Why is it no one can get answers to what this thing is..Im a 30 y/o female. I have had these irregular beats since as long as i can remember.. They mostly feel like skipped beats or extra beats.. Sometimes i will have one that feels like my heart is kicking me. My recent symptoms have included beats that feel like my heart pauses for a second and i have to gasp for a breath.. when i was very young i would only have these wierd beats once every few weeks.. The older i got the more frequent they have become.. up until recently i would have them may one or twice every day or every other day.. within the past month they are happening all day every day, except during times of rest where they seem to calm down.. Any time im up and walking around they get worse.. I found that by the time im done walking home from work i am soo out of breath.. this has never happened to me before and ive been taking the same route for 7 years.. I went to the hospital yesterday because they have been happening soo frequently.. My EKG came back abnormal but they have no idea why.. My ecg was normal.. My CT scan was normal and my blood test was normal.. These people had me feeling like a jerk because im not making this up.. Of course the whole time in the hospital i was laying down and did not have an irregular beat.. My blood pressure was also normal.. i have not had a treadmill test but i am hoping sometime next week to see a cardiologist to set up wearing a holiter monitor so they can see i am not nuts.. I do not believe this is stress related beacuse i was so terrified in the hospital and did not have one wierd beat.. I always have to take a nap when i get home from work cuz im tired.. I want to note that im not having a fast or racing heart beat.. These beats usually last half a second.. but they occur all day long except at rest where they seem to calm down some.. I have read that these beats are normal but others say irregular beats can weaken the heart and can cause heart failure.. I need some answers here, please help !!!


I have been reading a lot of responses on here and it seems to me that the answer is always anxiety related. Are you telling me that everyone with a heart condition has anxiety ?? I find that very hard to believe.. And what is the difference between good irregular beats and bad irregular beats (the ones that cause cardiac arrest).. I dont get it.. Id also like to add that while in the ER i had one doc tell me i was having those ectopic beats, then the cardiologist came in and said he heard a slight prolapse of the mitral valve but nothing showed up on the heart monitor or that wierd 3D heart image machine.. So please excuse me if i seem a little irritated or have some disbelief that what i have is normal or "anxiety related".. I also like to re-mention that my EKG was abnormal and when i asked why they said my heart wasnt resting normally and they had no idea why.. whatever that means. So after all the tests they said i had nothing wrong with me and sent me home... I went from being worried to just plain P-Oed.. why am i getting all different answers..

Okay, I've read your posting and welcome to the forum.

I need to get some clarification from you. When you say you've experienced the palpitations for as long as you can remember, can you please be a bit more specific? The reason that I ask is that it's quite rare indeed for persons of pre-adolescence to take notice of something like a palpitation and rarely does it cause concern of any kind. In cases of both prominence and frequency, children are usually diagnosed with congenital defects or other conditions at that time which would explain the symptoms. For example, We see certain syndromes that can begin early in age such as Wolf-Parkinson-White but they have characteristic signs that are quite well-known and readily confirmed on diagnostic examination.

The typical onset for benign palpitations of the type being discussed on this forum ranges from about 13 years of age and beyond. I'll talk about this in a moment, but first let's go directly to your concerns.
The resting phase of the heart, known as diastole, is the brief period of repolarization of cardiac tissues just prior to depolarization(discharge) of electrical activity in the atria followed by the ventricles, a period which averages about .05 seconds. Based upon your description, I'll mention here that mitral valve prolapse is characterized by a murmer that is quite recognizable and can rarely occur in the early diastolic phase. This could account for what your cardiologist is puzzled about regarding an abnormal diastole or resting phase.

The problem with this notion is that the echocardiogram or CT would certainly be able to detect a prolapse sufficient to cause such a murmer, yet it was ruled to be normal. While there are normal variants in people that show some extremely mild prolapse of the mitral valve, it must meet certain criteria to be diagnostic of clinical MVP.

So having said all of that, my impression is that you do not have MVP because of the contradiction in the various diagnostic data. There must be consensus and it's simply not there unless you have misinterpreted what the cardiologist has relayed to you.

I will tell you that it's quite noteworthy that you failed to experience any palpitations once at the hospital and under examination and although you may find this both puzzling and frustrating, it actually has clinical significance. A true heart condition would not disappear on examination. It's important, even critical, for you to understand how the body responds physiologically to stress. I also will caution you not to try and make comparisons between the overt sensations of situational stress and those associated with fear. Examples of this erroneous comparison can be seen within the context of some of the postings here, as well as by countless patients within the clinical setting.

In other words, stress can arise in many different forms and its effects can vary greatly between individuals. Incidentally, your disbelief that all heart conditions are the consequence of anxiety or stress has a basic fault; first of all, the palpitations being discussed on this forum are not the result of any type of heart condition. Simply because a symptom arises that affects the heart, does not indicate that the underlying origin must be in the heart itself. This is an entirely subjective conclusion. Many things can cause changes in the pace of the heart, its rhythm and its force.

Secondly, I do not believe that the sensation of being exhausted or out of breath has anything to do with the function of your heart. It's important to realize that tidal volume associated with respiration, or breathing in and out, is part of a normal physiological process wherein the phases of respiration produce changes in the heart's rate and rhythm. Any disruption, for instance a palpitation, can cause a corresponding change in sensation from what a patient feels to be normal for them. In other words, when you feel these strange beats or palpitations, the body does not actually need to gasp for air as a consequence as though the palpitation has caused you to suffer any type of oxygen deficit of any kind.

Many patients who experience palpitations describe a sensation in either the lungs, the throat, the abdomen or sometimes a combination of all these areas that causes them to either take a deep breath, swallow or change their body position in response. It's important to realize that the vagus nerve innervates all of the areas that I just described to you.

If you are presently experiencing any major changes in your life, either personal or within the workplace, then you need to be aware that these changes can can induce a particular kind of stress capable of producing physical symptoms, ie fatigue, GI complaints and certainly benign palpitations. The confusion for many patients often exists at the level of trying to compare situational stress or anxiety to their chronic counterparts.

To sum it up, my initial impression is that you're in the right place by visiting the forum. I doubt that the pending tests will produce anything remarkable and I don't believe anything to be structurally or electrically wrong with your heart. By the way, I do believe you're experiencing the symptoms you claim. The underlying reason may be where we have differences of opinion.

We'll talk more,

Best regards and Good Health

Thank you for your response. Again, though, I need some clarification about the age at which you first began noticing the palpitations. Tell me specifically how old you were.

Many, many people who stop smoking experience a period of palpitations and other symptoms as a consequence of nicotine withdrawl. You have to understand that a tremendous number of things take place in persons who smoke tobacco products. The brain is a very unique organ in this regard because unlike other systems in the body, if you begin taking in something like nicotine, it binds to nicotinic receptors in the brain. Understand that nicotine is an alkaloid toxin and although it exists at the rate of about 1mg per cigarette when you smoke, one drop of pure nicotine is deadly. The reason that smokers are typically unable to break the habit is because it acts upon receptors in the brain that make you feel good, so it fools the person into asking the question of why they should stop something that relaxes them and makes them feel good.

Realize that nicotine raises your basic metabolic rate, including blood pressure, heart rate and the speed at which your body metabolizes calories. This is why smokers both gain weight and become nervous or jittery after smoking cessation and it's a large part of the reason that you feel so tired. These two factors alone oftentimes represent the reason that smokers take up smoking again. You may already know, but manufacturers of these products intentionally create the addictive nature of cigarettes in order to maintain sales of something that a person now needs in their life as much as they want it as well. It is indeed, however, a deadly addiction over time.

The good news is that the withdrawl effects will indeed begin to subside and you must bolster your confidence and ride it out until they are no longer a factor. This will indicate that the nicotine and its effects upon the body have been neutralized and the body's normal stasis has taken effect once again.

The palpitations are a conseuence of changes in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Your heart is simply responding to inappropriate nervous impulses from the vagus nerve, causing a superimposed signal over the normal sinus rhythm of the heart. They cannot harm you in any way whatsoever and they do not represent a precursor to any type of heart problem. Remember that people are used to associating physical symptoms with physical disease and it is especially true when the heart is involved.

If you've ever been suddenly frightened or startled by something and felt a brief lump sensation in your throat or your heart felt like it stopped momentarily, felt weak or tremulous, butterflies or a sinking feeling in your stomach, began sweating, your breathing rate increased or you felt it difficult to take a deep breath, then it's the exact same thing that is now happening to you in the absence of something external to cause the symptoms. Do you understand?

In other words, your body is responding to something known as the fight or flight response at at time where you are not exposed to something frightening in the environment. When all these symptoms occur to a person who has just been frightened, it seems normal because the brain connects the symptoms to the frightening event and the person says to themselves "Gosh, that made my heart skip a beat!" or "That made my heart almost stop!" or "Gosh, my heart nearly leaped out of my chest!" or "my heart was pounding out of my chest!"

Do any of those common exclamations sound familiar to you? Sure they do. People experience them at the movies all the time. Only in the case of a person who is experiencing anxiety or stress sufficient enough to engage the fight or flight response, the brain doesn't know if the danger is real or not, only that it is receiving the very same signals to engage the necessary response. Thus, even in the absence of a scary movie or a real danger, the body engages the fight or flight response and you begin sensing the changes that the body is undergoing. What happens at this point is that in the absence of a recognizable fear, the person suddenly thinks that the symptoms are a sign that something physical is wrong.

You are merely undergoing withdrawl effects from smoking and experiencing sensations associated with the fight or flight response.

Nothing is wrong with your heart and the palpitations will never cause you any harm because they are not capable of interrupting the real pacemaker of the heart. A signal is simply being sent to your heart and the tissues are responding. Nothing more.

Understand further that when the fight or flight response is engaged, the areas of the brain known as the locus ceruleus, the amygdala and the frontal lobes, all work together in dealing with the fear and it literally translates to you feeling frightened by the symptoms. It's a normal response that you are misinterpreting as danger.

You're going to be just fine. Take some time and read the other responses you find from members here and you'll begin to see that you're far from being alone with your peculiar symptoms. And don't begrudge your physicians. Their focus is primarily upon things that can harm you and in the absence of finding such things, they're fairly disinterested in harmless symptoms. It's about training to catch the bad stuff, not bad manners.

We'll talk more and enjoy the forum.

Best regards and Good Health