Heart disease? Or anxiety?

The only thing I know about heart problems is I have one.

If I stress too much I can go into deep chest pain and it gets worse. And I take an Ativan tranquilizer or 2, and the pain goes from increasing to decreasing.

If I see I’m exercising too much, I can take a half or full Ativan to slow down this anticipated process, and then a second which is what I normally take when I go to bed.

As a bipolar, I take 600mg of Lithium and 7.5 mg of Mirtazapine anti-depressant, both at bed time. To help with my sleep, I also take some Melatonin sleep aid from the health food store, drug store or grocery store nutrient or health food section or over the net.

Do you get enough sleep at night? How long have you had this? Do you have high blood pressure?

Socialization is also recommend.by the net, as well as good diet.

I try eating fresh food (chicken, pork chops, hamburger, or better, turkey). Frozen vegetables are lower in sodium than canned, I think, check on the back of the bag.

Processed food such as canned or frozen French fries, pizza, fish, etc., are high in sodium. Instead of frozen French fries, I eat boiled, round potatoes, which have no salt. You can eat the larger baked potatoes because you don't have Diabetes like I do, so I eat the smaller potatoes because of less carbs.

(Boxed food such as sliced potatoes, noodles, etc., are also high in salt). I've read where canned beef stew has, 1,000 mg. of salt whereas people with heart problems need only 1,500 mg. of salt all day long. So lowering salt with fresh food is said to be a help.

Also when I lay down to go to bed, I use a heating pad, which makes my heart work less, for it enlarges the blood vessels and allows the blood to flow more smoothly. I also use it during the night when I wake up, to help me go back to sleep. I keep it plugged into the wall by my bed.

Warm bath (or I have a chair in the tub and use a sprayer), socialization, exercise. Visit your doctor. Net says there are some meds.

Positive thinking can help.

I read your post in the heart forum & you said you had several tests done already & the drs are saying it's your anxiety. Why not ask to be referred to another cardiologist for a 2nd opinion & be sure to obtain all of your tests for the dr to review. If nothing is found by the 2nd opinion, hopefully this will give you peace of mind.

Good luck.

You said, “Yes i have high blood pressure 140-160 over 100 sometimes. I don’t feel very anxious, it’s my symptoms that make me anxious. If i can ask what heart problem do you have? Do you have a diagnoses? Some people never get one even though they have heart disease.”

My typical blood pressure reading is 98/62 with a heartrate of 65. You said you have high blood pressure of 140/160 over 100. I take blood pressure medicine of Olmesartan Medoxomil, 20 mg. a day.

Do you take blood pressure medicine? Do you have a general practitioner who can treat that and high cholesterol, etc.?

As far as my diagnosis, you’re right, I don’t have one. But I did hear my heart doctor mumble something under his breath to his nurse, based on tests results, a few words which didn’t make any sense to me but sounded like a condition he was telling her about.

My situation is, I can no longer do a certain amount of exercise, without it exciting my heart and making this build up of great pain, which, if it’s not stopped, would be a much bigger problem. So I now shy from excess exercise, and also if that does occur, I try to head off problems by taking my Ativan tranquilizer as soon as possible, in addition to my nighttime dosage of Ativan.

Ativan stops the pain buildup.

The condition started when a new general practitioner I had advised me to get off b/p medicine, I didn’t but when I was overcoming that, she advised in a letter not to take my b/p med for 2 days prior to a heart test. The night of the heart test, with reduced b/p med, heart pain like I had never had. Her bio on the wall said she was divorced with children. I don’t know what her ex-husband did, but I felt like she could have been taking it out on me and other male senior citizens.

Are you dxed with anxiety. Do you take anything for it?

How did this start for you? How long have you had it?

Healthline.com says:

What is sinus tachycardia?

Sinus tachycardia refers to a faster-than-usual heart rhythm. Your heart has a natural pacemaker called the sinus node, which generates electrical impulses that move through your heart muscle and cause it to contract, or beat. When these electrical impulses are transmitted normally, it’s referred to as normal sinus rhythm (60 to 100 bpm).

Normal sinus tachycardia:

Other things (not just exercise) that can cause sinus tachycardia include:
• anxiety or emotional distress; fever; some medications; stimulants, such as caffeine or nicotine; recreational drugs, such as cocaine.

Inappropriate sinus tachycardia:

If you have sinus tachycardia with no known reason, it’s called inappropriate sinus tachycardia (IST). People with IST can have an inexplicably fast heart rate even while they’re resting.
In addition to rapid heart rate, IST can cause:

shortness of breath; chest pains; dizziness or fainting; headaches; trouble exercising; anxiety.

Causes

Doctors aren’t sure about the exact cause of IST, but it likely involves a combination of factors, including: a problem with your sinus node; unusual nerve signaling that causes your heart rate to increase; dysfunction of the nerves that work to lower your heart rate.

Treatment

IST is often hard to treat since its causes aren’t fully understood. Depending on how fast your heart rate is, your doctor might prescribe beta-blockers or calcium channel blockers to lower your heart rate.
You may also need to make some lifestyle changes, such as:
• avoiding things that could cause an increase in heart rate, such as stimulants, recreational drugs, or stressful situations; eating a heart-healthy diet; exercising; maintaining a healthy weight.

In severe cases that don’t respond to medication or lifestyle changes, you may need a cardiac ablation procedure. This involves using energy to destroy a tiny part of the heart tissue located in the area that’s causing tachycardia.
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This information is from the net, which you can also look into.

Can you at least get treated for high blood pressure or anxiety, or you don't want to do that?

I think you should see a general practitioner and someone who can treat anxiety.

At least listen to what they have to say. Someone once told me, "You don't take good care of yourself." And they were right. It's just that I didn't know what to do.

What I needed to do was to get positive. Are you a positive person? Were you raised in a positive environment?

If you can compete in sports, you can compete in this situation.

I wasn't raised in a positive household, either, but I came across a column which said, "If you think going into a problem that you're going to solve it, your chances of solving it double."

I think if you think going into a problem that you're going to solve it, your chances of solving it increase tenfold or more. Because it sets your mind toward looking for solutions.

When I used to think going into a problem that I couldn't solve the problem, because my mind was negative and I didn't know it, my mind would do as told and would look, not for solutions, but for ways to lose. And I did.

Do you think you're going to solve this problem?

Trying used to be my objective, also. When I would tell my dad I had a problem, he would say, "Did you try to solve it?" and I would say "Yes." And he would say, "Angels can do no better."

He was also a negative person, as was my mother, and that transferred to me, there as a child thinking my mother and dad knew everything and adopting their philosophy on how to approach problems. (I transferred negative to my now grown son, and today we don't get along. I created a monster.)

When I read the column on being positive going into a problem that you can solve it (25 years ago, I can quote that almost to the day), it substituted another way of thinking into my brain. You know, maybe Mommy and Daddy weren't right. You know, maybe a 10-year-old's thinking wasn't right.

Another factor was, just before reading the column on being positive, my negative thinking towards a problem had lead me into another huge defeat, not only for me but for other people standing beside me. I could recover from another defeat, but everybody around me has to suffer because I can't solve problems? That's a huge difference.

I can remember my thinking, as if the room was on fire and my conscious thought, open the door and walk out. My negative unconscious (from childhood) thought, you can't solve problems, and besides the door might be locked. (My negative unconscious had just turned down my positive conscious mind's
olution).

I then thought, well, then, dive through the window (a negative/positive solution, to give both my conscious (positive) and my unconscious (negative) a partial victory each. I dive through the window. I walk over to the door. It's been unlocked the entire time. My negative unconscious mind had almost gotten me, and other people, killed.

Just another day in the life of a negative person. Yeah, so when I saw that column on being positive going into a problem that you can solve it, I knew this was the best thing that had every happened to me.

As for not solving every problem, the columnist she wrote, "Finally, never hold the past over your own head. Learn what you can from your mistakes...and give yourself the sympathy...that you'd gladly give to any friend."

Tim Tam - thanks for the insight, appreciated.

Also have to agree with last comment - there's literature showing it can potentially cause issues, but I've met many people with 'older parents' who don't have any apparent, major health issues.