How the heart influences what we perceive and fear
quantamagazine.org
quantamagazine.org
Coupled with low blood potassium levels and increasing distrust in my heart, I developed a fear that I could get ventricular tachycardia, and basically die instantly. I'm 33.
I know it's slightly off topic, but just be happy if you don't feel your heart beating and it's doing its work without you noticing. In my case, my anxiety disorder and fear is increasing adrenalin, making my heart stumble even more. It's so annoying knowing all that, but the emotions are just overwhelming and it's really hard to fight this.
Learning to slow down and breathe are the simplest thing that many never learn.
A few years ago, I delved again into meditation, this time more traditional Buddhist ones. I can't say emphatically enough that there is some deep knowledge there. Mindfulness (i.e. cultivating stable attention toward internal & external stimuli) is just the tip of the iceberg.
Like you, I found the expanded sensory stream provided by mindfulness training to be somewhat overwhelming. Imho, what's necessary to work with it fruitfully are: 1) developing the capacity of non-abiding, or not attaching/identifying too much with the flow of mental events, 2) training the unconscious mind to competently manage one's attention & awareness, so that you don't have constantly "pilot" your self.
Two books I've found indispensable are: The Mind Illuminated - John Yates, and The Rinzai Zen Way - Meido Moore
Of course, there's no substitute for a good teacher. Just be aware that there are many charlatans & New Age types who aren't so helpful. Good luck!
But I can also tell you that you eventually get used to it, and it just becomes a part of life. Feel free to drop me a line if you want to talk about it sometime (my username over at the big email provider with a G)
Several stressful hours later, the verdict came back: nothing abnormal. Of course, ever since that incident, my heart as been on my mind a lot more than I'd like. Getting a single skipped beat or a few palpitations sets me on edge. But the attention only means I notice more "errors". No heart is perfect, they all skip a beat every now and again, so I "know" it's OK, but it doesn't feel OK anymore. It's a particularly unpleasant kind of anxiety.
I'm more used to it now, but the sense of doom still passes right through all my reasoning layers.
But normally your mind should tune it out unless you focus on it.
Other things that helped was regular exercise, with good cardio load, and getting enough sleep.
Hoping in God and the eternal life definitely helped with the anxiety part.
Hope you feel better.
I ask because I used to have panic attacks and I would become suddenly aware of my heart beating faster than normal but my heart rate monitor showed it was not, and my blood pressure monitor showed I was still normal - it was effectively only my awareness that was out of whack for whatever reason. I was turned on to meditation and can count on one hand the number of times I’ve had these panic attacks in the last year.
For me it is constant chest pain that comes and goes essentially whenever it wants. It is quite varied and never fails to keep worrying me with its novelty. Sometimes burning, sometimes squeezing, sometimes stabbing. Been to the doctor and ER dozens of times. No diagnosis. And it isn't even correlated with anxiety as far as I can tell, although the anxiety only makes it worse. Sometimes NSAIDs make the pain unbearable. Sometimes they don't.
It doesn't even make sense because as far as I understand the heart isn't innervated, so why is the pain always on the left side of my chest?
I went to urgent care and they reported my cholesterol levels, etc. were excellent.
It's so terrible because the heart is critically tied to our ability to continue living through unconscious action, and so anything regarding it feels completely out of control in the moment. Meaning your instant death is out of your control. Now have that on your mind for 365 days and see how it feels.
So after spending dozens of times trying to figure out if something's wrong with my body, seeing as it's probably trying to send some sort of signal, and completely failing to come up with an answer, what else is there left to do? Worry about dying every single day?
Early on I got so many palpitations I was sitting in bed holding a heart monitor on my chest until 3 in the morning. This was when I was 23 and started to regret all the life decisions I had made in college to feel this awful and scared about my health that young. Today if I get like three palpitations in the span of five minutes I'll be completely unable to keep focusing on work and go off trying to manage the anxiety in the hopes of not dying.
If anything it's pushed me to eat more vegetables and such, but I don't know if it will end up helping.
I'm 23 and healthy. I went into ER a few months back with high heart rate, chest pressure, and palpitations. They couldn't find anything wrong with my heart, monitored me for a few days and discharged me without a diagnosis.
For 2-3 weeks after that I still had that same occasional chest pressure/tightness. This might be a coincidence but it started easing away when I started doing various exercises meant for costochondritis.
This sounds like an upper digestive tract issue. You should look into Roemheld Syndrome. https://cara.care/digestive-disorders/upper-abdomen/roemheld... I was having a lot of feelings of skipped heartbeats and my doc realized I was also having a lot of digestive issues so he told me that Roemheld seemed most likely. What I noticed is that skipped beats occurred around the time when I needed to burp. The burping releases pressure on the vagus nerve which goes to both the heart and the stomach. When I realized this my anxiety was much reduced.
In my case I found that I needed to limit chocolate consumption, sit up straighter and practice deep breathing.
I have a history of heart pain and heart weirdness associated with certain health issues. It has gotten better over time as my health issues have improved.
I have come to believe that some of my heart issues -- especially pain in my chest, which is why I am replying to you -- are related to how the lymphatic system works and are related to health events that put a strain on my lymphatic system in some way.
> The risk of heart rhythm problems with low magnesium levels is particularly high in people who also have low potassium levels. [0]
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/ask-the-doctors-...
Most of us taste our food before deciding whether to add salt, same should go with supplements.
That said, it is definitely something to discuss with a doctor. I've had good luck recently working with a naturopath who is highly knowledgeable about nutrition and has far more time to discuss such things as diet and supplements than any general practitioner I've ever visited.
When I was a kid I used to complain of episodic pains I would get in my heart, and as a child I described it as feeling like lightning shocking my heart. After some testing I was pretty quickly diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia.
I feel pretty grateful as I never had to have a heart monitor, take meds, and as far as I can recall the last episode was sometime in high school (maybe 20 years ago), I hadn't really thought about it in a long time, but you made me realize now how bizarre it was to "feel my heart".
Right now the extra stress and weight gain gives me much worse heart palpitations. Its hard when that happens to relax when you have to think whether something serious is finally happening or just another blip.
This stuff is just supposed to work.... never had to worry about any health stuff when I was a teenager.
- Cognitive-behavioral therapy did not work for me. The thing is, as soon as your heart wants your attention, you're submissive. I talked a lot with psychologists, but it didn't get better.
- Running to the ER and being dismissed with good blood samples helps. But only for a limited time.
- Stress is very bad. Not long ago I had a very arduous business call with a former co-worker and I felt one extrasystole after another. As if my heart would want me to calm down ;)
- SSRI (e.g. Escitaloprame) are really powerful. They did not cure my extrasystoles, but they prevented things like panic attacks. Side effects are note worthy though, you pretty much lose a lot of your sexual energy.
- and if you're into medicine, SSRI may also produce new cardiac problems, such as QT-interval prolongation. It's a vicious circle.
In the end, I think, the heart is much, much more than a muscle. I always hope that someday I'll find a doctor who gives me the answer I'm searching for so long, what exactly is causing all this.
Mirtazapine is not an SSRI, but it is an anti-depressant that blocks adrenaline receptors. My resting-heartrate went from 95 to 55 from one day to another.
The first few days my body felt a little heavy, but after that I had absolutely no side effects at all.
(compare the scramblers in Blindsight)
Respiration, acting through the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system (breathing in) and the parasympathetic (feed and breed) nervous system (breathing out) also impacts the heart as measured through Heart Rate Variability. Like many systems in biology, I suspect there is a network of feedback loops at play and they act in both directions.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-palpita...