Continuing heart problems

[bear]

Anne,

I thought of you when I read the following about beta blockers not being so effective:
Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

If you are having panic attacks maybe they are for you but it looks questionable for lots of others.

Bear

...
I did have a panic attack the other day but that was the first one in over 30 years. My heart does race - thought to be an autonomic problem and I have taken a beta blocker for the past 15 years. Off balance when walking - probably has to do with my PN. Apparently testing for Babesia is very poor as the tests cover only a couple of the many types.

Anne

[annelb]

It sounds like the optimal range is 6-6.5 so I may be suboptimal. Have not talked with my doc yet.
Anne

[annelb]

Anne,

I thought of you when I read the following about beta blockers not being so effective:
Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

If you are having panic attacks maybe they are for you but it looks questionable for lots of others.

Bear

The beta blocker keeps my heart rate from racing. I have tried stopping it but each time my resting heart rate soars to over 100. This is very uncomfortable. The last time I tried to stop it I did a very slow taper over a few weeks, and still my heart rate was too high.

I have no idea what happened when I had that "panic" attack. Since I now know I have a LBBB, I wonder if it had something to do with that???
Anne

[Marciab]

My heart races if I eat or drink certain foods. This just happened but my life has been too chaotic recently to remember what triggered it. Caffeine too early in the day will do it everytime. I can drink it later just fine. Mine always calms down by itself if I just rest for a couple of hours so I don't worry it about it now.

I have a LBBB too and suspect mine may be what's behind my orthostatic intolerance (my BP drops 20 pts within 3 minutes (OH)of standing still and my hr jumps 30 pts after 10 minutes (POTS)) and exercise intolerance. I didn't ask my cardiologist specifically about this because the last time I saw him I didn't have the clear understand of my OI that I do now.
I know I can't do the treadmill test because my EKG or is that ECG goes nuts.

Have you tried doing a poor man's tilt table test yourself to see how your body responds to being upright ? One possible clue that you may have OI is that you feel healthy after you've been laying down for awhile. It takes me an hour to recover from OI but I'm not sure how normal that is. If you have this problem there are treatments that may help.

tc ... M ... aka GFCanary ...

[Marciab]

Hmmm, I can't edit my post above. Just wanted to say that of course not all LBBBs are created equal. My doc says that mine is mild and doesn't require a pace maker.

Oh and that I found out the hard way, is there any other way ?, that just because my heart is racing it doesn't mean that I have the increase in activity function (there's probably a term for this) that typically goes along with an increase in HR. Totally RESTING is the only answer for me. My body can't deal with my HR being over 110 - 130 bpm. I will have a petite mal and sob if my hr gets too high.
Then it takes me hours to recover ..

I can edit this one tho ... hmmm ...

[annelb]

Over 10 years ago they put me through the tilt table test while they were trying to figure out why I had peripheral neuropathy. I barely passed it. I don't have trouble going from a lying to a standing position and my blood pressure remains pretty stable. My fast heart rate was attributed to an autonomic problem. I have seen info linking this problem to high blood sugar. I have had abnormal GTT's since my 20's but they were never abnormal enough for my doctors to have concern. I now know that those post prandial spikes can be very damaging. Now my blood sugar remains 80-110 all the time.

I also have decreased sweating - another autonomic dysfunction.

A couple of years ago I passed a treadmill stress test with flying colors so this LBBB is fairly new. My heart does not show damage from my CAD. I have to wonder if this is related to Lyme - yes LD can cause electrical problems in the heart.

Caffeine is the only food that I have found that increases my HR.

My symptoms seem to have eased off a bit. I attribute that to the fact I don't have the stress of thinking that I am about to have a heart attack when I have the throat tightness. Knowing what it is and that it is not lethal has helped.
Anne

[annelb]

As I mentioned, my symptoms have eased. Seems I can exercise a bit more before having throat tightness. The only thing I have changed is I have added Resevertrol 100mg.

When I took my RBC Mg to my PCP, he told me that he is now checking this in his patients and he would have been more than happy to have ordered it. Would have saved me $50. I am so use to fighting with my doctors, I did not even ask. He agreed that it was suboptimal and needed to be at least 6.
Anne

[annelb]

OK, the other week had 2 more episodes of irregular heart beats - the "panic attack". These happened when I was sitting in a chair watching a boring show on TV. The heart rate was like beat-beat............beat-beat........... so it was skipping. I really don't think this has anything to do with "panic". Slowly the skipped beats became less and then disappeared. I wore a holter for 24 hours but had not further episodes. The only thing of concern was a HR of 47 for 8 minutes while sleeping.

No more episodes since. I wish I trusted my heart more.
Anne

[nick's mom]

awww, sorry you're having more irregular beats. are these pvcs? nick had a bunch 6 months after his last surgery, more than 1 a minute. but this last one, 6 months after that, was more normal. so it was probably just his heart healing. he never feels his though. i guess that's good and bad. is that low heartbeat a problem? nick's can drop to 40 when he's quiet, not always even sleeping.

[annelb]

I had only 4 PVC's out of 77246 total beats. Our hearts work hard ;)

How is Nick doing?
Anne

[nick's mom]

he's doing pretty good. switched around some heart meds and so far it's working well for him. thanks for asking anne!

[canoe]

Glad to hear that Nick is doing better.

Marilyn

[Marciab]

hi again. my internet connection is slow nowadays so I didn't respond earlier.

i don't feel bad going from a sitting to standing position either but if i stand still for 3 mins my bp drops and after 10 mins my heart races.

It takes me an hour of being supine to get my heart rate back to my normal resting rate of mid 60s.

My reaction to rice chex felt like a panic attack .

[Marciab]

Sorry about that. Short version, my internet died on me.

I started getting throat swelling about two years ago. One tsp of Liquid children's dye free Benadryl takes care of it. Walgreens brand is gf. Actually from what I've read, most allergy meds are gf.

I'm not sure if this is a true allergy because I read that Liquid Benadryl has a numbing action.

Also, you may want to re-evaluate your supplements. Just this past year I started having a toxic reaction to some supplements that I used to take. So far I've had to give up sublingual adenosylcobolamin, sublingual methylcobolamin, p5p tablets by Solgar, ? That's all I can remember. These started making my heart race and it feels like my liver can't process these now.

I suspect my leaky gut has led to an intolerance.

Fwiw, my doc was shocked even tho I clearly have dysautonomia / orthostatic intolerance that I could get up quickly without getting dizzy. I "think" that stopped when my ataxia did in 2006.

Hope you feel better soon. Tc .. M

[annelb]

Way back I mentioned the possibility of Lyme disease causing my left bundle branch block. There have been reports of young people dying from heart block - a conduction disorder - and the Lyme disease organism was found in the heart tissue. Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register... I wonder how prevalent this infection is in people with heart block.