Atenolol

[annieo125]

I am a 30year old female. I have been haveing heart pounding palpitations. I have been haveing them since last year. I went to the er last october they said it was low patasium. I has 2 bags of patasium iv's in the er. I was great for a month no palpitations. then again they started a few months ago on and off. I started eating patasium everytime it would affect my breathing or cause dizzyness I went to my Dr he didn't hear it, didn't belive it.
    so today I went to the walk in and told them my symptoms and had a ambulance take me to the er. They finally seen the palpitations on the heart monitor. 6x's in one minute it pounded and stopped for a very quick moument. I have it through out the day getting dizzy and the pounding is nerve wreaking. I get so scared I am ganna have a heart attack or something. I need to know if anyone has had this kind of problum. The Dr at the er put me on Athenolol 25mg. I have to go see a specialist.  My heart pounds too even when its not skipping. like it's working on overdrive or something then a quick pounding skip then it contiues to pound.

     this is so scary and I don't know what to think of this can anyone tell me what you think?Or if you have been through something like this too?


This discussion is related to Palpitations and pounding heart on Atenolol.

[BeachWalker111]

I have Graves Disease..for a long time now.. am on 150 mgs of PTU daily. I lowered it on my own a few times but had bad results BECAUSE of Aspartame. Equal, Splenda all of those. I couldn't breathe.. had trouble even walking when on it. I am making this short..but it took a long time to figure out this was the cause. It is in EVERYTHING. A piece of chewing gum, Orbit, would wreck havoc on me.  So now I totally avoid this stuff and it's cousins, Sorbitol, anything low sugar will have it.
But what I want  to get across is that.. I too, am on Atenolol. I was put on it when I was having the anxiety reactions to aspartame. So..now I feel I don't need to be on it and am weaning myself off. I am now on 12.5 mgs.  My sleep has been a nightmare since on it... diarrhea constantly, and total depression and I am NOT a depressed person. I am beginning to feel happy again.  I can't STAND this med.. or ANY beta blocker for that matter. I don't know what I am going to do if my experiment fails... because I won't go back on them.
I also read on another site to stay away from DeCaf Tea.. it contains two ingredients what also kicks up palps... I am off it as of today and so far.. so good!!  Perhaps that added to this mess. We HAVE to be our own doctors... They wanted me on Coumadin and diagnosed me with AFib ...and a whole aspirin... which opened another can of worms. but no rat poison for me!!  They only know what the drug reps feed them.. and they never listen to us.. barely... and tell us not to read the Internet.. don't listen to them... read!!

[sandywest]

Hello!  It sure is comforting to read all of these posts. Nice to know that others are having the same problem and are concerned about it.  I am almost 60 and have lead a very active, healthy life...no smoking, plenty of exercise, very little achohol, good diet, etc.  A few years ago my heart went wacko...was having major arythmmia, out of nowhere.  After going to the ER, I used a Holter monitor for only 2 days...then the "trackers" said I needed to see a cardiologist ASAP as my pulse was at times over 300.  Normally it is in the low 70's or high 60's. I have access to very good heart care as I live in a large city with a great medical school teaching hospital.  My cardiologist immediately put me on Atenol and Fleicanide.  We have talked about the mini-maze surgery but I'm not quite ready for that yet...both meds have significantly reduced the arythmmias.  However...in the past few months the nighttime heart pounding has been making me crazy.  Doesn't happen every night but enough to keep my awake for several hours.  The pounding is occuring only in my left ear and is so loud that it feels like a tympani drum pounding in my ear.  I have worn hearing aids all my life; but of course not to bed.  I can't even imagine how loud it would be if I had my aids in.  My docs say not to worry also.  I am a licensed counselor and know quite abit about stress, anxiety and their mangement.   I really don't think this is what causes it with me.  Several of you suggested excess caffeine or that alcohol may stir it up.  I drink about 3 diet cokes a day...not good.  I need to try going without and seeing if that makes a difference.  I drink a glass of wine a few evenings a week with dinner and have found no correlation with the heart pounding.  Yes...it amazes me that our docs have not given us very good answers about this.  To the person who said she was giving up on the the Lexapro...maybe you should try reducing the dose?  I haven't tried any anti-anxiety meds yet but maybe I should.  My life is not particularly anxiety producing...I'm just a really busy person who works full-time and also teaches adjunct at a university as a second job (at most 10 hours a week extra).  Hmmmm...  I do love both of my jobs though.  And, I have a wonderful family life...happily married, two great adult kids, etc .I should also tell you all that I have Congenital Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder.  The cardiologists have been monitoring me closely as they are concerned about my aorta due to this diagnosis but have yet to see any structural abnormalities or any indication of aneurysm on the 3 Echocardiograms and 2 MRIs that I have had in the past 2 years. I am going back to see the cardiologist in a few weeks to address the heart pounding issue once again.  I'll let you know if there is any new information.  Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

[BionicBabe]

What you are describing is pretty common on this forum and all of us have different conditions, ranging in severity. So you are not alone! Hopefully you will see the specialist soon and he/she can run some tests to figure out what is going on. If you pass out or feel close to it, head back to the ER. I wish I could tell you more, but there are different causes to the symptoms you are describing. The important thing to focus on is that you are taking matters into hand and you are going to find out what is going on. If it turns out there is a problem, it can be treated.