Fast flip flop flutter sensations out of the blue

[ell691]

I am a 21 year old female and have had occasional PVC's for the past year. I wore a holter monitor and this picked it up, the cardiologist said it was nothing to worry about, and it doesn't bother me a whole lot. I normally feel a big single thud, then everything goes back to normal. I have done a stress test as well, I was up to 95% of my max heart rate around the 10 min mark but other than that it was all normal.

More recently, I have been experiencing a different sort of palpitation. I have been laying down in bed with a resting pulse rate of around 80bpm, when out of the blue my heart will start beating really fast (around the 160bpm mark) for 2 - 6 seconds and then just revert back to normal. I can feel this through my chest and it feels like a flip flop flutter sensation instead of a distinguished beat. I am very aware of what my heart is doing at this point. I suddenly feel very hot and nervous. Last night I had this coming and going for a couple of hours, which it has never done before. I noticed that it would mainly occur when I was inhailing, if i help my breath this racing fip flop fast beat would stay but as soon as i exhailed it would go back to normal.

Sometimes before all this occurs, all of a sudden I can strongly feel a pulse through my chest. It feels more of a small shock on every beat rather than just being aware that there is a pulse there.

This is starting to control my life, I don't want to leave the house because of this! Can anyone shed some light?

Thankyou

[ell691]

a bit of an update.. i increased my daily water intake to at least 2L's and also changed my diet (which used to consist of take away an awful lot). Since then I have not had anymore PVC's. I havent experienced the random short bursts of tachycardia again but when i experienced this it was just before my period i think it could be related.

[nikgirl28]

Just wondering what your tachycardia is like...i have bouts of really fast hard beats for a minute...and they got worse after my second son...how do you deal exactly?

[sweets2323]

I started to have palpitation when i had my first son.  I have two kids now.  What helps me is, squating down and pushing, that makes my heart rate go back to normal in a few seconds.  You can ask your dr, about this exercise and see if its okay for you.  I have a really slight murmer and i have tachcardia every once in a while.  But the funny think is, sincei learned how to control t i have it only a few times a year. I notice i get it when i am stress.. I hope this help

[Michael J. McWilliams, M.D.]

Symptoms like this are almost always from a benign cause.  You need to go to your talk and diagnose what is causing these symptoms so you can be reassured that it is not going to harm you.  If the symptoms happen every night, a Holter monitor will suffice. If the are less frequent, an event monitor or home telemetry system will better serve this purpose.  When you where the monitor, you will need to keep a log of the time when the symptoms happen as well as trigger the monitor to record that you had symptoms.

This is usually shorts bursts of atrial tach, premature atrial beats, and rarely non sustained VT.  All of these cause pose no long term risk to your health if you have a structurally normal heart.

Do not let this keep you in your house out of fear.  Go to your doctor, get an answer, and move on with your life.

If you find it difficult to get past this and perseverate about a fear of dying, this is where anxiety disorders sometimes play a role.  There are people that worry (labeled as anxious, although I know this is a buzz word that upsets some people) and the people that accept that the symptoms are benign and can move on.  If you find yourself unable to stop worrying, there are non addictive anxiety medications that might be able to help -- SSRIs and the like.

I hope this helps.  Thanks for posting.