rem sleep tachycardia

Thank God I found this site! I don't feel as isolated now. For a few months, I have been getting tachycardia shortly after I enter rem sleep. It always happens around 5am. It wakes me up, I have anxiety, then my heartbeats are slower but very forceful for about 5-10 minutes. My doctor wants me to take cardizem, but I am reluctant to due to it slowing my heart down generally, which sounds bad to me - my normal resting heartrate is 65 beats per minute. I only experience this after I fall deeply asleep.

Any thoughts? Is anyone else going through something similar?

[Artaud]

Hi,

If you went to bed before midnight, would you not have been in REM several times during the night? When you speak of Tachycardia, how fast are you referring to? A heart rate above 100 is Tachycardic, yet tachycardia can produce substantially higher rates than that.

Have you worn a Holter Monitor and had the results substantiated on it? Is the Tachycardia PSVT or another form? Was there any non-sustained Ventricular Tachycardia?

Heart rates. When I took Nadolol, 20 mg in the morning and 20 mg at night, my resting heart rate was 54, that is sitting in a chair watching TV.

With Atenolol (Dosage at the time), 25 mg in the morning and 25 mg at night, from my Holter Report: average rate is 59 bpm, minimum of 51 bpm

These rates were not of any concern to my Cardiologist, in fact, with the Nadolol, I would be willing to bet that during sleep my heart rate was in the High 40s.

Any reason for the concern about a slower heart rate?

Best regards.

[Michael966]

Hi,
I experience something similar but it is usually within 10-15 minutes of laying down and entering a light dream.  Usually it wakes me up with a jolt.  Its pounding, pounding, and afterwards I just feel drained or almost itchy.. its hard to describe.  Like I want to drink alot of water and just uncomfortable.

It started happening with frequency when I was 28 during a stressful time/anxiety.  Since then it  comes and goes in phases.  The thing I notice the most is how it seems tied very strong to a couple factors, especially diet, exercise, and smoking/nicotine.

If I am not eating alot of fats and sugars late at night, nor caffiene past afternoons, eating healthy in general, and getting in a couple hours of cardio a week, I feel great and the problem rarely happens if ever.

The other aspect seems to be smoking.  I endeavor to be a non smoker, but if I trip up after a while, and the addiction rears its ugly head, I get myself on the patch and work off it.  I feel like wearing the patch and the nicotine definitely affect this as well.

So I was wondering if there is any good answer to how these things affect the lay-down-tachycardia?  I've just based these on observation.  I had major anxiety problems in the past over a 5 year period but somehow I learned to make those nonexistant by managing stress and attitude.  Add regular exercise and its all good.

Basically I am trying to figure out if its some sort of condition or just a product of health related choices and a nicotine patch side effect.

Oh yeah and, this doesn't happen hardly at all if I fall asleep reading or watching some movie on the ipod or something.  Only if I'm going into dreams and imagining things.  Sounds weird I bet but that's how it works.

hope someone has something to share or that I shared something useful!