describing or not. I'm not sure she'd really know. I do know that sometimes it feels like it's going to pound right out of chest.

All tests say her heart is just fine.

[CK]

I have had trouble in the past with that too. Things have been much better now, but it happens occasionally. Part of the problem for me was Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome- so I have to eat a high salt diet for that. But the tachycardia felt a little different from the racing heart of arrythmias. I hope he finds good answers. It can be tricky.

[julienc]

This happened a lot when I was pregnant. I still get it occasionally, but not near as often as when I was expecting.

Interesting...I'll have to ask my brother about this and see if it happens to him.

I talked to my doc about it, and she said it is usually related to caffeine intake. I didn't have much caffeine when I was pregnant, though.

[meaniejean]

I also get heart palpitations when I have fructose. I have been having palpitations for as long as I can remember. When I was at a doc office just after I got out of college I mentioned them and they did a heart monitor thing in the office. They didn't see anything at the time and they said I should do a longer term monitor at home, but I never did it.

Since eliminating fructose, the palpitations have gone away. I had some coffee drink the other day - it said "insignificant amount of sugar" - I ended up with abdominal pain, nausea, dizziness, weakness, some little "absent" moments and heart palpitations. Grrrr!

You said that your brother still has some fructose, right? Maybe you can convince him to restrict a little more now that the heart thing is becoming more of an issue ; )

[colormist]

I didn't start drinking caffeine until after the palpitations went away, so I seriously doubt if that was the cause. I'm still leaning toward stress--either the stress from the environment or the stress we put our bodies through from consuming fructose.

Jean, my brother is endlessly stubborn. I think it would take a serious life event in order for him to take his diet seriously. He didn't seem to be too concerned about the heart monitor, but I might suggest it to him. I think the hardest part of having this diet is if you stick to low-level fructose over time you don't notice that it's causing your body misery. Being eternally nauseated becomes so commonplace that it becomes standard. Of course, fructoseless products taste better, but he doesn't have the initiative to go through his entire eating habits and figure out what has fructose in it. Even if he did, I think he'd be more upset about the foods he'd be skipping (cheerios, KFC, etc) than he would about being sick.

Maybe, if he eventually settles down, I could coerce his wife into enforcing a new diet on him. I think all it would take would be a week on a fructose-free diet for him to switch to being completely off fructose.

[meaniejean]

I too have been trying to convince my little brother to take better care of himself. He has cut out anything with high fructose corn syrup in it, but he has a long way to go before he will be restricted enough to do some much needed healing.

It really floors me what you can get used to. If you've never felt well it is hard to know when you feel sick. For years I have thought that this disgusting feeling in my stomach was hunger - nope, nausea ...

Maybe you can kidnap your brother for a week ; )

[CJSculpts]

As a pre-teenager I passed out daily in the morning. My doc said that I had week veins (he also told me a lot of other really stupid things over the years) and that I would grow out of it.
I also frequently had arrhythmia and still sometimes do. I did not ask a doc back then except for my father, the surgeon, who basically thought that I was a hypochondriac so I shut up about it. In my twenties, I grew very frustrated with my inability to exercise. I knew that I was not just being lazy as I has always been told, but that my chest hurt and that my heart was racing uncontrollably. I saw a cardiologist. He determined that everything was primarily okay but that I had a mild mitral valve prolapse.

Over the past year or so, I notice that I was feeling a bit passy-outy again and that feeling of nausea and vertigo were become a little too common for my liking. I was also feeling pretty out of it in general. This all came to a head in late August when I spent three weeks sleeping. Okay so I was awake for 2-3 hours per day. Major leg aches, slight sinusy feeling, etc. After the first week, I realized that I did not have the flu and got really sick of telling the world that I was not depressed I just couldn't maintain consciousness, had trouble accessing my own thoughts, and my brain was literally itchy. MY GP took one look at me and said, "What the hell is wrong with you!?!?" Thus started the amazing battery of test after test. The only this that she found in that round was low potassium. I now think that my high-potassium diet that she prescribed to get me out of that (mostly potatoes, avocados and kiwi) was actually pretty low in fructose which probably helped.

Now, what's interesting is that the crash came after I had been on a lite form of the HFI diet for a few weeks and then went off of it suddenly. I went on it because my mother stumbled across HFI/FM in a Google search of my symptoms and we both thought that it fit. I had put the exact same symptoms through multiple search engines a million times before but somehow never stumbled across it. I started on a mild version of the diet cutting out the obvious. I saw drastic improvement in body shape/size and some in pain. (I was diagnosed with SIBO a year ago and saw similar improvements which also faded over time so this whole issue was confused.) I stopped the diet for two reasons. One, my GI doc who is general fabulous and lecture at Stanford but "never had it as an issue" in his practice took a while to figure out even the breath test and with out a diagnosis, I was reluctant to stick to such an extreme diet. Obviously, because I was not on the full diet More importantly, my fiance opened a new restaurant so I had to eat everything in sight. Duh!

[esmee]

This is fascinating!

I was diagnosed with Orthostatic Hypotension/Orthostatic Tachycardia in my mid twenties (I am now 41) through a Tilt Table Test at Johns Hopkins under Dr. Peter Rowe (a specialitist in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which I had also been diagnosed with by Dr. Paul Cheney). This means that when I stand up, my blood pressure drops really low (it runs low anyway at 85/55) and my heart rate rises to compensate. No doctor has been able to tell me why this happens. It is worse when I reduce the level of carbohydrate in my diet (tried Atkins at one time and could not function due to chronic low blood pressure and depression), and some salt in my diet really seems to help also. Whenever I fast, the OH/OT is extremely severe and keeps me in bed most of the time.

[Thea]

OH/OT is common in adrenal insufficiency and POTS syndrome.
Potassium/Sodium/Aldosterone levels will tell much. Low Pituitary/Hypothalamus/Adrenal function. See:
eAware.org
www.thyroid-rt3.com/
www.adrenalsweb.org
faqhelp.webs.com/
health.groups.yahoo.com/group/RT3_T3/
health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NaturalThyroidHormonesADRENALS/
health.groups.yahoo.com/group/NTHA-Chat/

[ukbill]

I have lowish blood pressure as well, correct for a person of 25 (I'm 55 )

For a long time I have had problems with loosing blood flow to my arms at night and waking up with "dead" arms and having to try to get to sleep again with massive "pins and needles" as the blood flow returns.

Occasionally I also have very slow heart beat but very powerful it feels like my heart is trying to jump out of my chest, this is not common thank goodness.

I have spoken to the Doctor about this but got no real response or interest so left it at that.

However recently (6 months ago) I heard about the research that proves that taking a small amount of Aspirin every day reduces our chances of getting Cancer by over 50% (but only after taking it for at least two years)

I thought .. OK I'll go for that. So I started taking 75 mg per day.

Since I started taking 75mg Aspirin every morning with my breakfast all the above symptoms have stopped!

This might well be coincidence but it might be interesting to try.. I am sure 75mg aspirin will do no body much harm but check with your Doctor if in doubt.

[charlie]

Hi Bill, check that plan first, got my osteopath head on here. It may be that your back is locked up at the top, where the base of the neck meets the first couple of vertebrae in the main body as this is where the nerves into your arms come from, tension or bad position when sleeping pinches these nerves giving you a dead sensation.

The nerves from T2 to 4 at the top of the shoulders also supply the heart muscle so can affect the beat!!!!!

You may need a good crunching and massage rather than aspirin!!! Not sure I can send one via the net though!!!!

[ukbill]

mmm I cannot remember the last time I had a good crunching..

so maybe that is it..

Thinking about it I changed my car in (just before we met) June and the one I have now has Lumbar support and is much kinder on my back.

Its one thing Fiat have got right

Next time we meet feel free to put your hands round my neck and twist you will only be doing what a lot of people would like to do anyway.. if not for the same reason.. tee hee.

OK OK I have just re-read that and for those with a mucky turn of mind (like mine) I was meaning between my shoulders and head OK???

Regarding blood flow though One night I fell asleep with my fingers interlaced on my chest..

I woke up not only unable to feel both arms but my fingers had swollen up and firmly locked together.. It took me several minuets of panic and rolling about and shaking my arms as much as I could to get my hands apart.

My hands looked like a giants for some time and it hurt like mad as the blood flow returned.

A waking nightmare that was..

[charlie]

Next time we meet feel free to put your hands round my neck and twist

Wot d'you reckon Tammy, shall I do it???

[carolyn]

Going back to colormist & the arrhythmias..... Yes, I had a frightening episode in the car about 10 years ago, or feeling a very rapid heart rate, & thinking that I was going to pass out. (I wasn't driving). Went to doc & got investigated with 24hr heart monitoring, but it never happened again. Strange!!

[buddhasbelly]

Also about colormists arrhythmias question. I was diagnosed with a mild heart murmer years ago and last month, after a holter tape (wearing a heart monitor for a few days) arrhythmia was added to that. Mine are mostly that my heart skips a beat every so often, or it pounds in the wrong heart chamber and the beat after that feels like a big beat said the cardiologist. It also beats irregularly, almost every day, mostly when I am tired, not when I am stressed, and it races from time to time, a few times a week. More so when I eat too many cupcakes or cookies with glucose the cardiologist offered me beta blockers, but said if I felt I could do without, that was his recommendation for me.

BTW, my blood pressure is on the low side, about 100/60 and I have had some episodes in the past where I fainted or almost fainted and didn't see for about half an hour. I think that maybe was related to this.