Tachycardia Palpitations

[imapumpkin]

I'm used to tachycardia when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom or when I have to get out of bed in the morning, but today I was experiencing not regular tachycardia, but a pounding palpitating heart. Every time it was beat it would palpitate and each time it would palpitate I felt incredibly nauseous. Has anyone else experienced this?

I have had palpitations for years but usually not during a tachy episode and the only thing that helped was lying flat on my back.

[Guest Alex]

Hi Pumpkin,

I've had something similar (I think, as I am unclear as to what you call palpitations) happening several time in the past year or so. In my case I had some very strong and rapid heart beats (heart beating faster than normal and beating out of my chest type of feeling - if that makes sense to you).

I even caught one such episode on a Holter monitor. I was told it's nothing - my heart was in normal sinus rhythm when it happened. I didn't have any associated nausea, but I read that tachy episodes can trigger nausea in some people.

It's good to hear that you have found something to help you alleviate the problem.

This might be worth mentioning to your dr if it's a new symptom for you.

Good luck

Alex

[imapumpkin]

palpitations in my case feel like my heart skips a beat and then the next beat is super strong, then skips, then pounds. Often it will happen for 5 or 6 beats and then go away (I'll have them intermittently throughout the day). Today it felt like my tachycardia (which is normally a pounding racing heart that feels like it is trying to escape my chest via breaking my ribs) was ALL palpitations...racing, but the beats would skip, POUND, skip, POUND. I am seeing my cardiologist on Monday and had an echo-cardiogram last week so hopefully he will be able to shed some light on the palpitations, even though he doesn't know much about POTS.

[SpinnyC]

I get a similar feeling. Sometimes for me the pounding is just regular tachy. But other times I get a very skippy and poundy feeling together (which is different from the "normal" heart pounding sensation). For me these happen infrequently but seem to come in clusters- like a week of them happening once or twice every few days, then nothing for months. I actually caught one on my heart monitor and my cardiologist said the one I caught was a PVC- but wasn't concerned about it.

I'd call your cardio or regular doctor and explain any new heart sensation you have. That's how I ended up with the monitor which caught the PVC. Just knowing what it was made me feel better about it.

[monica]

I get very bad palpiations sometimes ( heart beating out of chest sensation ) and usually have a presyncope just after it starts. I really started thinking after a while that I had an arryhthmia of some kind. I was put on a Cardiac event monitor and was able to capture a couple of these presyncopes on it. When I have these presyncopes I always get nausea..sometimes extreme, also feel very hot/start sweating, ringing in ears and then I feel extremely weak and usually slump to the floor. I was told by my Cardiologist that my heart was in normal sinus rhythm with tachycardia when these happened ( tachy into 150s-160s but I have had these with HR of 110-130 also).

I just had another one of these presyncopes yesterday and immidiately lied down on the floor because an EP Cardiologist told me to NEVER keep standing as you want the brain oxygen perfusion to return to normal level asap. Incidentally, I was also wearing an EEG yesterday when it happened, so it would be interesting to see what it shows

Maybe you can ask your doctor for a holter/event monitor for peace of mind?

[misstraci]

I've gotten palpitations with and without the tachycardia a lot of times. When it's a bad episode it's very scary. It feels like my heart 'falls' or the bottom drops out.

[blinkofani]

i know exactly what you're feeling and my cardiologist said it isn't dangerous. he explained it by saying that the heart fills up with blood then releases in between beats. there are times when the heart takes longer to fill up (the pause) and then BAM you get a strong beat when it finally releases. he says this happens to everyone at least a couple times in their life but for some people it can happen very often. for a few days last week this was happening constantly all day and caused me to cough every time.