Palpitations. Anxiety or not?

[androo119]

My name is Andrew I'm a 20 yr old male with a concern of heart palpitations. My heart history has been mysterious but healthy. When I was younger(about 14) I developed a tachycardia with exercise that has now ceased. I recently visited the cardiologist this past late december. He did a still EKG and an ECHO...he said my heart was healthy and that I have a benign heart murmur.
Recently I have been diagnosed with a amxiety disorder and was wondering if these heart palpitations are related. I woke up this morning noticing that when rolling from my left side to on my back i was having heart palpitations. The reason this worries me is because I was totally relaxed and not worrying about a thing. These palpitations occur every 3-5 minutes or more frequently when I get really worried about them. They are not associated with shortness of breath, chest pain, or lighheadedness. I did have a lacrosse game late aftrernoon yesterday and it was the first time I had run in about 3 weeks and was extremely tired. So i was thinking that may be related. I know this is most likely anxiety related but I just wanted to make sure.
-Andrew

[DPM111]

I'm not a doctor, so please be sure a doctor does check your heart and look into these things.

I've had problems off and on with generalized anxiety disorder, and all the symptoms you describe are familiar.  GAD is pretty common.  With anxiety, sometimes the physical symptom of racing heart actually comes before you experience the emotion of anxiety.

If it is just anxiety, that's good news, because that is treatable.  Stopping exercise and getting deconditioned doesn't help.  Try to at least take walks regularly.  Not running for 3 weeks and then running would make you tired, it's just a loss of conditioning.

Beware of Xanax, which can stop anxiety for a while, but then you feel terrible coming off it and have nightmares.  Increasing the dose can lead to addition.  Lexapro worked well for me; but with some discipline I found that _cognative behavior therapy_ was better and drug-free -- basically just learning to control your thoughts and behavior is often enough to manage anxiety -- don't catastrophize and dwell on worst-case scenarios, don't push friends and family away, etc, etc.

Good luck Andrew.

[Douglas Bogart, MD]

You should have either a Holter monitor or an event monitor to record your EKG during on of these episodes to see  if the palpitations are a serious problem or not.