Hi everybody,
So I've taken it upon myself to stop taking my beta blockers right now. My GP didn't want me on them anyway and I don't want to be on them either and RLR also said he wouldn't have even given them to me if he had been my doctor.
Well anyway, I haven't taken them for a couple of days and my heart has gone back to how it was before. Very fast on exertion (more than I feel comfortable with), beating hard (not faster just harder) and just generally uncomfortable. I seem to be having more chest pain again, I'm burping up more and more air and I'm feeling worse!
One of the reasons I decided to stop taking them is because I bought an exercise bike recently and I've been struggling to get my heart rate up past 130. I bought the bike so I could try and lower my resting heart rate and get off the beta blockers. However, being on beta blockers I have had to work really hard to get my heart rate to 140-150, hard enough that my legs fatigue too early and I have to slow down which makes my pulse drop even further to around 120.
But now that I'm not taking the beta blockers, I'm finding it TOO easy to get my heart rate to 140-150! I am only getting my speed to around 19km/h (the bike has a display which tells you speed, I don't know how accurate it is) which actually feels really slow. My heart rate goes to 150 very easily and I feel like it is going too fast for the amount of effort I put in.
Should I be trying to average somewhere in the middle of these two calculations, if I am to lower my resting heart rate?
65% intensity: (220 − (age = 22)) * 0.65 → 128 bpm
85% intensity: (220 − (age = 22)) * 0.85 → 168 bpm
RLR, is it also true that having a fast resting pulse like mine means that I have a significantly increased chance of heart attack? There is some text on Wikipedia that says a study concluded that those with a resting pulse of 70 or over were at a significantly increased risk of having a heart attack! Well my pulse is 90+ ALL the time, so does this mean that I am at significantly MORE risk than those with a pulse of 70? Which means I am even more significantly more likely to have a heart attack.
The article is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate
I am doomed. My heart rate almost never goes below 80-85. RLR, I also have another question that no doctor has ever given a straight answer to: if an average 22 year old guy was on a desert island and his heart rate was 150 BMP, how long could his heart last before he had something go wrong with it? Stupid question I know, but I've never been able to properly gague how much work our hearts can do before they start to strain.
I'm doomed to suffer some horrible death I'm sure. What can I do about my heart rate? It's really depressing me that I just can't slow it down. I'm not even anxious either. I know all the doctors say I am, but isn't it a requirement that you actually feel anxious, before you can say you have anxiety? I almost never feel anxious, only when I work myself over my heart rate. Yet, my heart is constantly 90+. I just don't get how my doctor can tell me that it's all anxiety when I don't even feel anxious. How can this be? I'm just getting more and more frustrated and angry about it because I just KNOW it isn't anxiety causing this rate.
Thanks for reading!