signifiance of heart palpitations

[maddy]

Could you please tell me if there is any signifance to the amount and hardness of heart palpitations.  

I am a 38 year old female who suffers from heart palpitations almost daily.  I usually have between 10 - 20 skips or strange sensations in my heart per day.  Sometimes the skips are REALLY hard.  I have no heart disease and a completely normal heart so I am told not to worry.  

My question is 10 - 20 abnormal beats a lot during one day and is there any significance to how hard the skips are.  I am told a lot of people just ignore the skips but I can't believe they can do that when they are so intense.

Thank you for your time.

[Xtian]

Robert,

I am a 34 yr old male and also have bad pvcs and what "appear to be occassional runs of atrial fibrillation" according to the cardio. I have had a cardiolite stress test which was negative along with stress echos, numerous exercise stress tests, MRI's, Holters, CAT scan of heart etc.. All negative except for the pvcs and occassional afib. I'm still bothered by this because I have been experience spasm-like chest pain on and off for a few years but more frequently lately with exercise and also at rest. The pain is crushing, in the center of the chest and very fast (seconds). My cardio doesn't believe it is angina because of it's short duration. He put me on 240mg of Cardizem CD to see if it might eliminate the problem which it did for a month until today when I had another spasm. I had an endoscopy yesterday to rule out esophageal problems which was negative. What's interesting is that I took the cardizem at 5:00PM yesterday instead of in the AM as usual because of the procedure. So today I took the cardizem at 3:00PM and one hour later I had the spasm. It's strange that I haven't had the pain in a month and the one day I screw with the medication it returns. This leads me to believe it is a coronary artery spasm or esophageal spasm. Have you, or anyone else out there, experienced fast chest pain like this as a result of arrythmias or otherwise? This morning I had a strange irregular rhythm for about 10seconds. My pvcs are usually shorter, so I'm not sure what the longer arrythmias are or whether I should associate this with the chest spasms i'm having. I'm frustrated because the doctors no longer listen to me due to all of the negative tests and my cardio doesn't even believe I'm having coronary artery spasms because the pain doesn't last long enough (he said coronary spasms are usually minutes, not seconds). The cardio also says I can get off the cardizem (which scares me because the pain is not diagnosed, and believe me I hate all meds!) My health is good otherwise and I have very low cholesterol. Anyone out there ever experience this? Should I push for an angiogram even though I had a negative cardiolite test and a negative CAT scan of the heart showing 0 calcium. I could use some good feedback. Thanks all.

[Cleveland Clinic, MD]

Dear Maddy,

In general there is no medical significance as far as the type of extra heart beat associated with the strength of the sensation.  However, in extreme circumstances where the patient is very bothered by what are otherwise normal beats beta-blockers can be used to decrease the sensation.  10-20 extra beats a day is not very much and personally I wouldn't take medication for so few beats but for some people it may be worth it.

[matt]

What causes PVCs?

[.]

To Maddy:

try being some of us getting 10-20 a minute or more...I envy you, you've got it easy.

[Mary]

Please all of you,research into the many side-effects (palpitations and racing heart) of the additives which are in our foods. Msg is in practically all processed food and is a known cause of heart irregularities. It is even present in vitamins but as hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Food dyes and tartrazine are components of many medications and may be causing your troubles. Some of us are simply more sensitive to the toxic
additives in our food and drink. I had a terrible episode of heartracing after ingesting a pack of Wine Gums candy which is full of FD&C #5 food colouring and that is how I made the connection. Kentucky Fried Chicken, affected me in the same way and it is full of msg. If you do the research you will discover that these food additives are in nearly everything and you will have to really examine the packages of food you buy from now on.There is an excellent website at www.nomsg.com.

[chris]

I'm a 19 year old male and have been suffering the odd heart palpitation daily for about 8 years or so. It started gradually getting worse over the years, sometimes once a day it would feel like my heart was going crazy and skipping or giving extra beats in the time period of about 15 seconds. I would just get up and walk around, then I would be fine. This week has been really bad, in the past few days, these palpitations have been happening almost constantly during the day. There are periods of about 3 hours or so where I will be ok, but the rest of the time, particularly when I go to bed or wake up my heart will start skipping  beats like crazy and it feels like I'm going to die. There has never been any pain involved or pressure. Just basically the  very uneasy sensation of my hear skipping beats. This really scares me, I have had 3 ECG's and so far they have been fine. I don't smoke, drink alcohol or anything with caffeine in it. I am very concerned over this. I find my self feeling my chest and praying that it starts to beat regularly again. I find that when I am in a situation where there is a lot of adrenaline (like an ER visit) my heart seems to beat normally with not palpitations or at least very few of them. I have a bit of stress in my life, I am a part owner in a small business, had my mom pass away earlier this year and just crashed my car the other week. I don't know if this is related or not. Right now I'm wondering if it is safe to go to sleep with all these palpitations and if I'm going to wake up in the morning. I have also suffered so called "panic attacks" off and on in the past few weeks. At first, I thought it was just my blood sugar level because I was feeling very dizzy and felt like I was about to pass out. During this period, my heart rate might have been fast, but there were no actual skipped or extra beats. For all I know, these might not be panic attacks but somthing more serious, this is all up to my doctor I guess. Right now I wish I had a degree in medicine so that I knew what was going on and how to make myself feel better. If anyone has any suggestions on what I can do or even ask my doctor, please let me know. I am very fustrated over this and want to prevent or fix the situation. My email address is: ***@****

I would greatly appreciate any advice that anyone has, thanks for your time, Chris.