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What Causes Skipped Heart Beats?
Question: I get skipped beats from time to time. I have had numerous trips to the hospitals and stess tests and echo and holter done. Everything came back normal, they still happen and scare me to death. I cant function after that and get anxiety. What can i do to make them stop.
Brief Answer:
I would recommend as follows:
Detailed Answer:
Hello!
Welcome and thank you for asking on HCM!
I carefully passed through your question and would explain that your symptoms are not related to any cardiac disorders.
Your performed cardiac tests can confirm this (they have excluded any possible cardiac disorders like cardiac arrhythmia, etc.).
So relax! You have nothing to worry about!
Anxiety seems to play an important role in all this clinical scenario.
You should know that during physical or emotional stress (including anxiety), the sympathetic nervous system is activated, leading to a load of chatecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) in your blood, thus causing an increased heart rate and even ectopic heart beats (which you can perceive like palpitations or shortness of breath).
For this reason, I would recommend you to focus on your anxiety and try to manage it.
Consulting with a specialist of this field (psychiatrist, psychotherapist) could help you find the proper treatment options to have a better control of anxiety and thus ectopic heart beats.
An anxiolytic like alprazolam 0.25mg or 0.5 mg would help during these episodes, but it can not be uses as long term therapy.
An antidepressant may be needed as a long term therapy in order to help you manage your anxiety.
Yoga, meditation are also useful activities in this regard.
I would also recommend reduce caffeine intake and perform a lot of physical activity (which can act like antidepressant in your brain cells).
Another point, I would consider is performing thyroid hormone levels to exclude possible thyroid dysfunction, which can trigger all this symptomatology.
Hope you will find this answer helpful!
Feel free to ask me again if you have any other uncertainties!
Kind regards,
Dr. Iliri
I would recommend as follows:
Detailed Answer:
Hello!
Welcome and thank you for asking on HCM!
I carefully passed through your question and would explain that your symptoms are not related to any cardiac disorders.
Your performed cardiac tests can confirm this (they have excluded any possible cardiac disorders like cardiac arrhythmia, etc.).
So relax! You have nothing to worry about!
Anxiety seems to play an important role in all this clinical scenario.
You should know that during physical or emotional stress (including anxiety), the sympathetic nervous system is activated, leading to a load of chatecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) in your blood, thus causing an increased heart rate and even ectopic heart beats (which you can perceive like palpitations or shortness of breath).
For this reason, I would recommend you to focus on your anxiety and try to manage it.
Consulting with a specialist of this field (psychiatrist, psychotherapist) could help you find the proper treatment options to have a better control of anxiety and thus ectopic heart beats.
An anxiolytic like alprazolam 0.25mg or 0.5 mg would help during these episodes, but it can not be uses as long term therapy.
An antidepressant may be needed as a long term therapy in order to help you manage your anxiety.
Yoga, meditation are also useful activities in this regard.
I would also recommend reduce caffeine intake and perform a lot of physical activity (which can act like antidepressant in your brain cells).
Another point, I would consider is performing thyroid hormone levels to exclude possible thyroid dysfunction, which can trigger all this symptomatology.
Hope you will find this answer helpful!
Feel free to ask me again if you have any other uncertainties!
Kind regards,
Dr. Iliri
Note: For further queries related to coronary artery disease and prevention, click here.
Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar
Answered by
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