Managing fast heart rate and stomach discomfort

Hi Michelle you are not alone in your symptoms I stated like you four Years ago waking early morning with upset tum and palpitations Heart rate 165 Was told over and over it was anxiety but it's not. Turns out I had a large sliding hiatus hernia which is classic for causing belching and acid reflux which irritates nerves in the solar plexus and can set off your heart beating fast. Anxiety is a result but not the cause. When my heart goes fast I take a good swig of Liquid antacI'd and it slows it all down within ten mins. I had my hernia fixed plus reflux surgery (linx) and I had four months off Ppi and no palps at all.Unfortunately I was given a muscle relaxant and my reflux and palps have returned so I am back almost at square 1 I was told in ER that it's true that acid reflux causes palps Also get off gluten That does it too.

Hi Michelle

You are most certainly not alone, I feel like you are almost describing my symptoms to me! My symptoms first presented as a pounding heart and rapid heart rate. Cue lots of anxiety, stomach problems and then heartburn. At times my heart seems to be all over the place, racing, skipping beats, and when I eat I can feel (and even see!) my stomach throbbing.

The racing heart sounds like an insignificant issue to most people but I know what profound effect it can have on you, it is SO much harder to relax, sleeping becomes a problem and you get caught in a circle of anxiety which leads to a worsening of the symptoms.

Most important thing is don't let people fob you off with anxiety, they always try it and the worst thing you can do is believe them. Yes it makes the problem worse and you should try to address it, but you also need to figure out how to physically relieve your symptoms too.

I can only give advice based on what I have noticed over the years but hopefully you find it useful. Firstly if I do not drink a lot of water, or eat regularly then my heart rate will be about 80-90 at rest compared to my 'normal' of 60-70. In extreme cases, like when I have to starve and drink no water for a test like an endoscopy, my heart rate is always 150+ when seated. Two things that affect heart rate are dehydration and blood sugar levels, which I think explains somewhat what I have noticed about eating/drinking. So I think one thing you could try is eating more frequently and drinking a bit more. But obviously stay within what your stomach can tolerate, my stomach is the bane of my life so I know it can be so difficult trying to eat and drink enough when your stomach just wants to rest. I find ginger quite helpful if my stomach is a bit off, also a lot of people with anxiety take ginger for 'butterflys' in the stomach and it works.

The biggest improvement I got was not in taking anxiety meds, it was actually taking ant-acid meds, Gaviscon, PPIs and ranitidine. You say you've had GERD for 4 years so are you already on these?

Also has your doctor ever offered a beta blocker? Im surprised they havent if your heartrate is always over 150, and it would probably work a lot better at calming you than Xanax.

You could also look into something called POTS (Postural Tachycardia Syndrome), do you notice any difference between lying and sitting up? It probably isn't that, but a lot of the treatments for it, like drinking lots of water, could help with a generally fast heart rate.

On the anxiety issue, you probably feel like its impossible to relax, I know the feeling, but I always try, and I use some relaxation tapes and while I can't fully relax when the hearts pounding, it does help get me calmer than before. I use a relaxation technique called Autogenics and can't recommend it enough. I've been on everything from sedatives to sleeping pills in the past, but I rank Autogenics up there with it all because it is so effective when you get the hang of it.

Michelle
It might be worth trying PPI yes, or maybe just Zantac, when I've had bad bouts of stomach pain I usually welcome the heartburn because I find it so more tolerable. A note on the carafate, I personally find it makes me worse, I dont know if its because of some interaction with the PPI or I just have a reaction to it, but point being sometimes even taking something that's supposed to help actually causes you problems so good to keep track of what things you try and how you feel afterwards. I also take DGL, a form of licorice which seems to settle my stomach a bit.

What kind of things are you eating? I find diet really important, it took me so long to actually figure out that a lot of what I was eating was making it worse. Things like vegetables that are supposed to be 'healthy' were giving my stomach a hard time. Atm Im sticking to mainly brown rice and a bit of fish because Im going through a bad flare up again and its the one thing I've found that gives me the least problems. I find keeping protein fairly low and fat low helps me most, and I don't have much veg (and always thoroughly cooked) just out of fear because so many set me off.

If you have a juicer I've heard cabbage juice and raw potato juice helps with stomach problems, I tried it once but couldn't stand the taste lol.

Also super weird thing happening today. Can't move around too much or stomache and heart race so I'm bed ridden at the moment :( thank the Lord my husband stayed home with me today. I really wanna try going down the stairs but it just aggravates something in there.

Hi, Michelle.

I can't say this has anything to do with you, but you might try looking up a few things like "cardioesophageal reflex" and "linked angina." It's what triggers my tachycardia when I eat something that the stomach or esophagus doesn't like. In my case it's usually sulfites in foods, or sometimes it's texture of the food. Others get it from MSG or any number of food triggers.

The way to find your food triggers is to keep a "food journal." Look that up in the archives - the search box at the top of the page. It's how my allergist had me find the foods that gave me tachycardia and then the ingredient in the foods that is the real culprit.

You need to get on this. I let my problem go for a couple of years, and then one day after eating a small bowl of delicious cereal with dried fruit I got tachycardia, followed by a heart attack. My coronary arteries contracted and pinched an artery to 95%.

I hope you're seeing a cardiologist. ERs aren't the place to go for heart problems that are continuing.

Cardioesophageal reflex is not diagnosed by any doctors I know of except those that have done the studies - read them online. There are more all the time.

Yep, I had all the tests and the monitor for many months, right up to 2 weeks before my heart attack. I felt out of breath doing any sort of exercise, felt there was something wrong with me, but nobody would believe me. I know now that high cholesterol and taking ibuprofen for pain, may have contributed to out of breath, but the tachycardia was something else.

The only way I know of to diagnose this is to figure it out for yourself the way my allergist had me do it. FOOD JOURNAL. I'm not going to repeat the many posts, so put the words into the search box at the top of the page. There are hours of reading.

There's probably no use talking to most cardiologists about it because they likely will dismiss you, like mine did, and he's a good one!

One thing - how's your cholesterol? That's something you can control. I finally got my familial high cholesterol down to super good by simply not eating bread. Cholesterol is reversible! It's not about avoiding eating fat. Your liver takes the carbs from the bread and makes cholesterol from them. I may have had a cholesterol plaque rupture when my arteries spasmed. Nobody ever figured out anything except that there was a tiny, tight pinch showing on the monitor pictures when I got the stent. I didn't have high cardiac enzymes, which led me to looking into cardioesophageal reflex. (with an E, not refl U x)

It's just something to consider. I'm no doctor! Keeping a journal is FREE and not very hard to do. I keep a notebook on the kitchen counter and put the time and all my foods, drinks, and medications into it. Then I write down all my reactions - like tachycardia. Tach will usually show up within a half hour to 2 hours if it's triggered by food or something else you consume.

I got rid of my tachy events (except when I make stupid mistakes in eating), all my gastric reflux events too, just by figuring out I'm sensitive to sulfites. You could have a totally different sensitivity.

This is not a quick fix. It takes months to learn which foods, and particularly which ingredients in the the foods, are the culprits.