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Comment by hedayet | Hacker News Reader

I was diagnosed with a mysterious tachycardia last year, coincidental to this headline: while I was living in Canada.

At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast.

I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period ended without a root cause and with me just being put on heartrate reducers for a while.

I really feel for anyone dealing with "mystery" medical conditions. It’s a tough place to be.

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Ha, same! The first time I noticed it, coupled with palpitations, I thought I was dying and went to the ER. I swear nobody teaches you how to get older, so everything feels like something is going way wrong. They treated me like a baby, said avoid caffeine, and maybe see a cardio.

And I did. He was an old guy, didn't seem at all worried. He said he worked in pro sports and a surprising number of people have it, including top athletes, try not to worry too much about it. It's been nearly 10 years and I'm still kicking so I guess they were right.

But to this day I avoid smart watches/rings, because I know it'll be nothing but anxiety inducing alarms.

Did you get an EKG? Do you have it documented somewhere this issue randomly occurring is your 'normal', that's easy to share if you have an actual cardiac event? The reason I ask is I have a sternum pectus, so my EKGs can be odd. My cardio said I'm fine, but I should keep my odd EKG on my phone to show any doctors if I have an actual cardio event. Otherwise they may end up chasing something that isn't the issue.

Good idea. I don't, but hopefully I or my wife is around to tell them.

What's funny, or depressing depending on how you look at it... when I told my dad the terrible news, he said 'oh yeah, that's been happening to me for years.' Like I mentioned, nobody, including my parents, seem to teach you about getting old...which is terrible for anxious people like myself.

Finally a useful application of a tattoo

https://xkcd.com/933/

Getting an EKG seems very prudent. I had one done for a non-heart related procedure, and afterwards was basically asked: - Ever have any heart events? Heart racing, palpitations, that kind of thing? - Yes, a few times a year I've noticed events like that. Resolves in a few minutes, though. - Well, your EKG shows a slurred delta wave. Sign of Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. Might want to get that checked out.

I did, and it was. Fixed with ablation. No issues since. Other types of supraventricular tachycardia can also be cured with ablation.

Minute I read the chain above I was looking for someone to point out WPW. It’s relatively easy to manage or cure once you catch it.

I mean, I had a similar experience with the old doctor not being very worried when I had the same symptom. But when I raised that I was worried about having a heart attack and dying he was equally unworried about that "people die, don't worry about it". And yeah a surprising number of athletes also die suddenly from heart conditions, so I'm not sure I find that very reassuring.

In any case, they did diagnose SVT or some variant. But it pretty much went away, it seemed that getting dehydrated and/or alcohol was triggering it for me.

I actually find a smartwatch that monitors my heart rate very reassuring. I have suffered from anxiety in the past and if I think I'm having anxiety symptoms I can glance at my watch and it tells me everything is fine before I start stressing and making it manifest physically.

Dehydration is the biggest trigger for me as well, as far as I figured out.

Not to be crude, but if my pee isn't basically clear, I immediately start slamming fluids until it is again.

I’ll add fatigue/stress.

A long bike ride after a stressful week and off it goes.

An interesting observation from a cardiologist to me was that cyclist have 5x the rate of rhythm disorders compared to to general population.

But… ‘It’s hard to work out if that’s drug induced or not’.

Say maybe lay off the performance enhancing drugs.

Fun story to add: I can't get my heart rate measured. I get so nervous about it that I immediately double my heart rate. Of course it's impossible to communicate that with doctors. One even equipped me with a 24h heart monitor. Only to have my stupid brain go on overdrive and clock my heart at 120+ for the entire time, with 0 sleep. I literally fainted when getting ekg cables on me. I now have on record a heart condition without having one: I just get nervous from measurements lol

It's jokingly called 'white coat syndrome'. Any doctor who has a clue should understand this.

At 200 BPM the cause should be clearly visible on EKG. Examples:

https://en.my-ekg.com/arrhythmias/supraventricular-tachycard...

It's has similarities to debugging intermittent problems in software which many of us are familiar with. Heisenbugs. Heisen-medical issues.

Covid.

Or POTS, which can be caused by covid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postural_orthostatic_tachycard...

How many COVID shots did you get? I noticed my resting heart rate go up after the first one. So I never got another one.

When your immune system activity increases, generally so does your heart rate. It's fairly common to get sick and have an increased heart rate. A quick search for "heart rate when sick" will turn up a number of results explaining this, the mechanisms behind it, and more.

Sorry you missed out on simple, effective preventative health measures because of this misunderstanding.

It lasted over 6 months. My resting heart rate has been 52 for over 2 decades. Months after the shot it was up to 75 and stayed there for over 6 months. Slowly crept back to 52.

I got two. But these events started to happen 4 years after my last shot.

An immune response to any trigger temporarily increases the heart rate.

Or Covid itself.

COVID vaccines (and various other vaccines), often cause flu-like symptoms for a day or so; you should've been warned about this at the time. Pretty much anything that gives you a fever will boost your heart rate a bit.

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