Tachycardia after eating a heavy meal?

[antsypants]

Please explain why I sometimes get tachycardia within a 1/2 after eating a heavy meal?  The heavy meal usually causes bloating and indigestion, then tachy.  This doesn't happen all of the time, just when the meal is particularly rich with carbohydrates and/or fat.

Thanks

[jdm]

My pulse will run "normal" in the 65 to 72 range prior to meals.  Within 15-20 minutes of a meal it begins to increase and reaches 100 to 110 within 30 minutes.  It stays there several hours and then gradually declines.  I take 1/4 of a 25 mg attenolol 4x a day and this tachycardia is reduced to increase to 75 to 80.  I understand that 100 pulse is "not medically dangerous". However, the up and down all day following meals drives me nuts and has resulted in severe anxiety.  When my pulse is elevated due to eating a meal that is my baseline...any normal activity such as climbing stairs starts from that level.  Therefore my heart will race with just minor exertion until the meal tach has worn off.  I am very sensitive to the attenolol and it works to reduce pulse rate following meals.  I have posted about this in the past as it began with my pulse remaining elevated for many hours following even moderate aerobic exercise.  The doctors say that I am not a candidate for ablation to correct this that my heart is just "sensitive" and the pacing is coming from my sa node.  I too lost weight and feared meals due to the constant up and down during the day.  Very ( for most people ) low doses of attenolol 15-30 minutes prior to a meal may help you.  I also see inceases in tachycardia rate if the meal is larger and contains more fat.  My doctors say that I am normal in terms of endocrine function.  It's a rare condition and the present state of diagnosis and medical science apparently cannot correct the problem.

[netrox]

"This doesn't happen all of the time, just when the meal is particularly rich with carbohydrates and/or fat."

I get that a lot. I find that if I drink green tea with the high fat meal, it somehow helps minimize the increase in heart rate.

-jeff

[pandora9048]

Hi,
   I have often experienced a higher heart rate after eating, sometimes over 100 bpm. It got to the point where I was literally afraid to eat and lost 30 pounds in about 2 and a half months.  That was a year ago.  I still get it now and then and my doctor has given me no real answer as to why this happens.  He said an increased heartrate after eating is normal.  But my heartrate doesn't just increase. it races.  Ive had echo, event monitor and stress test that were interpreted as normal, but it's still a scary feeling.
   Hope u feel better soon.
Pan

[arthur]

great moniker...

If you had a focally-driven tachycardia, then it's quite possible that the upward change in the autonomic tone that occurs when digesting could allow the focal signalling to get through and spur on a tachy episode.  I had a similar situation with the tachy taking on the form of a brief atrial fibrillation event triggered by digestion (the focus has since been 90% removed by ablation and these types of events have ceased to occur anymore).

As the good doc here just about suggested, an event monitor could document the tachycardia and help a cardiologist diagnose the problem.

-Arthur

[Cleveland Clinic]

thanks for the post.

There a several possible mechanisms as to why you experience the increase of the heart rate with swallowing.  Both increased heart rates and decresed heart rates have been reported with the ingestion of food and liquids.  The occurance of tachycardia from this process is rare and I would be interested to know exactly how fast you mean by tachycardia...a small increase in heart rate can be seen from the changes in blood flow as you begin to digest a meal.

If by tachycardia you mean an marked increase in heart rate, I would want to document this with holter, or personal diary of your heart rate during the episodes.  Frank tachycardia brought on by the process of swallowing has sever suggested mechanisms including parasympathetic and sympathetic changes in activity from the process of eating to mechanical stimulation of the atriaum as food passes through the oesophogus.


hope this is a start