Indeed, the sensations you experience as palpitations are merely the heart muscle responding to wayward nerve impulses arising from the vagus nerve. The "flip flop" sensation is due to the fact that the heart is in motion and depending upon precisely when these irregular nerve impulses arrive, the characteristics of the subsequent sensation can vary.

Thyroid irregularities can indeed produce palpitations, tachycardia and bradycardia among other characterizations. While your TSH is elevated, it's important to look at the entire thyroid profile such as T3 andT4 values in order to establish more precisely what may be taking place. In general, however, medication is rarely considered advisable subsequent to a single thyroid panel test. If subsequent test 6 weeks or so later reveals similar values, then other tests and/or treatment options are normally discussed. This latency in treatment is because a number of factors can produce irregularities in the thyroid values which are transient in nature. Treatment should only commence if the high values are observed on secondary evaluation a few weeks or so apart from the original test.

Indeed, thyroid dysfunction can cause all of the symptoms you describe but I am constrained to point out that all of these symptoms are just as easily produced by significant stress and anxiety. Indeed, anxiety of a certain type can produce physiological disturbances which patients misconstrue as symptoms of disease.

As I have mentioned many times on the forum, true disease cannot suddenly hide from detection or its symptoms suddenly abate in the presence of medical evaluation. Such an observation is of high clinical significance that the underlying cause is functional, rather than organic, in nature.

The tests you've undergone would reveal any sort of underlying problem related to your heart. You feel certain that something is wrong because of your perceptions about what the palpitation events actually constitute in your own mind. When tests such as those rendered prove negative, then any persistence in contrary beliefs must unavoidably be held to great scrutiny regarding their origin in fact or fiction. You are basing your fears upon what you suspect or fear, not what the tests actually state as medical fact. Such tests are extremely definitive and accurate. They are not an approximation or derived by hit-or-miss technology. When you find yourself making a contrast between these sort of tests and your own subjective concerns and demonstrating preference for your own rationale, it very strongly indicates the need for self-examination and drawing questions of whether the means by which you stand so firm in your beliefs are rational, logical and scientifically sound. It is the persistent fixation to one's beliefs about fearful prospects which reveals the true nature of the circumstances.

You are not concerned whether you are right or not, only that you maintain vigilance to factors which you believe are placing your life at some measure of risk, which in all reality is not anywhere near the truth at all and extremely inaccurate. These palpitations produced by the vagus nerve have no more capacity to harm or stop your heart than plucking an eyebrow will result in a stroke. You do not understand their actual nature and therefore, they constitute a risk of unknown magnitude. In other words, if you don't know how they function, then they are just as capable in your mind as being deadly as they are harmless. You do realize, however, that such plausibility is not reality-based, but derived through subjective fear.

The very existence of this forum should cause you to pause from your headlong pursuit in the belief that you are in danger. You're not and that's not going to change simply because you believe it is somehow possible. You are suffering these manifestations because you believe your life is in peril from their presence and the brain responds in a very particular and unrelenting manner to any feedback that survival is at risk. This happens where the risk is real or merely perceived and as long as you persist in your beliefs, then the brain will continue to compel you to seek safety and identify the threat in order to either challenge and overcome it, or escape from it. That's how humans are genetically programmed to react to matters that challenge survival.

You're going to be just fine and you are in no danger whatsoever, regardless of how hard you try to prove otherwise.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)

What I mean RLR is that you describe the heart beating like a pendlum on a clock and the vagus nerve sends a palpitation but the pendlum is not interrupted. What confuses me is that when I'm playing hockey and my heart literally feels like it stops for a second how in the world is that not interfering with the pendlum on the clock? My heart is stopping (pausing for a second) and to me that halts or stops(interrupts) the pendlum. This happens over and over again while I'm playing.  This seems so much more serious to me than a twitch or extra fire of the vagus nerve. The heart is pausing therefore stopping the pendlum. How can the pendlum be uninterrupted when I feel my heart is completely out of whack and not beating right? Please help me make sense of this?

Rlr- I was hoping you could answer my questions above

Hi rlr- I hope you get around to answering some of my questions above. I'm having a bad day with alot of hard palps and not feeling well with alot of anxiety.. I so feel like something is wrong with my heart. It lurches and drops and feels like it's struggling. I quit playing hockey now because it stops and skips and jumps all over when I play.. I've had all the tests that turn out ok but I'm so depressed. I hope it's just anxiety but can't come to terms with why my heart behaves like this? I feel like other people's palls are just a minor skip or hiccup but mine are so strong and forceful on my heart. How can a perfectly healthy 40 yr old with no family history of heart disease and stays in great shape by exercising have these terrible heart erratic forceful beats?

Thanks Stef for the kind words. I drink alot of Starbucks coffee but not much pop.. I have a large Starbucks every day and it's strong. I don't get dizzy right after a palp, I'm just kind of dizzy/lightheaded all day long.