hello all, spent a night at A&E to have a 12 year old doctor tell me these are nothing to worry about although it went on for several minutes 3 separate times yesterday and knocked me off my feet 🤷🏻♀️
Apparently unless I actually black out twice I can’t be referred on to anyone and when I why this has flared up again as there must be a reason I was told not to drink coffee
Any help or advice would be appreciated 😊
Hi Hazel
I’m sorry to hear about your recent PVC episode; you’re right, they can be awful to experience.
I think the difficulty where medical professionals are concerned is that although they are correct in the information they are providing, they often lack the empathy for how you actually experience the episodes.
Are you under a cardiologist? I think it would be worth raising your experience with them (or your GP if no cardiologist) to investigate the underlying cause.
Unfortunately I can’t share any ways to manage reduce them as I can’t seem to identify any particular triggers; I experience mine in the daytime and at night.
Maybe start a log of when they happen, the pattern of the beat of your heart, duration of the episode etc.
I hope you start feeling better soon 🤞🏼
Best wishes
Soap 🧼
Hello. Thank you for your reply, I have my ecg from the episodes so I’m sending them to the palpitations clinic Monday and calling my go Monday
It’s the way you get treated after all it’s not an ingrown toe nail and it might be nothing to a doctor but it frightened the life out of me
Thank you 😊
What are these symptoms of pvc
I felt like I was going to faint and could feel my heart thumping, used my Kardia unit several time to make sure the reading was right and it went on forages , faded away then during the day kicked off loads of times
Hi Hazel.
I know how you feel. I have ventricular bigeminy and I've had them constantly for 5 weeks now. I spoke to my cardiologist and he said there's nothing wrong with me, despite seeing all my ECGs from my Kardia.
It’s a great response to something that scares the hell out you isn’t it 🤷🏻♀️
Definitely! I have also found out today I have regurgitation in 3 valves. 7 months ago my echo showed no regurgitation
My personal experience is feeling like my heart has missed a beat and then followed by a very powerful pounding beat and sometimes I can have a run of several or a string with 1 normal beat or several normal beats in between; that seems to vary.
What I can say with certainty is that it isn’t very pleasant to experience and at times it’s been quite frightening. I too have experienced a feeling like I was going to faint in the past.
Best wishes
Soap 🧼
H , this seems to have a pattern of starting in the morning about half hour after I get up , my legs ache, my chest is tight and it’s hard to breath while my heart bumps all over the place it usually seems to ease of lunch time weirdly enough but I’m off to Spire hospital today to see a cardiologist so we shall see what happens 👍😊😊
Hi hazel I feel for you. Iv had nearly a week of ectopics and they finally settled down recently. I haven’t been to hospital because Iv had same response in the past unfortunately.!!
My EP once told me not to worry as they are harmless. They don’t feel harmless when I’m getting 2 a minute ( at worst) Iv still got them now but nothing compared to last week. They can start playing with your mind sometimes too.? I can’t concentrate on anything when I get them.😡
I hope you’re feeling better soon hazel. 👍
Best wishes. Ron
let these doctors feel what you feel, as often as you feel them, and see if they still say "it's nothing, you're fine." see if they keep their jobs or have to quit due to not being able to function anymore. if only. it's very easy to tell someone it's nothing when you have no idea what they're feeling. and with heart arrhythmias, i feel that we're a big stigmatised.
meaning that we're blamed for having palpitations. or we only have them because we're highly anxious people. or too sensitive. would you blame a cancer patient for having cancer symptoms? only if it was lung cancer. you'd blame them if they'd been smokers. but many get lung cancer when they've never smoked.
i've also been in A & E with severe palps and chest tightness, with a doctor telling me it's nothing, as i lay there crying as i suffer continued palps as they talk at me.
i do agree that in a lot of cases, you have to get really, really bad in order for docs to start taking you seriously. heart rhythm issues or other serious heart issues can be hard to spot, especially if the doctor has a bias that it's only anxiety or that it's entirely non cardiac.
You'd think that they'd want to prevent a problem occurring than trying to cure it. Curing is also much more expensive for the NHS
Absolutely, I am a pretty calm person most of the times but they do know how to push my buttons with some things that have been said to me 🤷🏻♀️😜
hello, thank you fo your reply . I agree it’s not much help when you’re frightened to death and need answers or at least some more help other than lots of people have it ……..
I spend all my time walking to be fit , eating the right things, doing as I’m advised and get treated like a nuisance, go home and come back when you’re dead isn’t helping at all
Sorry for the vent 🤨
Hi Hazel,Sorry to hear you've had this experience. You will find loads of helpful posts on this site about pvcs but maybe no guaranteed cure. I've had them for over 35 years (despite being pretty fit) and can get several a minute going on all day long. They still get me down when they're that bad. But you have to hold onto the fact that they are generally harmless unless you get thousands a day going on for weeks without pause. Dr Sanjay Gupta from York cardiology has lots of good videos on YouTube which might help to reassure you.
Good luck
Hi Hazel,
I’m so sorry to hear of your experience. I too suffer with PVC’s and they’re horrible. The thing with PVC’s is they need checking out because they could be nothing or they could be an early sign of something else.
I went to A&E multiple times with episodes of ventricular tachycardia and they just checked my vitals, told me I was fine and sent me away and made me feel like I was stupid to have bothered them. I then saw a private cardiologist with these same readings and he booked me in for an emergency procedure and MRI!
Some doctors in A&E are a joke and they’re not cardiologists so don’t have a clue what they’re dealing with.
I hope you feel better soon and get some well deserved help! Xx
Hi Hazel it's always the 12year-old who has the answers, sorry your post made me laugh.I know you must be worried and rightly so. I had a fifteen year old doctor on my last visit to A+E last year ask me if I wanted to be resuscitated! I understand why they ask this question and of course at 64 my answer was absolutely I want the whole nine yards of resuscitation don't spare anything the full ER experience!
Thankfully it didn't come to that and when he saw my ECG which showed a defective artery he said the safest place for me to sit was the waiting room as there were more people around!!
I sincerely hope that your problem gets sorted really soon. I do feel emergency treatment since Covid is a sticking plaster service and until a near fatal event it's all follow up and advice.
just a PS to Evaluna's suggestion about looking up Dr Gupta's resources:
here's a link to one of his videos, this will lead you to more - youtube.com/live/-i3b-ureBx...
and this is info on his clinic website - drsanjayguptacardiologist.c...
Thank you 👍
That "12 yr old doctor" might one day save your life. I am not a fan of any derogatory comments directed to health professionals on here. They are underpaid,over worked and hugely let down by Barclay, Hunt and nearly every recent so called health minister. Less negativity,less stress.
Everyone is underpaid and overworked. There is no point being there if they can't do their job. Just seeing patients like they're on a conveyor belt us no use to anyone. There is no excuse for just telling patients they're fine, just so they can hurry up to the next patients. I know the main problem is down to government letbdiwns, but health care professionals need to also take some responsibility for poor patient outcomes because they just can't give them the time and treatment needed.
Many of us are on here trying to get advice from each other because health professionals are doing it!
I think my best comment from an A&E doctor was ‘what do yo expect us to do ?
I don’t know , refer me to someone who knows , reassurance would be nice , I didn’t know what the hell was happening to me was I having a heart attack , some compassion sometimes works better than a thousand pills
And I’m not having a go I know they are busy but they hold the knowledge I don’t want to use doctor google 🤷🏻♀️
Thank you 😊
I stopped by pvc by using taurine. I take 1 gram when i walked in the morning and 1 grab before i go to bed at night. An NIH study showed men taking 9 grams per day were able to stop their pvc in 95% of men. The other five added archive to the taurine to stop their pvc. Talk to your doctor about this. Taurine is a very safe amino acid. Search for the nih study link.
Many thanks and will do 👍
Hi Hazel, PVC’s and any type of irregular heart beat can be very worrisome. A bit of history; I’ve had PVC’s since childhood and I’m now 63. I stay very active and I am a health coach. Many years ago I went to a cardio and they put me on calcium channel blockers that “somewhat” do the trick. However, whenever I get above stressed, the PVC’s kick back in and sometimes can be a few hundred to thousands per day. I’ve been to top Hospitals like Johns Hopkins and met with their top cardio doc who all said, “you are fine and these episodes are benign” and to basically work on stress levels. It’s also possible that by letting these PVC’s worry you to the point of going into AFIB which has happened to me. I’ve had just about every test, nuclear stress and the heart scans and all show up ok. The doctors I have met with and gone into detail will say “we just don’t know what causes these normally benign arrhythmia’s to happen”. I even had a doc who specialized in arrhythmias that suffered from them himself. He took the same meds I did and practiced all the healthy things like stress reduction, etc
If you are void of chest pains (which by the way can just be symptomatic of stress), passing out, dizziness, nausea, and any other type of pains in stomach while you incur these irregular beats, you may just have the benign version. That being said, one should always get an ECG/EKG, heart ultrasound and probably a stress test to rule out any dangerous arrhythmia’s.
Triggers like caffeine, lack of sleep, eating unhealthy, and without a doubt stress will set these irritating things off. I’ve also worked on the vagal maneuvers which can cause these things. Gargling, humming and laughing can help stimulate the vagus nerve and calm these things down for some . I do drink caffeine coffee some days but I’m well aware that later in the day, those irregular heart beats will show up . I just let them work through and feel just fine. Exercising also calms them down for me.
The best thing to do is, ignore the ones that come and go “only after” you have received confirmation that are benign. And in the mean time, eat as healthy as possible, get great sleep (my biggest trigger), and laugh a lot!!!
Best in your journey!!
Lou
Yeah, that's the reality. Doctors simply don't know enough about the human heart to explain why some feel PVCs and some people who have them don't feel them.
I kinda think PVC's are Gods way of reminding us to slow down and relax! 
Thank you for your reply , I’m starting to understand these a little better now
Many thanks for your help 😊
Yea, not that it’s scary but oddly enough, the more one worried about “benign” PVC’s the worse they get and it becomes a crazy cycle. Here’s a tip worth trying, in many cases it could be a vagus nerve problem, try humming, signing, laughing, and gargling. It can help rebalance the vagus nerve and possibly slow down the arrhythmias.
Yes. The doctor is correct. Most likely nothing to worry about. 3 times for severally minutes...this is nothing compared to some. I remember reading it has to be over a certain amount to be a problem...I think over 30% of the time, over a 24hr period...don't quote me but it is online somewhere the actual amount.
I have had ecgs where I get PVCs around that amount and nothing further was done. They were literally non stop all day long, fluttering away. Beating 6 beats then a jitter, thud thud. Anxiety kicks in, making them even worse. Yup. We all been there.
I have found that the best way to tackle these is
1) stay calm. Mentally beat them down by telling yourself, the tests are correct. The medical professionals would have picked up anything major.
2) cut out tea/coffee, any caffeine. Eat good. Stay hydrated.
3) EXERCISE!!!! (Big one. The PVCs will literally vanish if a proper exercise routine is done).
4) go for a walk whilst they are happening. Again...this is a PVC and aniexity destroyer!
5) Breath!! Ahhhhhhh. Whack on relaxing meditation music on YouTube. Big breath in nose all the way...out thru mouth all way. Repeat 5 times....5th Breath in AND HOLD! for as long as possible....you may literally feel your heart beat here and the pvcs....hold and exhale....repeat again if necessary.
For me, this breathing exercise can work and seems to reset the heart rhythm.
6) Sleep! Get a full night's sleep does wonders for the heart...but also during the day if PVCs are bothering you, try go for a quick snooze. Even 5 mins shut eye and drift off. It can also reset the heart rhythm.
Good luck. 👍
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