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Increased PVC's the fitter I get

I am a 25 year old female, I don't smoke, am a healthy weight, and eat well. Last year I started getting frequent palpitations (PVC's I think) I was put on a 24 hour monitor and had an echo. The 24 hour monitor showed PVC's and a wandering atrial pacemaker, which are of no significance, the echo came back clear. Due to the palpitations I stopped exercising for about a year. Slowly, over the course of the year the palpitations subsided then a few months ago I started exercising again, and the palpitations came back, I now have them everyday, they don't bother me as much anymore. However, I would like to know if anyone else experiences the same thing, the fitter you get the more palpitations you get? Is this a normal bodily response to exercise?

They do not seem to happen during exercise or on the cool down from exercise, just randomly. Although, they have occurred a couple of times during exercise, but generally it is a very random thing.

Thanks
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Avatar universal
the post I sent dani applies to you as well...hope it helps
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Avatar universal
here is the second part:
Now I am being serious (as a heart-attack). READ about Athlete's Heart. In a shell I will tell you the symptoms:
Bradycardia, PAC's, PVC's,Chest Pain, "Non sustained ventricular tachycardia",  trace mitral regurgitation and tricuspid regurgitation are commonly detected, Stage one AV block (long considered benign), and other arrhythmias. All articles seem to suggest that athletes--particularly those with bradycardia, are particularly susceptible to arrhythmias. For the record, SVT, VT, and even Atrial Escape and A-Fib are listed as “Benign if the athlete’s heart is structurally normal.”

And now for the “Cure”: I am 7 days into the "cure"--proven in various scientific studies to work. No idea yet. For the record I am in a hell that I wouldn't wish on Jeffrey Dahmer...and I mean it...the "Cure"...is called "Deconditioning."

Deconditioning AKA Detraining has been proven to reduce ectopic beats and benign arrhythmia symptoms in highly trained athletes. Detraining involves 3 MONTHS of reduced or eliminated training; and in particular it aims to reduce cardiovascular exercise...YEAH, THAT THING YOUR DOC HAS BEEN PREACHING TO YOU TO DO AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.

I am not a doctor, but again...THINK ABOUT IT...you want to LIVE...right?  Someone wearing a stethoscope tells you “you might wanna try exercising..." What do you do if YOU WANT TO LIVE? If you’re like me you kick it from High-Gear into TURBO. I went from a pretty strong guy that could hang on a run or two per week to being a guy that at 38 years old can bench press 320 pounds after running 4-10 miles or doing 30-45 minutes on the elliptical. I even did the "TURBO-FIRE" DVDs several times per month. Hours at a time my heart-rate during exercise was a sustained 130-155 bpms...you gotta be a battleship to handle that at my age.

I have trained my heart to exist in conditions far too harsh for a normal heart. It is only natural that my heart now doesn't recognize anything other than "BATTLE-STATIONS!!!" as normal.

You see, given my above testimony it all fits, and it also explains how your respective doctors may have failed some of you. No offense to the sedentary PVC sufferer, but I'm speaking to other gym-rats, nurses, runners, and so on that are constantly active...how many times just on this forum have you "heard" someone "say" that a quick run around the block makes the symptoms go away?

Guys, your doctors have led you to your own guillotine and you have deliberately laid your heads in the cradle.

Your doctor...bless his or her heart...is used to dealing with symptoms like yours in "normal" people---which means people who are chronically sedentary. When they come in it is obvious in two or three seconds that they need to skip a meal and walk a mile or two IMMEDIATELY.

Then you come in... That one in a hundred person that really does run up and down stairways all day at work all the while thinking "Man, I've gotta get to the GYM...all this lolly-gagging is making me squishy-about-the-middle..." What does he do? Tell ya to work out! Please don't think on revenge...Doc-clueless meant well...BUT---parts of your heart have been enlarging. Your pulse has (probably) been slowing down. Electrical changes have been made to maximize your hearts ability to handle punishment others couldn't possible stand up under. Chemicals have been hoarded by your body that others don't have present...and other chemicals you need dearly have been deleted daily...sweat-out somewhere between mile 4 and mile 7. You slowly did this to yourself.

And now you know it. You instinctively know it. Oh sure, the anxiety that came on as a by-product contributes; so does the acid-reflux that comes and goes, as does the vagus nerve anomalies, breathing abnormalities, body positioning, caffeine, diet, etc...But at its base---you trained your heart to do this.

It can be dangerous...but rarely is what I get from the studies. It can be reversed...a good deal actually; but it will be hard to do if you (like me) are vain about your body and health.

I don't know if this is "FOR SURE" what I’ve got...but come on; the writings on the wall.

As I said; I am on day seven. I am in hell. It only makes since that this is a worse-before-better scenario. My slow heart rate, having not been sped up in a week, feels like it is going to STOP. My ectopic beats sneak in at every possible interval...it's like a feeding frenzy for them since I am no longer chasing them off with cardio. I am lifting weights still...but I take my time. They pounce on me even then.

I try to think of it like this. Ceasing workouts will (hopefully) cause my Bradycardia to die. These palpitations, PVCs, PACs, and all the others discussed above are like parasites. Like parasites, if you don't "fight" them they overfeed. Once the host nears "death" they feed like crazy (think zombie apocalypse). But once the host "dies", they all die.

I will let you all know how it went in three or four months.

Peace be with you all.

---END OLDER PoST---

Dani1388; I really hope this helps. I started acting on this theory on November 3rd (23 days ago)...so far my electro-physiologist confirmed that "this" is probably what I have. I still hit the weights, and once a week or so I "cheat" and go on a long walk, but no more rapid pulse cardio. There are less PVCs already for sure, but I am still "in hell" a good portion of the time. My heart rate during sleep was sometimes 30 bpms...THIRTY...so I have a long way to go.

A bit of personal advice: exercise...but DO NOT TRAIN...you are pre disposed to this condition; your heart is probably a tank like mine is...you will not lose all of your mojo by slowing down. Let someone else break the tape at the finish line.

I wish you the best and will pray for you and all of the others like us; these docs really need to take this condition...and its treatment... MUCH more seriously. After all--benign or not--if people have no sense of well-being then life might as well be death and health might as well be sickness. I'd pay 80,000.00 USD tomorrow if someone could cure me; I'm sure many others would as well.
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Avatar universal
Okay dani...

Here comes two HUGE posts I made a couple of weeks ago.

Hope these help:
Several posts needed to complete the following:

They keep tellin' me this word...this EVIL word: "Benign." I swear I see red every time I see or hear the word "Benign." I have been going through weird chest pains, palpitations, exercise induced (healthy or "benign") bradycardia, and such for 14 months now...but for the last two months I have been the proud owner of PVCs, PACs, and very rarely a bout of what feels like VT or SVT (about 5 extremely fast beats)...all of it labelled "Benign" so far.

How is pain benign? I am not suicidal...but sleep loss, the anxiety, and the strain my condition has put on my marriage has backed me into a position in which I would be fine with this whole gig being over with. I am sick of watching my old fulfilling life disappear in the rear-view mirror.

My heart HURTS. I am 9 doctors into this thing. I tell ya I spent the first twelve months worrying that this "benign" condition will kill me...

I have spent the last two months worrying that it WON'T kill me...

For what it is worth, I may be on to something this last week. I hope I am right, and I hope this can help you all.

Google "Athletes Heart". I am a tall and muscular 38 year old, former USMC infantryman who has a good diet, have always worked out, and maintain a lean healthy build. Despite all of this, I have also always had high-normal blood pressure; almost pre-hypertension territory. Therefore, about 6 months before I had any of the above symptoms I concluded that 6-7 days a week of weight-training warranted more than just 2 or 3 days of cardio to augment (the weight training). So 6-7 days of weights along with 1-3 days of cardio became 6-7 days of weight and 6-7 days of cardio. It seemed logical that more is better with exercise. As you will see, if you read further: this may be a "Silly Me" situation. For the record, my chest pain, palpitations, and all other symptoms Vanish with exercise...an important fact the reader will need to remember later.

Six months later I started having the chest pains. My PC doc saw "something" on an ECG and to this day cannot really tell me what...I have a theory that it was just a mistake or a nurse’s mistake...but I wound up going through the cardiology route "just in case." I had an echocardiogram (heart was a "beast"-as healthy as they've seen), a calcium test (freaking ZERO...perfect score) and wore a holter monitor for 24 hours. Normal...which equals "benign chest pain...maybe you have pulled a muscle, or Lymes Disease, or GERD, or chostochondroitis, or Thyroid, or aliens, or government chem-trails, or holy moly mother of PETE..."

After being cleared by other doctors of, well...EVERYTHING... I ended up back with another cardiologist...you know...the whole "let's get a different doctor and make sure." He ordered a very affordable (heavy sarcasm) Chest and Abdomen CT which revealed that....TA-DA! I'm a STUD! Nothing wrong in there, buddy! You look GREAT! I know it sounds silly but I would at this point have been overjoyed if my doc(s) dropped my CT results and ran away screaming all the while making the sign of the cross so as to ward off the demons and fiends that took up residence in my chest cavity. Alas; the decision was made to put this healthy guy on the Stress-test machine, and I was scheduled for the fitting of another Holter Monitor.
Prior to the second round of tests I went to New Mexico with my wife and three kids. At altitude, I noticed that my heart felt even stranger. One night I felt THEM; 2 of THEM. After 11-months of weird chest pains and enough internet research to make me an honorary cardiologist I needed no one to tell me what THEY were: bump, BUMP.....bump, BUMP.....bumpBUMPbumpBUMP....................bump,BUMP....bump,BUMPbumpBUMP.
PACs or PVCs were on the SCENE! Over the next two weeks I noticed these things throughout the day...and I noticed that they made my "benign" chest pain worse.

Upon returning to The Lone Star State I freaking BROKE THE STRESS TEST RECORD at my cardiologists’ office. No joke….the office I go to is a volume-based office; 9 cardiologists work there. I broke the dang record. The technician actually stated "I've never seen a tall guy ( I'm 6'6") with as much muscle as you... with your kind of stamina...especially in your age group!" Oh, how merrily he told me that. Oh, how very close he came to needing a defibrillator himself that day...if only he knew.

My second Holter results showed 13...but I swear I feel my heart "trying" to have them far more often than that...kind of like a stumble rather than a trip and fall-flat-on-your-face...dunno if anyone else can sympathize...Anyway these things for the last two or three months have a come and go quality to them. 3 or four times I have been aware of HUNDREDS of these things. They seem VERY POSITION SPECIFIC; swallowing, lying down, looking down, clearing my throat in a "different" way,you know the drill. I have tried everything: magnesium, no caffeine, EXTRA CAFFEINE (yup, got desperate...it is worth noting that this actually seemed to help a little), folic acid, cardi-blend vitamins, kale, quinoa, eye-of-newt, boogers from a virgin muskrat, etc...

Let me assure you: you cannot eat, "vitamin", detox, meditate, or yoga your way out of this thing. I am not trying to evangelize (although I probably should) but prayer has helped some...all other treatments, techniques, talismans, and snake-oils have failed. I am a non-sleeping, unhappy, unhealthy feeling health-nut that has the musculature of a corn-fed-Iggy-Pop and my heart goes flip-flop.

And now for my discovery: I mentioned it above...Athlete's Heart. It is a Real Condition...and I simply can't help but cackle at the hilarity of the following sentence. IT'S USUALLY BENIGN! (think DAFFY DUCK'S LAUGH as he bounces off camera at the end of a looney tunes).

THINK ABOUT IT: Think back to when you were first having symptoms. Were you healthy already? Maybe you were exercising routinely? What did the doctor---doesn't matter if it was a cardiologist or an ear-wax doctor---tell you would help? EXERCISE! You probably said what I did "OH BOY OH BOY OH BOY...now I have a medical condition that I can wave in my spouse's face JUSTIFYING my healthy addiction! Then you ran, cycled, swam, lifted, boxed, Zumba'd your happy butt off.

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Avatar universal
I have the exact same thing that you do dani1388. I starting getting into better shape and at my peak here, I have the wandering atrial pacemaker with trigeminal unifocal PVCs.  I notice it is worse in the evenings when I'm just sitting or laying down relaxing.  When I'm up and busy I'm nonsymptomic.  I notice if I go more then 2 days without going to the gym, running 3 miles then lifting for an hour, is when it is the worse.  I think the extra sympathic nervous stimulaton over rides in the increase in vagal tone and it makes me feel better.  My cardiologist wanted to put me on a beta blocker and I said no.  That is the last thing I wanted was to block the strong sympathic stregth I had been working so hard for.  I'm a Flight Paramedic, and I have seen my fair share of patients tied down to medication for the rest of their lifes. No thank you! Has anyone ever looked into radiofrequency ablation for the pvc's?  I've been researching it and considering it.  This though is the first case I have come across that looks IDENTIAL to mine.  I would like to hear how you are doing and what your cardiologist has told you, just to see if they were able to come up with anything like a cogenitial electrophysiological abnormality or anything like that.
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212161 tn?1599427282
Thanks Robb, you have been so kind to talk to me and help me work threw this bad time,

I do not take any caffeine ,been off it for years,try not to over eat or eat spicey but they just seem to still come

I have acid reflux take proslec every morning to try hold it don't, now eating tums to try help it, my stomach upset from all of this anxiety from paps last 3 months, so I am sure the anxiety is not helping me keep paps away

I have never had trigger points that I could tell,when I have been in my worst anxiety ,I didn't have flutters, so not sure if anxiety brings my pacs on

Never been able to find out why I get them, can be in a great mood,enjoying life and they hit me?

Lost with them, have had them a long time but never this bad, this many hours in a row and that many flutters , like every other heart beat,
Glad I went one time and had them watch and record them a few months ago, said just pacs nothing elsa, now are they that everytime they come I pray so

Thank you again, hope you have a great day, I am going to get up and live my day as always, going to clean a house and hope my flutters stay away

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Avatar universal
I haven't heard of your new BB, but have heard of Timolol.  I had some success with Sotalol, another BB, however it made me very tired and I found that I needed to take more and more as time went on.  I am currently on a BB called Metoprolol which is supposed to help the anti-arrhythmic Tikosyn more effective.  I would say that in general BB's do help somewhat in ending my afib episodes, but they are not the cure-all.  If you read the other messages in this forum you will find that many people have long runs of pac's like you are having.  They are really annoying but not life threatening.  I would really try to minimize your reflux and maybe eat smaller meals more often.  Stay away from spices and caffeine and things that seem to set off reflux.  You might try raising the head of your bed so that stomach acid doesn't go up into your esophagus at night.  I am having a small bout of reflux today and went back to taking an Omeprazole.  Hope this helps.
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212161 tn?1599427282
wow feel the again they just wont leave me alonand belching with them whats up with them
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212161 tn?1599427282
I've also always been on a BB since I started having them so keep my bp low and heart beats low, I take timolol for years , she's now switching to its sister drug pin dolor, says about the same a little stronger, trying slow the PAC, but we all know they can still come, going to stop the 2-10 hours they are wanting to stay now,

Have you heard of that med it's old like my other one lol
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212161 tn?1599427282
Yeah, they say my heart is by echo structure good, and last time in hospital said nothing but pacs

But I am 54 and who knows as I get older what will happen, my beat never gets over 70 even when having massive PAC

So should I worry about afib now lol
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Avatar universal
I find it suprising that your doctor said that you pac's would be rare to develop into afib.  From what I know, there are 2 requirements for afib to occur.  One is that there needs to be a trigger, like an over-active vagus nerve or a structural problem in the heart.  The second is that the heart tissue must be susceptible to recirculation of the electrical signals coming from the SA node (the pacemaker of the heart).  As I have aged my pac's started to trigger afib.  Apparently the characteristics of my heart tissue has changed over the years such that the electrical currents can now recirculate to cause fibrillation.  I'm not informed enough to answer why it takes a pac to trigger afib and why normal rhythm doesn't just break into afib.  In afib the atria are pumping at a very high frequency, about 300 bpm.  The ventricles can't keep up at that rate and fire at a fraction of 300, for me usually around 100bpm when I am in afib.  I don't feel the bubble in my chest that you describe, but a lot of people do.  Reflux also make pac's more frequent for me.  I have stopped drinking coffee, eating chocolate, etc.  Hope this info helps you.
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212161 tn?1599427282
Plus I have acid reflux , do you they say that makes them worse?
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212161 tn?1599427282
Wow so sorry Rob, I have pacs to every time they have recorded them they are pacs, had since 20 now 54 , never have I had a fib that I know of, is a fib a really fast heart beat?  My heart beat is in the 60-70 when my pacs are acting up,   I am getting them now for hours at a time, any where from 6-10 hours and sometimes every other beat is a flutter, went to my Dr yesterday to get answers, she said EKG same as in last 14 years, that my pacs are not a fib and would be rare to become afib ,   How can she say that if yours are, have you always had afib.?

Now a little worried about afib,      I think my pacs have a lot to do with the vagus nerve to, I get lots of air in my chest and burp a lot with my pacs do you?

Hope your having a PAC free day.
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Avatar universal
I have had PAC's and afib induced not from a yawn but from stretching.  I have given up playing golf regularly because of the bending over and the stress on the abdominal area during a swing.  What seems to really bother me is shoveling snow.  The contraction of the abs set off the vagus nerve.  There has to be a 'pinch point' somewhere on the nerve.  But even if so, I do have high vagal tone with symptoms of bradycardia (pulse rate in the low 50's), low body temperature (usually under 98.0) and recently now, low blood pressure.  The high vagal tone do doubt makes me more susceptible to PAC's.
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Avatar universal
Thanks guys. Robb S, funny you mention that as I have experienced heart rates of 180 after eating a meal, although it hasn't happened in the past month or so. I have often thought it is my vagus nerve acting up. A wandering atrial pacemaker is caused by increase in vagal tone as well, so maybe. I also get pvc's if i yawn or bend over. Thanks, nice to hear, in a way, ha.
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Avatar universal
I have had afib for about 10 years now.  I used to run a lot, 10 - 15 miles a week.  I started to get pac's while running that would go away as I ran.  Once in a while they would force me to stop running.  Now my running is down to maybe 5 miles a week in the summer.  Very often while running pac's will quickly bring on afib and that is the end of my run.  With me, the trigger of the pac's is my vagus nerve.  The jiggling of my stomach will stimulate the nerve which then sends strong pulses to my heart which throws off my normal rhythm,. My doctor tells me that I have very high vagal tone which make the nerve very sensitive.  Eating can also start an episode of afib.  Not sure if your pac's are triggered by the same source, but it is something to consider.  I had an ablation last fall which has thus far shown inconsistent results.  I may see a neurologist about controlling the sensitivity of the vagus nerve.
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Avatar universal
I am not an exercise person, but I got my worse pvcs after eating raw spinach in a salad and also in the glowing green smoothie.  If you eat that, you might try avoiding it for a while and see if they get better.
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7013001 tn?1400979002
Yes I've had the same thing happen to me. I can't rule out if exercising or having a baby made it worse. I didn't notice changes until 3 months after I had my daughter I started hitting the gym. Then out of nowhere I developed SVT and my pvcs have tripled. But I use to exercise 5-6 days a week for at least 1 1/2 each day and sometimes go twice a day. So I really think I was over doing it
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