***Welcome to the Palpitations Room***

[dannyMH]

Dear to all Heart Rhythm Community
I am trying to come up with a list of "What causes your palpitations?"

Okay here's mine:
- Lack of sleep/rest
- Not enough water
- Caffein
- Anxiety
- Bending down position to stand up position

Your list would might help others realize that they are not alone, so please feel free to add in.

Life is good, so lets all enjoy it by living healthy.
Cheers!

[demps123]

oh also time of the month can sometimes set it off, usually the week before i am due. Odd really.
and if i have a cold bug.

[demps123]

well my list would be:
*being tired
*stress
*having more then 2 glasses of alcohol
*sometimes exercise
*walking up hills or flight of stairs (try to avoid)

Hopefully my ablation in September will do the trick and get rid of my extra pathway. fingers crossed.

[MaryLL]

I really love this site as it reminds me that AFib is a "one size doesn't fit all". Sometimes I can't pinpoint why I have an episode but some of the triggers i know are:
Caffeine
Diet soda w/artifical sweeteners
Alcohol
Too much sodium
Not enough rest
Stress
Stuffing painful feelings
Trauma or death anniversary dates
Doing lots of weed pulling in the yard
For some reason, I often have them when I lie down to sleep or wake in the middle of a nap with them
Not taking my meds at the same time each day
and after reading this, I am wondering about hot weather? We have so little hot weather in Seattle but I often get them when it is a hot day.
When I get to the ER or the Urgent Care, I am often dehydrated.
With AFIB it's critical that we take good care of ourselves I'm learning. Have others found this too?

[fargon]

I have much to say that may help all of you.  My journey has been this, I started having palpitations like 10 years ago or so.  I definately get major physiological reactions to my environment.  Anxiety attacks, heart rate increasing etc.  I am tall and thin and I think I'm a bit deficient for one reason or another nutritionally.  I have been putting this puzzle together for many years and where I'm at right now is this.  I have many of the same triggers as all of you anxiety, stress, food, positions, breathing, hormones etc the list goes on.  I feel that the reason the heart rate goes out of rhythm is deficiency in key minerals that help regulate heart rate.  It explains many of the symptoms and triggers.  Now I know this isn't true for everyone some people have heart abnormalities, genetic stuff but I think for a lot of us it's a touchy mineral/electrolyte balance in our bodies.  Many many things have taught me this and I think I may have begun to get this rollercoaster ride under control a bit.   I did all this crazy stuff to myself that exacerbated the problem but in doing so it showed me what was happening I think.  Like I said I've always had palpitations for many years but about a year ago I started to do something called The ****** Therapy.  This is when you drink a lot of freshly juiced juices and do coffee enemas and it's supposed to heal everything under the sun as well as cancer.  So because i have had many health issues i thought i'd try it.  What it did was pull tons and tons of water out of my body daily.  The juices and coffee enemas created a powerful diuretic effect and I was peeing all the time.  I did this for almost a year and things got really bad for me, my palpitations went from frequent and occasional to daily to hourly to every five minutes it seemed.  Everything would throw my heart rhythm out, bending over, walking, absolutely anything that altered my heart rate in any way caused irregular beats.  I was terrified.  Then it got worse, i started to go into a fib when i would walk up gradual hills, or sweat.  If any of you have ever gone into a fib it makes a palpitation look like a walk in the park.  Terrifying, this started happening daily, my heart would start to malfunction then it would speed up to a shockingly high rate and my breathing would go crazy.  I was at my wits end, I had been to the hospital, had ECG, blood tests, ultrasound, holter monitor, all "normal" I felt totally alone.  Then i went onto a forum and a lady was saying she was having the same symptoms she said she started taking magnesium and the symptoms that were nearly out of control, daily and horrific simply stopped (like right away!) so of course i went right out and bought myself a ten dollar bottle of magnesium citrate.  The day I started taking the magnesium I was feeling 60% better which was astounding.  It's now been about two months things have been getting steadily better.   I haven't had another a fib episode, the palpitations I get are nowhere near as frequent or severe.  I feel like how I used to feel yes get the occasional palpitation but I am no longer constantly feeling like I need to go to the hospital.  So I have concluded, that I took an already deficient body and then with my crazy detoxing diuretic diet I did pulled like crazy tons of minerals out of my body and it created an exaggerated mineral electrolyte imbalance.  Even now it's touchy I have to be so careful to drink enough water, take magnesium, and a mineral supplement (potassium has a lot to do with heart rate too heck they all do) if I get at all dehydrated my heart lets me know promptly but also if I don't have enough sodium my heart get's weird, if I have too much sodium it gets weird.  But if I keep up with lots of water, the supplements and have not to little or too much sodium I feel almost completely  normal!!!!  You guys too may have mineral imbalances definately try the magnesium right off the bat.  But you lose tons of minerals in urine, sweat, hot baths, etc.  If you already have a slight deficiency then it makes sense that anything you do to further pull minerals out ie, caffeine (which is a strong diuretic) alcohol, exercise, sugar.  Also eating too many carbs or grains suck up water in the body and cause dehydration, your body and heart need proper water, mineral and electrolyte balance to function properly. It's electrical activity and it's very touchy if it somehow gets out of balance.  The triggers your describing, the heart should be able to handle stress, and blood pressure changes, positions etc without going out of rhythm.  I think it's the imbalance that keeps your heart from acting normally when it's under any change.  For the most part I can do things without worrying now that my heart will start malfunctioning.  I mean even changing my body temp would cause palpitations not so anymore.  We all have different reasons most likely for the deficiencies for me I think I may have something called diabetes insipidus which causes me not to absorb water properly it just flushes right through me and along with it my minerals.  Man was it a bad idea to do the ****** Therapy if I have that condition!! lol.  Anyway, some of you it may be digestive stuff, your just not absorbing your minerals properly.  Anyway I hope this helps, please write me and let me know if you have success with this idea.

[Pino10]

Did anyone memtion just sleeping. I have palpitations them I'm asleep only and so long as I sleep, never when awake.

[jonaz]

It's already mentioned but i would like to emphasize this one as it can be a subtle one easilly missed:
- bending over and not sitting with a straight back give me PVC's and tachycardia,
caused by pressure on vagus nerve probably.