It is both. If your are very anxious this can spur them on. Now you may just get a pvc or pac and then become very anxious. This then will send them on there way. I have gotten them for eleven years and they do suck but I am still typing.
thank you very much stutterheart1. i have one more Q for you is that do you think when we feel our pulse and it's like very steady and within range, we still got PACs? whenever I have PACs, I always have the urge to go ER and check my EKG instantly, so you think anxiety causes PACs and vice versa? thank you
I have the exact same symptoms. But I also have (had?) a reentry tachycardia and atrial flutter (only happened twice but they captured it in the EP study and ablated both teh AVNRT and flutter supposedly).
For me, the PVC/PAC come on for 2-4 weeks twice a year for the past 2 years. My symptoms are exactly like yours: a dropped beat, a thud in the chest, a boiling of the blood or a flash in the skin that I can feel for a split second, etc. And I can always feel my pulse when I am resting on my back or side...it shakes the whole bed sometimes.
These episodes still really freak me out. More troubling for me is the fact that about 50% of the time when I lift a heavy box, I'll get a few long pauses followed by 10-20 very fast bursts..repeat. So I don't lift heavy boxes anymore.
Most of the time I am ok. When the symptoms come on, I know they'll be here for a few weeks. What has really helped me is studying the mechanisms of these beats and other problems with the heart. My doctor ran all the tests on me and says that I should be fine because I don't have a structural problem or a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and don't have the higher-risk diseases like WPW, Brugada or Long QT. He educates me and tells me that yes, there is probably some increased risk of sudden cardiac death because of my other problems (having 3 problems at 28 is unusual he says) but the increased risk is very slight and impossible to quantify given current tests and data sets (perhpas twice as likely? I can live with that I suppose because sudden cardiac death is very uncommon in those without WPW, Long QT or Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy). After understanding it (as opposed to just trusting the doc's sign-off), I am more at ease.
But they still freak me out so I have a backup of benzodiazapine pills which I can take at night. During my 'spells', I take about 3 .5mg pills a week at night time when I know I am going to have a bad night of palpitations. They help me relax and absorb the stress rather than freak out and create a self propetuating cycle. They also cut the intensity of the PVC/PAC's down by about half so it's not as scary.
Hope these suggestions help. This method of educating yourself to the point that you know what is going on and accept any increased risk that might be present and also haveing some chill pills around as a parachute when things get ugly has helped me stay much more sane during the last cycle.