My heart fluctuates more than the stock market.

This has been happening for the past 7 months or so, it all started with UNBEARABLE anxiety then eventually led to these heart races.

I've had an echo done, a stress echo, ultra sound, blood tests, and also wore a heart monitor for a week.  The results indicated nothing was wrong, my doctor from miami said there's a good chance it could be psychosematic, and insisted I keep jogging.


Here's a brief background of me.

-I'm an orchestral composer, so I would smoke very small amounts of marijuana before making a piece, despite me only taking 1/10th of what would be considered a cigarette drag, the heart palpatations and anxiety were unbearable, so I've not smoked for 4+ months.

-I'm 22 years old, I'm stressed every day about my future, goals, the long run in general, and I come from a family who can be quite paranoid.

-My dad also has these heart conditions, and the doctor has told him he is fine as well and that he is just stressed out.  

-There have been three heart related deaths in my family on my fathers side before the age of 50, and one successful heart surgery on my mothers side.

-When I was young, and immature, I did quite a bit of ecstasy (3-5 pills a week for 3-4 months on average).  Was never an addiction or problematic, just a careless time in my life.  Anyways I easily stopped for good.

-I also took steroids once when I was 19, for 6 weeks.  Nothing to heavy, the bare minimum, i believe it was called Deca.  Also stopped for good.

-I've been a smoker for 6 years now, used to smoke a pack a day or some times a pack and a hafl, I'm down to under a 5 a day, still trying to quit.


I informed my doctor about all of this, but I am suprisingly healthy as an ox.  Here in canada, procedures are pretty useless in finding problems, I feel they are far from invasive enough.
I'm currenlty looking for a US clinic that does CT scans.

Anyways, today I was in a movie theater, and randomly, my stomach dropped, the screen became wobbly giving me motion sickness (which I never get) and I knew immediately my heart was about to reach a bpm over 120 in a matter of 10 seconds.  Mind over mattering is nearly impossible.  I got up, went to the washroom and splashed cold water on my face, in about  7 minutes my shakey (shaky) legs and heart were almost back to normal.  My heart fluctuates more than the stock market.

Seriously, what could this be?  I'm going to try and quit cigarettes tomorrow for as long as possible, sometimes I feel that by just smoking one during the day affects me subconciously, and is maybe triggering my heart.  I'm pretty annoyed with the idea this could be "psychosematic."

Can the mind be that powerful to randomly attack your heart without ONE thought on it except the movie, raising my bmp to a catastrophic 140 bpm?
My bpm is not overexaggerated for I have measured with my piano metranome.

[itdood]

My BPM went that high for a PA, and this was in the ER.  On a 12 lead AKG it was confirmed as sinus tach, which was the adrenaline from the PA.  An IV beta blocker brought it right back down.

I don't even want to tell you how high some folks' HR can go just from a panic attack.  It's common dude.  

I don't think a CT scan will find anything.  MRIs are better, that'll run ya like $800 I think.  

I had an MRI but I had enough other symptoms to warrant it.  I had all those tests you had, plus I had more symptoms than you, and in the end the MRI was perfect which didn't give me any peace of mind anyway.

Sorry I hate to dismiss someone with PAs or anxiety because I know what that's like, but I think this is more than likely your case.  SO you try treating the anxiety and see if that helps.  If it does, you've found the source.  Diagnosis is a process of elimination and so far, you've pretty much eliminated any structural heart problems and from what you describe I think you are getting straight line sinus tach and that's easily produced by a PA.  This is controllable and not the end of the world.   CBT and I've taken bridge medication (something to get me through the rough times) has worked well for me.

Best of luck.