"Heavy" heart beats on Cartia XP 240mg 1x per day

[rockstarsmom]

I am a 40 year old, non smoking, non drinking, no caffein intaking female with asthma.  I recently had a stress/echo due to multiple PVC's per day.  The test showed that my heart lining has thickened due to undiagnosed high BP (the doc thinks I have sleep apnea which is causing a rise in bp at night, without my knowing).  The doc put me on Toprol 25mg...could NOT breath.  He has now changed me to Cartia XP 240mg...I can now breath fine, but my heart beats seems very, very hard, not fast (85 bpm), just very hard.  When I try to lie down, they keep me awake, they are so hard.  Is this normal with this medication??  The PVC have dramatically slowed, maybe one or two a day, but I seem to have a headach I can't seem to get rid of.

[Cleveland Clinic]

I am not aware of this side effect of Cartia sl. It is probably because  of the lack of PVCs, and slowing of your heart rate causing your heart rate to drop so each beat contributed more to your cardiac output. Hence each beat seems stronger. If your echocardiogram shows normal ejection fraction, then there is virtually no risk of the PVCs causing you any heart problems.
The obstructive sleep apnea however can have very serious consequences and you absolutely need the sleep polysomnogram so the diagnosis can be formally made and treatment initiated.

[rockstarsmom]

Thank you for your reply. I will get the official results of my stress scho Monday.  In the meantime, I did have the sleep apnea test done 2 days ago and I most certainly have sleep apnea. They came in and slapped a Darth Vader type face mask on me in the middle of the night.  What I am not clear on is the relation between sleep apnea and heart issues.  Can you please explain the relation between the two?  I keep hearing that sleep apnea is a serious problem, but I don't fully understand how this is affecting my heart, other than raising my blood pressure at night...is this the only issue?  I do know I have thicking (minimal) of my heart wall, can this be caused by sleep apnea induced HP?  This is all so new to me and I'm rather confused.  By the way, the heavy heart beats have stopped, I think it must have been just a momentary reaction until the Cartia fully "kicked in".  Thank you again for any information.