Heart Palpitations Usually Benign, Harvard Health Publications Says

According to a statement issued today by the Harvard Health Publications, heart palpitations (the sensation that the heart has started to race or pound, or feels like it has skipped a beat) are typically caused by a harmless hiccup in the heart’s rhythm. However, at times palpitations reflect a problem in the heart or elsewhere in the body. Sorting out “warning signal” palpitations from harmless ones isn’t always easy, reports the September 2007 issue of the Harvard Heart Letter.

Heart palpitations are quite, quite common, says Harvard. The feelings can include that of the heart’s fluttering, throbbing, flip-flopping, pounding heavily, or skipping a beat. Palpitations can appear out of the blue and disappear with equal suddenness. Palpitations can also be linked with certain activities, events, or emotions.

Harvard says that if one goes to see a doctor about having heart palpitations, it is very important that one be able to accurately tell him how the palpitations feel, how often they come, and when they occur.

Heart palpitations can result from premature contractions of the heart’s chambers or malfunctions of a heart valve yet without giving any signs to doctors or machines that this is happening. If one’s palpitations are not accompanied by dizziness or other symptoms of a problem, and if one doesn’t have a valve disorder or other structural problem with the heart, then the heart palpitations are probably harmless.

Cutting back on caffeine, smoking, and alcohol; avoiding over-the-counter decongestants; eating and drinking regularly; getting enough sleep; and mitigating stress are all basic things that one should do if one is experiencing regular bouts of heart palpitations.

Sometimes one has a slight electrical impulse irregularity in the heart that causes the palpitations. There are prescription medications that can regulate this relatively minor problem.

This journalist began experiencing heart palpitations in February of this year. They began coming on me out of the blue one day as I was engaged in my usual daytime activity of living online and writing. The feeling was that of the skipped beat; more precisely, my heart was stopping completely for approximately two seconds at a time, then starting up again at its normal resting rate. The two-second cessations were occurring about every 15 seconds. I knew when it was happening because I got a feeling mildly similar to getting the wind knocked out of me every time.

I was very disturbed when they first started up. My first reaction, once I realized they had been happening for a few days, was to get up and go for a jog. This would alleviate the palpitations, but I would then have them come back the next day.

I also began to notice that the palpitations were always coming upon me in the late morning or early afternoon. By that time I would have had several cups of tea. I likewise noticed that if I drank beer in the evening, the palpitations would disappear for the rest of the night.
I had reason to be extremely stressed emotionally during this period as well. I at last deduced, tentatively, that my stress was being heightened by the caffeine in the tea to the point that I was getting “stressful arrhythmia”, which is a kind of heart palpitation pattern that sometimes comes over athletes and others who are doing intense physical work on an extended basis.

I stopped drinking tea (replacing it with “energy drinks”) and mitigated at least some of my stress with a physical relocation. My heart palpitations ceased and have not come back.

source:
Harvard Heart Letter (PR Newswire), “Heart Palpitations are Usually Not Dangerous, Reports the Harvard Heart Letter”