22 replies to this topic

[protoject]

Hi,
So I've been experiencing this weird tachycardia for about 2 years now.
Specifically though it seems like it occurs the most if i sleep on my stomach. (I experience the actual tachycardia the day after sleeping on my stomach).
any indication to what that may mean?

example:
past few days didn't really have much tachycardia.

then I slept on my stomach for a couple days

then tachycardia is bothering me all day the next day or the next few days.

doesnt seem to happen as much if i dont sleep on my stomach.

I thought maybe i was pressing on a nerve inside my chest sleeping on my stomach or that having my neck twisted i wasn't breathing properly.

But this didnt happen before......

It's possible it has nothing to do with sleeping on my stomach but i have noticed a strong pattern here. I haven't seen any reports online of people experiencing the same thing.

BTW, blood results mostly normal except low ferritin. (that was like a year ago and i took heme-iron supplements sporadically)

EKG/ECG "normal" as well. Some sinus tachycardia was noted, and my average BPM was 93. This test was about a year ago

Edited by protoject, 18 March 2014 - 05:41 PM.

[ZHMike]

an average bpm of 93 is very close to the technically defined tachycardia of 100, it seems like you could use some rate control like a beta blocker. I am 32 and if my BPM werre that high I know I would want one.

[protoject]

yeah like I'm only 27 so this needs to stop. none of the docs recommended a beta blocker at all. i was considering nebivolol

[ZHMike]

Hmm I am not familiar with that, I wonder if its not in the states. I would recommend metoprolol, its cheap and is probably the most widely prescribed beta blocker state side. I would keep a log of your BP and pulse at different times during the day. Make an appointment with your doctor and specifically have him discuss the risk vs benefit of not taking a medication to control your heart rate. Or post on this board, I am sure people here can comment on the need for treatment.

Diet and exercise will also lower your heart rate if you have time for such things..Keep us posted and good luck.

Also could be the 'white coat effect' peoples HR often goes up in a doctors office, so tracking it yourself at home would be useful.

[zorba990]

I think somehow you are irritating the vagus nerve. Do you have any other stomach issues (ulcer, gastritis, IBS, hiatal hernia, etc?). Have you tried deep abdominal breathing? Before going on a medication to suppress the symptom you might want to look more into the cause.

http://en.wikipedia....iki/Vagus_nerve
VNS may also be achieved by one of the vagal maneuvers: holding the breath for a few seconds, dipping the face in cold water, coughing, or tensing the stomach muscles as if to bear down to have a bowel movement.^[9] Patients with supraventricular tachycardia,^[9]atrial fibrillation, and other illnesses may be trained to perform vagal maneuvers (or find one or more on their own).

[protoject]

I think I may be irritating the vagus nerve as well, but it's hard to tell. I do know that my heart rate seems to be consistently faster after any night that I've laid on my stomach even briefly. Not sure if this is coincidence but it seems that there is a strong correlation. I also sleep pretty bad and sometimes I go through periods where I can't help but lay on my stomach for some reason.

I did try vagal maneuvers for over a year now and it seems to do absolutely nothing unfortunately.... wonder if I'm doing it wrong or if it really has nothing to do with my wonky heart rate.. I heard of someone having success doing the reverse maneuver called the Muller Menauver, so I have been trying it the past couple days but i didn't notice it helping yet..

I was also excersising- going swimming every other day for about an hour for a few months which seemed to give 0 help to the situation as well. I knew that generally if you're excersising a lot more it should lower your overall heart rate.. but it didnt help.

I want to take beta blockers but am worried that this will interact with my insomnia. I was hoping for something really cardioselective, someone mentioned nebivolol. I don't know much about beta blockers but I know some are more cardioselective and that it may boil down to how lipophilic or not the beta blocker is. For example, a more lipophilic beta blocker would be more active in the central nervous system rather than selective peripherally in the body/ heart.

I'm also worried about general side effects but if my heart beating fast is taking away years of living then it'd be worth it.


I should note I did have low iron around that time as well, ref. range is 20-200 and my level is at 20, theoretically there could be some sort of internal bleeding happening because my b12 and iron levels have gone down to random levels and then back up again (was low on b12 a few years ago, and this is while i was taking tons of b12, now it's above normal)... i thought that might be an indicator of internal bleeding. (ive also taken iron supplements intermittently in the past 1.5 years, sometimes for a month and then sometimes none, it's high dose 150 mg heme iron)

[protoject]

Update:

Tried taking my iron supplement with 10 000 IU of Vitamin A (animal source)

tachycardia resolved

was it coincidence?

I'm not sure iron alone works but it seems that if i take it with vitamin a it does work

there is some limited evidence that vitamin a greatly improves response to iron therapy in iron deficiency anemia,

I believe I've seen some studies involving pregnant women but I can't seem to find it at the moment

[protoject]

nvm i did it again and it didnt help. tach is back

[Lufega]

Magnesium with taurine ?

[protoject]

tried it last year, didnt work :(

Think i will get ferritin checked again but im guessing its normal now

[Dolph]

Low ferritin is actually a known cause of tachycardia!

[protoject]

I'm getting it tested again after a year of not having it tested. Just got the blood drawn today.

[Dolph]

If it's really the reason it would at least be easy to correct.

[protoject]

I hope so because I took it on and off for a while, sometimes taking really high doses for weeks, and I'm not sure that it affected me or not.  Sometimes I think overall it might have but that I didn't immediately see the effect.

 

I figure if my result comes out low again then I'll have to exclude gastrointestinal bleeding / parasites (I had parasites 6 years ago and never got a treatment).. I guess we will see tomorrow....

[protoject]

so my level was up from last year, i think it was 34 or 37 compared to 21, so obviously I'm a step up. However it says that good levels are 80. I've been taking iron supplements and vitamin a again, this time both at a more tolerable level. It seems they may be helping my sleep and my tach overall, but it's hard to say how long that will last and if it's just coincidence. Looks like I'll have to continue with the dosing for as long as I possibly can. I'm also consuming a very small amount of calcium folinate with "advanced" b vitamins, and garlic supplement as well (blood pressure went up in those 2 years i described the problem as well, by about 20 points, garlic effectively combatted it. but garlic itself never helped my tach/increased heart rate. ).

 

So I do wish for all the best and I ask iron-deficient patients: if you don't feel immediate relief from iron supplements, does it kick in eventually? Thanks.

 

I do hope the tachycardia problem was purely from this iron deficiency problem and nothing else.

 

P.S> extra info here for you folks... several years ago I did Vegetarian, Fasting, Raw Vegan, and even fruitarian diets. Maybe this iron deficiency is a result of that? or maybe it's from the "raw paleo" diet during the time that I contracted parasites. Who knows! (just detailing this as a blackbox warning against stupidity)

[Dolph]

Personally I don't feel like myself until I'm roughly at ~50 ng/ml. Always tired and outright fatigued. Below 30 I feel always cold even in hottest summer. Others feel perfectly well at such levels. It's somewhat individual.

 

[protoject]

Personally I don't feel like myself until I'm roughly at ~50 ng/ml. Always tired and outright fatigued. Below 30 I feel always cold even in hottest summer. Others feel perfectly well at such levels. It's somewhat individual.

 

 

Good to hear, thanks. I experience the same issue, I'm tired as hell practically all the time..

[protoject]

I was taking about 50 mg iron polysachhrides , 1 orange (for vit c, which is not required for metabolising the polysacchride i dont think, but IIRC i think it's required to work with iron anyway) and 1 tablet of 100% animal source vitamin A every day for about a week (vit a- proven to improve response to iron treatment). The tachycardia seemed to improve, even my girlfriend noticed a difference. It seemed that the combo of iron and vit a also improved my sleep if taken before bedtime in a banana smoothie. (well, the iron you can put in the smoothie, the vit a was in a capsule of cod liver oil).

 

I got gastritis, though, which I thought might have been related (but it probably wasn't, or was indirectly related since bacteria live off of iron). I stopped taking the iron/vit a for a week or two, and the tachycardia came back.  now I've started again but Im back up to 150 mg of iron polysacchride. The iron with vit a and the smoothie definitely helps my sleep when I take it before bed (if you don't know me, my insomnia is severe and I have threads related to this). I believe it helps my sleep because: My sleep was worse while not taking the iron (including a 2 day stretch at my dads house), and because even though I've lowered my sleep meds (trazodone and pregabalin) to a very low dose, I can sleep about 5 or 6 hours straight. (which didn't happen without the iron).

 

I have had some tach these 2 days of taking iron again but it seems to be less than usual, more windows of relief. I hope that's a good sign.

 

Edit:the reason I take it with the smoothie is because previously, I would take the iron with a lot of water. It seemed to cause my bladder/ urethra to get irritated. If i take it with the smoothie it seems to act as a buffer to let it enter my system better without causing irritation. Which is great because previously I had to take the iron early in the day to avoid having to pee at night.

Edited by protoject, 29 May 2014 - 05:02 PM.

[Dolph]

Iron preparations can cause stomach problems very similar to gastritis. Tardyferon gave me awful stomach pains. Ferro sanol  duodenal did the trick for me, even without the slightest sign of constipation. I have absolutely no idea about the iron preparations available in Canada, though. Maybe just try something different if the problem comes back.

[protoject]

I kept taking the iron and none of this appears to have helped my tachycardia. I've always assumed that there were just cycles of badness and that if my iron levels were increased that these iron levels would interfere with those cycles or at least give me a better uptime. I don't know. I'm having my doubts, and I had to stop taking iron due to bad stomach problems resembling gastritis/ ulceration. I never had this at all last year , from what I remember.

 

It's sad really, I wish I could get rid of this tach.

 

vitamin a has been helping a lot with sleep though, I'm hoping that as I get more sleep the tach will improve, but again I'm doubtful since I've had some periods of better sleeping this year and the tach seems to still be doing its own thing though. Hopefully the fact that I've practically almost weaned myself off of all my meds will somehow make the tach go away as well.

[Dolph]

Did you recheck your ferritin already? 

 

What meds did you stop taking?

[protoject]

Did you recheck your ferritin already? 

 

What meds did you stop taking?

 

Hey,
I didnt check it again recently. I've assumed it's surely gone up, but probably not by a lot.
My stomach is also messed up now since a period of gastritis a while back, and I presume it's possible i developed some ulcers; which makes it much harder to take iron....

i tried taking it once again and it made the stomach thing a lot worse so I've stopped for a few weeks now (actually I think it has been about a month)...

 

I wonder if injections would be worth getting.. though I worry about it overdosing me for the period during which I get the iron.. is that possible? (I think it's possible even with iron deficiency is it not?)

 

I wanted to add here too that I have noticed my pulse pressure is higher than it "should" be.

I think normal pulse pressure is between 30-40 but mine is sitting around 50 or 55 last few times I checked.

 

Then again I am using a Shopper's Drug Mart blood pressure machine, not a pump in the doctor's office. Therefore I don't know how accurate the machine is.

 

My pulse is still high though. Around 120 frequently at worst. 100 often, and sometimes it's pretty good like 60-70.

 

The meds I dropped to a very low level are trazodone and pregabalin. The problem existed when i was taking them in higher doses too except I *think* pregabalin lowered my heart rate with a high dose. I did drop down to this low dose over a long period of time and am pretty much sticking to it.

[protoject]

Started myself on 5 mg nebivolol, i wanted to thank the person who recommended that so much. So far I haven't had noticable tach at the same levels as before and I also havent noticed any palpitations. (btw usually when Im having a palpitation my pulse pressure is in the 50's range. [pulse pressure= diastolic minus systolic blood pressure])

 

I haven't checked my blood pressure numbers yet but i believe this nebivolol is a good choice. I've been on it 4 days and its effect seems to improve.

 

The only possible complication is that, along with my other 3 meds that I'm using for sleep/ anxiety (currently 50 mg trazodone at night, 90 mg pregabalin, and 0.5 etizolam bid), it seems to have made my zombified state even worse.

 

However the nebivolol has not affected my sleep negatively at all, which is exactly why I chose that over beta blockers. (i have been dosing in the morning, and only 5 mg)

 

The nebivolol brought my heart rate below 100, often between 55-90.
very happy with this.

 

cuz it seems like the effect is becoming more consistent and im more likely seeing 60-70 bpm on a constant basis

Edited by protoject, 29 July 2014 - 02:32 AM.