I’ve been experiencing ectopic beats everyday all day since January!
I’ve been to A&E twice and had an ecg done which picked up the ectopic beat but there doesn’t seem to be any concern. I’ve gone back to the GP who has now referred me to a cardiologist but my appointment is not until 25th April. I’m not experiencing any chest pain but have been belching and can have chest fullness at times.
My question is should I be worried with how often I’m having them? It feels like I have a one ectopic beat a min but sometimes this has gone up to three ectopic beats a min.
Any advice will be appreciated?
Many thanks
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nicnac00
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Two friends of mine were having problems with ectopic beats and were put on medication. Both found that removing trigger foods from their diet an enormous benefit. The triggers were coffee , alcohol, chocolate and spicy food. One who has given them completely had come off medication whilst the other is tempted to often! 🤣
With the caveat that I’m not medically qualified. Ectopic beats are extremely common and whilst they can be uncomfortable and unsettling, generally benign. The current belief is that almost everyone experiences ectopic beats, but only a small proportion of people are aware of having them. Once we start noticing them, we know the body becomes primed to spot them, which often leads to noticing them more, and that can worsen the problem for some people if it makes them stressed or anxious about the situation. Ectopics are only generally considered of concern in their own right if you’re having runs of three or more ventricular ectopics in a row without any normal beats in between, or if they total more than 10% of your total beats in a day, which for most people would be experiencing something in excess of 8000 ectopics per 24 hours. The easiest way to determine whether the beats are ventricular or atrial (or a mixture), and how many you’re actually having (as the total number may be different to the number you’re aware of), is a 24 hour monitor, called a holter monitor. In England, a GP can request one of these without referring you to cardiology, although cardiology do analyse the results and write the report to send back to the requesting doctor. I suspect that will be the first thing the cardiologist will suggest, as it’s an easy and frequently used way to see what’s going on in terms of electrical signals and arrhythmia, particularly if a problem/symptom comes and goes.
As Michael says, there are things that are known to be able to cause or increase the frequency of ectopics. If you have a look at my profile and look at my replies to others, you’ll find more detailed information on the things medically proven to be able to make the situation worse for some people. They don’t work for everyone, but lifestyle and dietary changes can make a huge difference; I went from having several hundred ectopics a day to around a dozen by working my way through the factors and determining which ones set me off, which in turn effectively stopped me having episodes of an underlying arrhythmia I have that is triggered by ectopics. Because I was having so many ectopics each day, I was having episodes of SVT two or three times a month, sometimes a week, and had been for 6 years. After the last major episode where I ended up in resus again to get it stopped, I did some proper reading on the subject, made the changes, and haven’t had a single episode since 2015.
In addition to the proven ones, which include all caffeine, chocolate (particularly dark, but milk often also contains caffeine), some medications, alcohol, stress/anxiety, and insufficient sleep, anecdotally, spicy food and ginger can also be triggers for some people. It doesn’t have to be large quantities, either, if something is a trigger: even a quarter teaspoon of instant, caffeinated coffee will noticeably increase my ectopics within an hour of drinking it. Eating anything effects some people due to the proximity of the vagus nerve, which runs to the stomach, to the heart. The nerve triggers the beats, which can be why some people notice them sitting after a meal. Some people also have positional ones, and a minority may get them in response to exercise, but what the triggers are depends on whether they’re emerging from the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, and for some people they just happen regardless: there’s a uk cardiologist called Sanjay Gupta that’s done some really good videos explaining this, alongside the little we really know about ectopics and what causes them. You can find them on YouTube.
Thank you for replying!I’ve made a number of dietary changes recently- gluten, dairy free, etc this doesn’t seem to have alleviated them as yet.
The only caffeine I have is matcha tea but will refrain and see if this helps. I suspect the lack of sleep could be a big factor along with a delayed response from stress.
I’ll check out the YouTube videos and see what changes I can make.
Insufficient sleep is guaranteed to make mine worse, without fail, so avoiding burning the candle at both ends makes a big difference. Caffeine, ginger, and dark chocolate are my other biggies, as well as lidocaine (local anaesthetic) - that was what triggered the increase in ectopics that caused the last major episode of arrhythmia I had. I also have positional ventricular ones if I bend forward and down, and lying on my left side. With dark chocolate, many shop or restaurant chocolate goodies and desserts are made with dark chocolate even if they’re listed as milk, so that was a learning curve. I will very occasionally indulge if eating out, but it’s with full knowledge that I might regret it later. Same with having a very occasional beer, although that tends to be palpitations more generally in my case rather than ectopics 🤷♂️
There have been recent studies that show tyramine is an issue for some people. It’s naturally occurring and found in a wide array of foods, but most notably aged cheeses, cured or processed meats, citrus and tropical fruits, fermented and pickled foods (including soy meat substitutes and pickled veg), and alcohol. I always forget to mention it because it doesn’t seem to make any difference to me, but it’s one to be aware of.
Fingers crossed things either settle or you get some helpful conclusions from cardiology: if they confirm it’s only ectopics and not at a frequency they need to do anything about, at least you’ll know where you are. I’ve found that knowing that’s what they are means they don’t really bother me anymore. I think it would be worse if I had spells without them, but because I have them every day, they’re just part and parcel of the expected.
Hi my ectopics are 30 per minute when bad every other one.They turned into persistant atrial fibrillation very quickly.All happened when GPS surgery closed due ho covid.Persistant a fib is actually easier to deal with unbelievably.
My partner was taken into hospital for one night last week when paramedics (who came to the house for some muscular pain he was suffering) discovered his irregular heartbeat. At the hospital they did lots of tests, told him he had whiplash (from digging the garden!) and that he was lucky: he has an extra heartbeat every minute! Then they put him in an ambulance and brought him home. LOL.
Beta blockers will do the trick. They should fit you with a heart monitor to see which type you have( cardiologist told me there’s dangerous ones and not so dangerous ones) I was on bisoprpolol for a while then changed them to sotalol which are brilliant for me. Good luck!
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