wanting an answer

[stillkicken]

First of all i would like to say this has been a very helpful forum and has taken a lot of stress off my shoulders.  My situation is this, approximately four years I got out of the Marine Corps in perfect health, i ran approximately five miles every day and was in the gym atleast  two hours a day.  about six month after i got out i started having trouble with anxiety and panic which i delt with and still deal with, i think its a hireditary thing.  about four months ago i was comming home from work when i felt a flip flop in my chest and it caught my breath for second, i then began to panic, and by the time i got to the ER i was in full blown panic, the ER Md. said i was having AFib because of the panic attack and acted like it was no big deal cause no family history of ANY illnesses, and said it would stop and sent me home.  I went to a Cardio, and had all the tests incl 24hr monitor, said heart was very fit, and only early or extra beats, and he said after reviewing the er report the AFib was not verified and was interpted wrong.

My Que is I now notice that these skips i have all the time now, and are very concerning to me and I notice they are triggered when my back muscles spasam due to sitting or sleeping the wrong way,I have seen all the posts on the heart-stomach connection,but how about the spine and back agravating those pv foci?
i also have no chest pain and no shortness of breath unless I am panicy and that is due to shallow breathing, I am 27/W/M/186lbs/5ft 11in, and fairly active.
#2, can panic cause all of these things, this benign thing is hard to swallow

[CCF-M.D.-CRC]

Dear pokey,
I don't know of any direct link between back pain/spasms and extra heart beats.  However, stress due to pain may increase the frequency of PVCs/PACs.  Panic can cause quite a lot of symptoms but I only make this diagnosis after other tests have been negative.  Talk to your doctor about trying one of the new serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI).  These are very helpful in decreasing anxiety and if your symptoms go away after you start taking it this would suggest that they were due to panic alone.

[egret]

I'll be very curious what the doctor says in response to your question.

I know my heart skips in large part due to back problems.  They skips are always much worse when I'm having a bad back spasm.

I've seen a chiropractor and that's gotten some relief.  I'm currently getting Japanese acupuncture treatments and it turns out the area where they treat the heart is on the back right where I've been having pain.  I thought that was kind of interesting.

Good luck and I hope you find relief soon.

[gregd64]

Jeez I have almost the same thing and Panic/anxiety can cause the symptoms of a heart attack/Angina. I started out by getting one Palp in my chest that really scared the **** out of me also.
I went to the ER and they asked me if I was under alot of stress
etc.. they did the usual ekg,blood etc.. My pulse was flying
and blood pressure was kind of high at the moment. Anyway I had gotten sick the week before and slowly dehydrated myself without knowing it by drinking coffee and soda, that does not replenish the fluids in your body when your sick. That showed up on the blood test in the ER and they gave me some IV fluids and I felt fine after. But to make my point my first noticable palps occurred because of my dehydration and now I get them or feel them more on a regular basis and they trigger the anxiety/panic feeling because I think the end is near. I feel that once you trigger your first noticable palp that makes you nervous where you have a panic attack your going to notice them alot more and it makes me feel like going over the first steep drop of a roller coaster and then the tingles or flush feelings start. This all started about
2 years ago when I was 34 and I am 6' 180 pnds. No high blood pressure and my combined colesterol is around 158. So I am in pretty good shape in the area of heart disease for common markers. So I'll finish by saying Anxiety/panic can cause heart palps in my case and I am no doctor so Im just passing on my experience. Since this all started I am finally getting fewer and fewer palps and have learned to relax. they tried those SSRi's on me for the Anxiety/panic attacks and they only made things worse for me so I had to settle for Ativan which *IS* very addictive and I wouldn't recommend unless nothing else works. Right now Im weening myself off of the Ativan and it has
withdrawls as bad as what they were treating me for as in Anxiety etc...  good luck and they will go away once you figure out the cause such as anxiety/Panic attacks just listen to your cardio doc when he says there harmless or do as I did and get a second cardio doc to tell you the same as the first maybe that will help.

[gregd64]

One more thing..  stay away from sugar , alcohol and caffeine as much as possible it does effect the palps until you feel you have a grip on your feelings toward them. I just started drinking real coffee again. Also eat 3 meals aday no skipping or making up at lunch or dinner for a missed meal. I also started a multivitamin each day and that helped to. good luck.

[pikamom]

Panic attacks can feel like heart symptoms, but heart symptoms can feel like panic. My first time in the ER last year with tachycardia/angina, I said, I think I could be having a panic attack although I never had one before. My pulse was 200 with BP 170/100 and the EKG showed ST depression of 1.5 mm. They said it wasn't panic but SVT. I went to the cardiologist who gave me a script for nitro and wanted to do a cath. I never went back for the test and just used the nitro all last year and felt panicked all the time. Then last month my second time in the ER for this problem, I had the cath and started on cardizem for angina and tachycardia and guess what? I've had no more panic feelings. That high heart rate can make you feel anxiety! But it's hard to tell which way around it is which is why it's important for a cardiologist to rule out heart problems before treating for panic. Or it could be stomache problems or other things too.

[stillkicken]

thank you for your responses, i too will be interested to see what the dr says about the spine thing because i do not recall it ever being mentioned.  
as far as a rapid heartbeat, i do not really have a problem with that, very rarely, and when i do i do get a little short winded but it usuall last for anly a few mins 10 min at the most, but the panic always comes first, not the fast heart rate.
the thing i truely find most troubling is the skips, i just have a hard time believing they are nothing more than an electrical "misfire", and nothing more, could be though i suppose.  
there was one other thing i wanted to ask but ran out of space to use and that was the other thing that makes my heart skip is jolting my body.  when i exercise, i can run, jog, or just about anything and my heart rate is nice and in rythm, but when i jolt my body, i.e. if i jump, i feel the skips almost everytime at that point. not sustained skipping, just at the point of the jolt and then back to the nice smooth rythm until the next jolt.  i was suprised to see that arthur still plays soccer while these skips are going on and was just wondering if this happens to him and if he or any one else has a theory on the skips upon contact or jolting the body since there is a lot of contact in soccer?

[arthur]

When my "skips" first started to show up, there was definitely a "jolting" - "skip" correlation...typically a sudden stop to a sprint would incur a few skips in a row (at that time these were a harbinger of AF).  Now, about 3 years later, with AF ablated about 1.5 years ago, things have settled down.  There are still some skips around (due to PV foci not correlated to AF)... and these do show up with some jolting on the field.  Over the 1.5 years, even these have settled down, so that either I don't feel them as much or there are simply less of them.

They are likely caused by sudden surges of adrenaline, as needed when making sudden movements.  Do you get a period of skips following intense physical activity?  If so, these are probably caused by the same adrenaline (left over from the activity).
It sounds like you simply have one or two foci that have found a way to communicate with your heart.  Your cardio should be able to assess if these can trigger anything worse (stress test).

[Mr. Know it all]

Sounds like another case of magnesium deficency, since magnesium and Potassium help regulate the electrical activities of the heart.  If your a women calcium loss would create an imbalnce as well.  When autopsies are done a heart diseased patients they find the heart muscle delpleted of magnesium.  I started getting pvc's when I took one diet pill. The diuretic depleted my already low levels of magnesium to a point my body did not have this vital mineral to control my heart rythem as a normal pace.
After 3 days of taking magnesium gylcinate the pvc's stopped and to my amazement other things that I had for years also cured,ie, twiches in the eyelid, pain the the leg bone, my well being has been elevated, my blood pressure is much lower, my heart does not beat hard for no reason..like it used to.  I can oly take Magnesium for all these benefits
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[briane]

How much magnesium do you take?  I have also heard it was good for other things like chronic pain.  I asked my pharmacist but did not get a clear answer on how much was safe to take if you already take a muti vitamin with some magnesium in it.  Do you know? Or should one just quit the multi vitamin and take all the supplements?  Any comments?

[arthur]

Magnesium is important and so are a skillion other minerals and cofactors.  It's true that a deficiency of magnesium as well as several other metal ions will cause all sorts of things to go awry, including precipitating arrhythmia and fasciculations.  But to hype the possible Mg and K involvement in every arrhythmia case is just as scientifically irresponsible as ignoring its possible relevancy. So please put your comments in perspective.

The medical literature abounds with information about magnesium depletion...especially in horses where it's known to cause diaphragmatic flutter.  In humans, there are no known cases of this type of flutter, however, there are data showing that the lack of Mg can lead to ectopic activity and muscle cramps.  Generally (in every case I read about) magnesium is administered intravenously, since oral forms are just not very effectively absorbed.  

I have asked you this before, and your answer fell short...what is the chemical form of the magnesium you claim is so effective and how much to you ingest per day?  Please don't answer with name brands.

[Scott]

Plus, who knows how much is too much with regard to supplements?  I've heard that too much Mg, K, Ca, you name it can actually cause some toxic effects.  Also, the interactions are poorly understood (e.g. taking too much of one supplement can cause a depletion in another supplement)....

[stillkicken]

In response to Mr. know it all, i believe i remember reading one of his posts where he said he takes 1000mg. per day of magnesium glycinate w/ potassium and Co Q-10, and that worked for him, and that the magnesium with zinc in the oxide form or whatever did not work for him.  he also gave two name brands but i can not find that post anymore.  any how you said my dr. could probably tell where the foci were comming from and see if they would lead to any worse arrythmia, i thought that pac/pvc could not cause or lead to any other form of arrythmia am i wrong, or can it lead to an even more serious thing?

also, what is involved in an ablation procedure and how long does it normally take (i.e. what goes on in there?)

[arthur]

PACs and PVCs are entities unto themselves.  If all else is diagnosed as okay, ie, sound structurally, then these critters are designated as benign and one needs to cope with that alone.
There are some cases (like mine) where the PACs are but a symptom of something else...in this case they indicated that a PV focus has been unearthed that was located close enough to the heart's pacing circuitry to cause a lot of chaos, ie, Afib.  So, in my case, these guys were not too benign.  Your doc can figure out if they are indeed benign (a variety of tests here, notably, stress tests with ekgs).  

Normally, benign PACs and PVCs are not treated by ablation.  They are either relegated to trial doses of various meds or you adopt new diets and alter your exercise or whatever ends up helping...even magnesium.   In cases where things are not as benign, eg, AF, rampant tachycardia, other arrhythmias, then your doc/cardio would suggest that you see an EP (Electophysiologist)...a cardio specializing in arrhythmias.  Manyu of these less benign situations are actually curable using ablation technology, but again, all depends on what exactly you have and what the EP recommends.  Just so you know, rf ablation involves threading wires up through the groin area to the backside of your heart.  These wires will determine what electrical activity is occuring and where, and the EP will then be able to decide upon a strategy to isolate the focus electically by zapping the surrounding area with rf energy.  This worked fine for me; the procedure is long and somewhat arduous, with little or no pain (although it can be quite interesting).  It took about 6 hours in my case, mostly asleep, overnight in the hospital, out the next day.

[Mr. Know it all]

Magnesium Oxide is does not absorb well, Magnesium Glycinate or aporates are the best.  Even though Magnesium levels may be normal with seru, blood tests , they do not measure intracellular levels, since Magesium works on those levels.  
If you use alot of Tums, Rolaids, excessive fats, sodium, vitamin D or calcium, it will deplete Magnesium.
To verify my statement chekc this site out:
http://www.execpc.com/~magnesum/cardio.html#FACTORS

thanks
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[Mr. Know it all]

There is substantial experimental evidence of the vital role of Mg in maintaining cardiovascular integrity and normal function. Large-scale dietary surveys have shown that American diets are usually Mg deficient, inadequately meeting requirements under conditions of growth and development, stress, or disease and drug therapy that cause Mg loss. Mg has long been used for parenteral treatment of convulsions and hypertension of eclampsia, and more recently, as a therapeutic modality in refractory cardiac arrhythmias (although usually as a last resort). Mg has potential value in the management of cardiovascular diseases treated with Mg-wasting drugs that intensify Mg deficiency. Such diseases and treatment also predispose to Cl loss induced metabolic alkalosis, which with Mg deficiency, contribute to refractory cellular K depletion.
The fact that chronic Mg deficiency is silent and difficult to diagnose - serum Mg levels being an unreliable index of the cellular Mg status, has militated against early treatment or supplementation with Mg. Studies should further assess the Mg status in persons with conditions that may cause Mg deficiency or those being treated with Mg- and K-wasting drugs. All of the ions that are lost should be repleted - Mg, K, and Cl (to prevent or correct metabolic alkalosis). It is further proposed that optimal Mg intake throughout life, and especially under conditions of normal anabolism and stress, may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, and even of sudden unexpected cardiac death.


thanks
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[Gimp]

After 4 days in nuro intensive care for labile BP 220/120 ranging to 60/20, they have found nothing wrong.  I feel very bad with sx of dizzyness, headache, nausea, chest pain and the elevated BP.  Also feeling like my blood is hot.  Can adrenalin surges cause this.  Sx have been escalating for three years.  I am 34 yrs old. No meds, no A&D, no smoking and regular exercise. Should I get another opinion or just live with this. I would really appreciate your help.  Gimp

[NicKatPhy]

Is there a way to help lessen the side effects of a stomache ache after taking potassium supplements?  We have tried crushing the tablets and mixing with applesauce and that does not work.