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Heart Palpitations Forum >> Symptoms and other concerns >> PALPS... stress, vagus nerve, or hormone????
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Message started by mishi on Apr 14^th, 2013, 7:06pm

Title: PALPS... stress, vagus nerve, or hormone????
Post by mishi on Apr 14^th, 2013, 7:06pm

Hi all,

I am a 35 yo female who is suffering from heart palpitations. I had a extremely frightening episode where I went to hospital, 35 plus palps per minute, bpm 200.. all tests showed everything normal, besides an elavated liver enzyme (I got diagnosed with fatty liver years back)

No Ideas what caused this but I still get the occassional palpitations occuring. They believe it is stress related but I notice I get them either when my stomach feels upset, or a week before my period????

I would love to know if anyone else had had them like this.. ive read a lot on here about the vagus nerve causing palps, but what about your menstrual cycle.. and if so.... how does this explain the episode I had in hospital???

I was taking pristiq for about 6 months prior to this which is an anti depressant, but got told to stop by the emergency cardiologist.

Please some advice would be great!!

Title: Re: PALPS... stress, vagus nerve, or hormone????
Post by George on Apr 14^th, 2013, 11:21pm

No clue about the menstrual cycle thing, but stomach upsets can definitely cause your heart to do all sorts of unnerving things like speed up, go out of rhythm, cause missed beats/extra beats and generally make it feel like it's all going wrong and death by heart ______ is looming.

The good news is, since your heart has been given the all clear by the doctors, the extra-cardial (originating from outside the heart) causes of a palpitations are benign.

I've in the past suffered for months at a time with general chest discomfort (almost always skips) because of stomach upsets (Crohn's) so know exactly how you're feeling. At times, my heart would just not beat normally because I had so much gas/bloating/rapid transit and every single beat would be out of rhythm. I too had the tests most people around here get including a holter, an echo and a visit to the cardiologist.

It's almost like blaming the wiring, when there's a leaking pipe dripping all over the fuse box. The way to stopping palpitations caused by GI discomfort is to get the GI issue sorted.

Title: Re: PALPS... stress, vagus nerve, or hormone????
Post by martinpetersen on Apr 14^th, 2013, 11:22pm

Hi mishi!

I'm no doctor, but have been following the discussions here for some years.

I think many people, me as well, experience that it is SO difficult to find a specific reason for the palps we get.

The vagus nerve: I see it more as the "channel" that brings an electrical impulse into the heart at some faulty moment. And I think there can be many reasons why the vagus nerve carries more wayward impulses than normal:
A period of a generally raised stress level. Events in the gi-tract (over-eating, alcohol, cafeine) and why not other events in your body like periods and liver-"events". Probably medicine-intake as well. (I experienced like many others that I got a lot of palps STEPPING DOWN from a medicine (betablocker).
Anyway: the vagus nerve connects quite a few of our organs: heart, lungs, neck, brain, stomach and probably more than that.

So, what I have done is to take it easy on eating and drinking, breathe deeply, both figuratively - and litterally to relieve stress.
And if you tests are negative, it is quite comforting to know that annoying as the palps might be, they won't ever harm you.
(While being afraid that something after all is wrong, contributes to stress and thereby more palpitations.)

Best of luck.

Title: Re: PALPS... stress, vagus nerve, or hormone????
Post by mishi on Apr 14^th, 2013, 11:54pm

Thank you I really appreciate the feedback.

It has been frustrating when I feel the palps and automatically begin to fear the episode where I was in hospital with it, which I believe causes me to be "ultra sensitive" to feeling if my heart is doing it or not... so its almost like OCD waiting for it to happen. I know its ridiculous but at the time when I feel them so so scary.