polycythemia, symptoms

[cheesypoofs]

30 year old male with exertional shortness of breath, palpitations,dizziness, atypical chest pain (heavy, not worse with exercise),   forceful heartbeat.  Inappropriate sinus tachycardia, makes lightheadedness worse (very sensitive to even slight tachycardia)..  Chronic lightheaded and nausea.

Chest xray
Cardiolite stress test
Echo (resting only)
Xray, stress test, echo all normal.
Cholesterol is 153...HDL, LDL, tri's all within normal limits.  TSH and T4 normal.

I have chronic mild polycythemia.....nobody is saying much about that,.... (???)

Could I possibly have a cardiac problem after all this?  I'm on a 30 day monitor to catch the palps, we'll see what they are maybe.    But, after all these tests...could it possibly be a serious problem?   Also was wondering,  if the polycythemia is causing it,  would i feel instantly better if i donated blood?

[lety417]

A related discussion, mild polycytemia was started.

[thepurselady]

OOps also forgot to say my husband takes 80mg of asprin (baby asprin) per day since polycythemia is thicker blood his doctor felt the asprin was a good preventative measure.  Try not to worry to much!

[thepurselady]

Hi there I just wanted to say my husband has very mild polycythemia.  We were sent to an oncologist but when I dug deep I found that his blood count has been consistant from 15 years earlier - its just a "normal" vairent for him and the thought was his normal kidney cysts were responsible for the very boarderline high blood count

[Cleveland Clinic]

Let's see what the holter monitor reveals regarding your palpitations. I am not an expert of polycythemia but there are both common and preventable causes (such as smoking), rarer and treatable causes ( any right to left shunt) or very rare causes such as some types of leukemias. I do not mean to alarm you, but you may want to speak to a generalist to see exactly how this polycythemia has been worked up, and what is its cause.