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15 years of PVC terror (Read 33201 times)
Mia
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15 years of PVC terror
Nov 30th, 2012, 3:05pm
 
Hello everyone,
First of I would like to say THANK YOU to the creators of this forum!  God bless you!

Now with the story... As the title reads I'm suffering from those beasts for the past decade and than some. In the beginning I was terrified, than I went to the doc, made all imaginable tests. All came back negative. My heart was healthy. Than I started to read and educate myself in order not to be scared of the PVC's. After  year or two they kind of disappears or haven't been that bothersome until this July when they've came back with a VENGEANCE!

The last 5 months were a huge setback for me psychologically because I got scared again and started to go back to the same route I went 10+ yrs ago: doctors, ER',tests, etc. I did have an ECG, echo, and thyroid blood test to exclude the reasons for the PVC's. The cardio doc told me that he can't give me any medication but antidepressants which I'll not take.

Those things are driving me insane... My whole body aches and it is tense because of it. I'm in constant fear of thinking that the next episode of it will kill me. Lately I have 2 or 3 in a row and those scare me the most! They happens when I sit in a specific upward position or when I lay on my back. When I sleep I don't feel them but when I wake up, 5 min after they start as someone turns them on with a switch! I have good and.bad days, today is especially bad and this is why I've decided to post here...

I'm 51 yr old female, I don't take any medication, my BP is mostly 125/72, I smoke not more than 5 cigarettes a day, there are days I don't smoke at all, I drink one coffee a day, with two words: I try to stay away from all the irritants that produce PVC's.

My biggest problem is the FEAR... I know is stupid, but I'm unable to convince myself to be rational! While I'm writing this I probably have at least 4 pvc's a minute, calculate how many are per 24 hrs... I can't take it anymore!!!
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Mia
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #1 - Nov 30th, 2012, 3:19pm
 
I forgot to ask - is there a difference between Bigeminy and Trigeminy and two or three in a row? If I have many of the above what are the chances of my heart to  go into AF or VT? Why I feel the pvc's as physical pain, heaviness and my whole body feels sick? They never make me dizzy tho.
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saab
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #2 - Dec 5th, 2012, 9:08am
 
Hi. I have had my pvc's for 8 years now. Some days are worse than others. My last holter monitor, over a year ago, showed 300 - I hadn't felt any that day. I probably have hundreds if not thousands on a bad day.

The key thing is that all the evidence seems to suggest that pvc's are not harmful if your heart is structurally sound. If you have had all the tests like ekg, holter monitor, heart echo, I would think you can be sure your heart is in good shape.

The number pf pvc's a day doesn't seem significant either - it is more to do with what the erratic beats are identified as, rather than how many you get. Apparently, benign pvc's are easily identified on an ekg, and clearly distinguishable from serious arrythmias. I have hundreds a day and I am still told not to worry.

I have read on other sites, like the Cleveland Clinic forum, that doctors there do not treat them aggressively (eg ablation) unless you are having 10k plus a day and you have symptoms. I get the impression that even beta blockers, which are usually the first port of call, are often prescribed for their calming effect on the patient, not because the palps are doing you any harm.

Of course, being told they are harmless and truly accepting that fact, is difficult when you feel so many. I have found several triggers - a heavy meal, caffeine, stress, a very cold day. However, nothing has made them disappear completely and I can honestly say that they have cast a huge shadow of anxiety over my life for several years.

Part of the trouble is that we are so convinced that they are harming us that no amount of doctors or medical info will convince us to the contrary. When I am not having them I can be logical and see that they are benign - but on a bad day it is hard not to be very anxious.

I would do all you can to manage the pvc's by avoiding the triggers, and then try to address the anxiety issues. There are some great relaxation/meditation things on You Tube. I have found Jon Kabbat Zinn's mindfulness books and cd's useful. Claire Weekes books are great, as is 'Stop Thinking Start Living' by Richard Carlson.

I believe bigeminy is a pvc every second beat, trigemy every third and so on.

To put your fears in perspective, the heart attack death rate amongst smokers is 70% higher than amongst non smokers.

http://heart-disease.emedtv.com/heart-attack/heart-attack-and-smoking-p2.html

Basically, lifestyle and diet should be more of a concern to us than the pvc's. However, because we feel the pvc's on a daily basis, whereas heart disease creeps up on us silently over decades, we get it into our heads that the pvc's are dangerous and ignore the lifestyle factors that are actually killing us.

If pvc's were a serious risk to those who get them, it would have become very obvious by now in the many studies on heart related deaths that have taken place in the last 40 years or so.
I take some comfort in knowing that if pvc's were actually harmful the drug companies would be all over it, producing and pushing drug therapy like mad. The fact that they aren't suggests that pvc's are just a big deal to us, not to medical science.

I hope you feel better soon.
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martinpetersen
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #3 - Dec 5th, 2012, 11:02am
 
I think your last sentence is very interesting. I agree; palps are not harmful and therefore not "a big deal" to medical science. Of course a reasonable priority, you could say, but even though they are harmless, they are NOT harmless to peoples' minds and causes a lot of discomfort.

Therefore I think it IS important to find treatments where possible. And why not?
Comparison: Being seasick is not harmfull, but still the medical industy has developed medicine against it ...
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #4 - Dec 5th, 2012, 11:07am
 
i quess its because todays medical science still doesnt know much of a human autonomic nervesystem. and our brains.

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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #5 - Dec 5th, 2012, 1:58pm
 
I totally agree Martin - there is a huge gap in the market for any drug company that can safely get rid of palpitations. The problem is that, as I understand it, heart drugs can actually cause arrythmias in some people and so doctors don't usually prescribe them for pvc's as it is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I often have thousands of palpitations a day - but still my GP is not interested in giving me anything. I think if I told him how anxious they make me at times, he would give me beta blockers, but that would be more to take the edge off the anxiety for me than to stop them.

I think there are some useful drug treatments available - beta blockers and flecainide are the ones most commonly mentioned - but I guess if you don't want to go down that route you have to either learn to live with them (which I haven't managed yet), or do your best to reduce them and address the anxiety they cause.

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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #6 - Dec 9th, 2012, 5:35pm
 
"they are NOT harmless to peoples' minds and causes a lot of discomfort."

"there is a huge gap in the market for any drug company that can safely get rid of palpitations."

And herein lies the rub. The "harm" to the mind of individuals who suffer from vagus nerve-induced palpitation events is actually a predisposition already present and having nothing to do with the palpitations. In other words, disturbance to vision, expression of sensory disturbances and other physical manifestations, even to cognitive thought processes, will cause the very same vigilance and perception of imminent harm from an underlying cause.

It seems quite fitting therefore that pharmaceutical companies should target research and funding to preventing physiological manifestations which have no underlying pathology. In fact, this has actually been the case for many decades and the drugs are specifically designed to treat significant anxiety and depression, both of which are capable of inducing somatic characteristics universally misinterpreted as physical symptom patterns of various disease.

The problem is the initial misinterpretation of the somatic features, not the need to create drugs which could prevent misinterpretation from occurring. The former is a battle of will between logic and irrational fear, the nature of which cannot be overcome by any level of pharmaceutical intervention.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)

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martinpetersen
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #7 - Dec 9th, 2012, 11:29pm
 
When I wrote "harmless to peoples' minds", I didn't mean that palpitations cause actual damage, the "harm" I'm talking about is that your focus becomes attracted to these bodily sensations because they "feel bad".

RLR, I think I have learned a lot in this group, most important that benign palps are not a genuine disease, not even a symptom of one. And I certainly know with all my concious mind that they are not dangerous, and that any "bout" or "spell" of palpitations will terminate, and that I will not suffered any damage from them.
But being concious of that does NOT stop them from being annoying, very unpleasant, "thought-devouring", you name it, when they are there.
If my palps are caused by anxiety, it is most certainly not an anxiety caused by any concious fear of being ill. But of course anxiety is to a certain extent (or totally, by it's nature?) an unconcous thing that the person suffering doesn't even know he's suffering.

When my palps started to show 7 years ago, I WAS in a very anxiety-creating (which I was very concious of) situation; being abroad and a family member died, which I had to take care of. That's how it started. And maybe that episode made my "system" more sensitve, who knows?
But I know that many of the later "bad periods" seem to have been  independent of life-situations as such. And more connected to eating and drinking. And lying down.

Sometimes, RLR, I think that what you  actually are saying to a lot of people is: This is nothing, and whatever you feel, you've just got to suffer in silence, there is nothing to be done except "working with your anxiety".

I think the physical reasons for palps should not be denied. And though benign palps are "nothing", it's not ONLY "misinterpreting sensations" that people (= I) feel they are "bad" and causing great discomfort while present. As I wrote: a bit like being seasick ...
And therefore a natural thing to try to avoid them/get rid of them.

Just my thoughts on this snowy morning in Denmark.

Martin
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richie
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #8 - Dec 10th, 2012, 12:03am
 
hi Martin,

I hear you.
I never had these sensations until 1 morning I woke up (in that period I had been running for 35km a week)  and I felt really bad. I was having dizzyness, my heart felt weird and I had fainting feelings and chest uncomfort. The weeks prior to that, I had dizzyness whenever I came back from running my 5 or 10 km
it came out of nowhere that morning and it never left.. now 5 years later

Anxiety?
The moment I got that sensation.. NO WAY
anxiety now. probably a high possibility of yes.
But what was the trigger, why did I felt that way that morning, and why did it never leave till now?

Thats why I doubt anxiety as the only cause.
Its not only a palp I'm feeling. Or one skipped heart beat.
Its a full scenario of sensations which are present for years now and espescially when i'm exercising or indeed eating..

I think it goes deeper than just anxiety alone. its a big nuisance and somewhere down the line our nerve system got too sensible
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #9 - Dec 10th, 2012, 9:21am
 
In all my anxiety fueled googling I have never found a scientific study that makes a strong case for pvc's being dangerous (ie. leading to heart attack). There was one that claimed there was acorrelation between pvc's and heart issues years later, but that now seems to have been discounted because it was based on a 2 minute ecg and it seems likely that some of the patients actually already had heart disease as many of them were old, overweight, and smoked.

In contrast there are several that suggest that pvc's are not indicative of later heart issues:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2578212

"We conclude that the long-term prognosis in asymptomatic healthy subjects with frequent and complex ventricular ectopy is similar to that of the healthy U.S. population and suggests no increased risk of death."

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1130227#bib27

"the subject with frequent and/or complex VEBs, who is thoroughly examined with conventional noninvasive cardiovascular diagnostic methods and found to have no evidence of structural cardiac disease, is at low risk of sudden cardiac death … even if he or she is an athlete engaged in competitive sports."

I now from experience that reassurance like this doesn't always help much when you are in the throes of a huge amount of palpitations, but thought it might help a little.

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Mia
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #10 - Dec 17th, 2012, 3:01am
 
Thank you so much everyone for your reply!
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #11 - Dec 17th, 2012, 5:53pm
 
I think you may have misinterpreted my response.

"being concious of that does NOT stop them from being annoying, very unpleasant, "thought-devouring", you name it, when they are there."

The above most recent statement is what I was actually speaking to in terms of predisposition. It is the compelling predisposition to adhere to a rationale which provokes fear rather than one which quells it as a consequence of logical facts.

Sufferers of these palpitation events become frightened by what they believe could potentially result, despite all facts to the contrary. Certain people have the predisposition of contemplation with no boundary and will actually act upon such a premise despite the unavoidable presence of concrete logic.

It is the willful perception that absolutely anything is possible regardless of the constraints of reality.

The problem has never been my ability to explain the nature of the palpitations or their furthest incapacity to cause harm, but rather the reader's inability to permit valuation of the facts to the extent that it supplants the irrational premise devised.

The "harm" is not the presence of the palpitations but rather the predisposition of the person suffering them to think and process in a manner which challenges logic because they are afraid to place their trust in it. The paradox here is that these same individuals place the very identical type of trust in the world in motion around them each and every day, yet in the instance of the palpitations they cannot do so because the events will not subside.

There is a fear of losing vigilance to the matter and in fact, it is habituated. If the palpitations occur and you sense a sudden fear that something dreadful may occur, then the problem is not the palpitation event at all but rather your perception of the capacity of the event to do harm. Fear is derived from an imminent outcome and not necessarily the source producing it.

Simply put, if the palpitation events unravel you then your focus and efforts to overcome them are misdirected. I have also never stated that people suffering palpitations need to simply do so in silence.

My time here is for the purpose of helping you by offering insight. If you tell me that you fully understand the underlying mechanics and logistical platform of the matter and in the same breath proclaim that you nevertheless become unnerved in some manner, then I'm constrained to point out that a severe contradiction exists and begs a pointed question.

What are you actually so unnerved by if you properly understand the nature and capacity of the palpitation events? Please expound on your statement and tell me precisely what causes the events to be so annoying and thought-devouring. In what manner?

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #12 - Dec 17th, 2012, 6:04pm
 
Additionally, I have not ignored the original author of this thread and I would ask that you follow the conversation for a time before I respond.

I will tell you, however, that you are in no danger whatsoever as a consequence of the presence of the palpitation events. They hold no capacity to do you harm. They are unable to cause any type of cardiac event.

Again, spend time following the conversation which I am working to stimulate on the topic relevant to your concerns and we'll speak more directly at a point soon thereafter.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #13 - Dec 18th, 2012, 2:56am
 
Hi RLR and others

Thank you for a suggestive response. First of all: You have in my opinion explained the mechanisms behind benign palpitations and the logic concerning anxiety caused by palpitations very well. And I have certainly benefited a lot by understanding these extra-beats origin from outside the heart due to the vagus nerve. I really believe it has helped me.

To your question: "If you tell me that you fully understand the underlying mechanics and logistical platform of the matter and in the same breath proclaim that you nevertheless become unnerved in some manner, then I'm constrained to point out that a severe contradiction exists and begs a pointed question. What are you actually so unnerved by if you properly understand the nature and capacity of the palpitation events?"

I really admit that this point of view sounds illogical, and of course I can only talk for myself. I am not scared that these events will harm me, but they "feel bad", I can feel "indisposed" if there are lots of them, as I wrote somewhere else in the forum, it reminds me a bit of being seasick. Also a condition that won't harm anyone, but certainly feels annoying and "devours your thoughts".
And just as seasickness is caused by something physical, I feel (but of course don't know) that there is something physical going on when I have palpitations or "hard pulse" in the breast-stomach-region. It feel as if the pulsation touches some nerve-center and sends waves of uneasiness out in my system.

So though I don't fear any long term effect of them, I can't help looking for reasons now and then. Though I have become better to say to myself: They are there, it feels annoying, but like all the other times, they will go away.
Maybe one shouldn't live with them in silence, but live with them, I guess many of us have to.

All the best
Martin
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Re: 15 years of PVC terror
Reply #14 - Dec 18th, 2012, 8:08am
 
Hi Mia,

I've had premature atrial contractions off and on.  I had a few months where they seemed to go away, then I came down with a bad stomach bug for 3 days, and the PAC's came back in a big way.

They were happening so fast and frequent that I thought I may be in afib.  I tried a product called Natural Calm which is a magnesium suppliment in powdered form (magnesium citrate).  It received really good reviews on Amzaon, so I threw my $25 into the wind to try it.

I took a tablespoon with water one evening, and again the next morning, and by that afternoon, the PAC's were gone - at least the ones I could feel.  Tomorrow will be a week without any noticable PAC's, and a week using Natural Calm.  I'm going to discontinue the use of the magnesium suppliment after a week (tomorrow) to see what happens.  My guess is that the stomach flu (with all the fun stuff that goes along with it) threw my elecotolytes out of balance, and that in turned caused the PAC's.

I just wanted to share my experience.  Best wishes.

If anyone has any experience with suppliments, good or bad, or why they work or why they don't work, I would be happy to read more about it.



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