Science of Pounding Heartbeat

[hefner33]

So for the curiosity of me, I always wondered about a pounding heartbeat and why you feel them. Most label this under palpitations. Palpitations get mixed in with other things like tachycardia, skipped beats, irregular rhythyms. But what I mean is a normal sinus rhythm but a pounding heart beat to the chest.

I've wondered for example say you are running and your hr is 150bpms. Me personally I don't feel my heart trying to beat out of my chest. But say someone has a panic attack, hr is 150 bpms but you feel your hearts going to burst out.

You can also have this pounding heart at slower rates or only on exertion.

I've always wondered why and thought it was a blood pressure thing but that can't hold true if your running cause BP is high or sitting calmly with low heart rate and it's beating out of your chest.

Anyone ever read anything on this? Is it from a stronger heart stroke volume at wrong times?

Thanks

[is_something_wrong]

I can't feel my heart beats while running either. Not even at 180 bpm. If I get a PAC I can feel it very well.

But I know that my heart beats hard. If I stop running I can feel it. It beats even harder while running than after running. Trust me.

I agree, it's funny, but I'm telling you the truth.

[hefner33]

Thanks.

When I say I cant feel my heart beat running I really cant. And when I run I will try my hardest to concentrate on my heart rhythm to see if I feel the pounding. Only time I will feel it is when I throw in a PAC and thats just like a thud to my chest.

But I can be in bed or just sitting upright with a low hr and feel nothing but Thud, Thud, Thud, Thud and in NSR. Im calm but I just have that pounding beat

[is_something_wrong]

I can promise you that your heart beats just as hard when you are running (at 150 bpm) than it does during a panic attack. During running, you also get the effect of massive venous backflow to the heart (from working muscles) which increase the force of contraction.

The reason you don't feel it is interesting, but it has to do with your focus. When running, you feel a lot of stuff in the body, like your feet hitting the ground, etc. When having a panic attack your attention is drawn towards the heart and breath. I tend to notice my heart beats more when I'm cycling than when I'm running.

The "pure" adrenaline effect during panic may increase EF (your heart is more empty between heart beats) and running (with the muscular pump venous backflow effect) increase cardiac preload more (EF can be higher during a panic attack than during running) - but stroke volume is about the same or higher during running.

[hefner33]

Thanks for that.

Would you think its with the contraction being more forceful rather than being more fast? What causes a more forceful contraction?

For example. Most people feel pvcs/pacs because because of the compensatory pause. More blood being forced out. So I looke at that with people in nsr that have them.

Also i think thats why drs prescribe beta blockers sometimes cause it lessens the force

[tom_h]

"I've wondered for example say you are running and your hr is 150bpms. Me personally I don't feel my heart trying to beat out of my chest. But say someone has a panic attack, hr is 150 bpms but you feel your hearts going to burst out."

I'll take a stab at this portion of your post:

If you're running, your respiration rate is high as well.  You're breathing heavily, and you're perhaps sweating.  You body is very active.  There's a lot going on around you maybe.  Now take someone who is having a panic attack, or perhaps like me, an SVT episode.  We're just relaxing, perhaps driving a car, or eating dinner. normal respiration rate, when BOOM! our heart takes off.  It's much easier to sense this in this type of environment.   You can feel your heart "beating out of your chest".

I remember having episodes of SVT years ago when I was skating and cycling. My sinus heart rate would be very high, and there was so much noise, together with the concentration needed on my part that if my heart jumped into SVT, I sometimes didn't even noticed it.  It wasn't until after the event, when I began to cool down that I'd feel my heart was still racing within my chest at over 200 beats per minute.