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HR spiking between 19 to 227 when asleep?

My HR usually is around 58-71 when resting during the day but sometimes goes as low as 51 or 52. However at night and in the mornings it drops to around 45 to 55. When I am asleep it has periods where it drops anywhere to between 19-31 bpm and then spiking immediately to anywhere between 206-227 bpm. Is this normal? What's going on? The only answer I could find was sleep apnea, which would make sense because I do wake up gasping for breathe often, but I just don't know.

I'm 26 years old. Have a long history of anorexia (been in recovery and relapsed). I've been monitoring my HR using a high tech heart rate monitor, due to it's additional abilities of counting calories and totally didn't expect to see HRs as low (or high at rest) as that. I do see a doctor, but not very often as I am embarrassed about my eating disorder so tend to put medical issues off a long time. Please no hate.

So I guess my question is, is this normal? Should I go get it checked out? Does it happen to anyone else?
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Avatar universal
I'm sorry you are having to deal with anorexia; it is such a difficult condition to treat.

As you probably know, this eating disorder can have severe effects on the heart.  One of the most common--which you have--is an extremely low heart rate.  Other very serious problems include a change in electrolytes, the ions that control the rate at which the cardiac cells fire.  That's dangerous, as you can read here:

http://www.cardiacmatters.co.uk/how-anorexia-affects-heart.html

You do belong under the watchful care of a cardiologist at this point, to prolong your life.
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1124887 tn?1313754891
Hi,

No, a heart rate of 19 bpm is not normal, not even during sleep. The immediate spike to above 200 bpm is abnormal as well, and very likely to be caused by some sort of arrhythmia.

What you should do:

Go to your doctor (preferrably today) and ask for a Holter monitor (24 hour continuous EKG). Explain to him or her what you have found. Of course, it may be possible that your heart rate monitor is wrong, but as long as there is a chance you may have an arrhythmia, you should get it examined.

The heart rate monitor are not good enough because the rhythm must be diagnosed, not just the heart rate.

See your doctor. A couple of conditions may be causing this, but it's not a good idea that you and I are sitting here speculating. You need a diagnosis.
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