Anxiety, ectopics and palpitations

hi guys um my name is Sanjay Gupta I'm a consultant cardiologist in New York and I have an interest in the subject of palpitations and ectopic Heartbeats uh and um I was really Keen um to do another video it's been a while since I did my last video and that's predominantly because I've been away on holiday and I've been quite busy um but since I started doing the videos I've actually had a lot of people write to me and contact me uh because they've been troubled with palpitations and I've become I've become aware of exactly how big this problem is uh the problem of ectopic heartbeats the problem of people feeling it topics uh the problem whereby people go to their doctors and the doctor said look it's nothing dangerous it's a bit of a topic you know it's just fewer topics they're benign nothing bad is going to happen to you and the patient goes home and continues to feel them and this causes them a lot of concern and a lot of times patients really don't know where to turn to and um I um have spoken to a lot of you uh who've had ectopics and um I've spoken a lot about the various different things that can cause ectopics uh and most of those things are related to our lifestyle um whilst I've been talking to you I've been trying to work out in my own mind is there one common thing that runs between the majority of people I see with ectopic heartbeats or with symptomatic palpitations is there one thing that underpins all this and what I have found from speaking to people is that the one thing that seems to be common in the majority of patients is that they have some sort of health related anxiety that they're generally anxious people and they're particularly worried about their health and that is by far the commonest thing I've found in people who complain of symptomatic palpitations you know palpitations pbcs Pacs when you look in further you find that there's a degree of anxiety and a lot of uh patients are actually taking medications for anxiety or will openly say look you know I do suffer from anxiety it's not something that's hidden away or covert it's actually very obvious that they have anxiety but that's the one thing that underpins this so my the reason I'm doing this talk is to try and work out why is it that anxiety causes people to feel ectopic beats why why does anxiety cause ectopic Beats um so I've looked into this and I wanted to try and explain it in a bit um in an easy way now let's say I take a hundred people off the street okay a hundred asymptomatic people who have no symptoms of palpitations who have no symptoms of PVCs or Pacs and I put a monitor on them for 24 hours at the end of that is 24 hours if I look through the results I will find that at least 70 of those 100 people will have some egg topics on the monitor PVCs or Pacs but they'll have some ectopics on the monitor but remember they're not feeling these ectopics These are asymptomatic patients so that tells us that ectopics are not uncommon okay at the end of the day your heart is like a machine but it can't be perfect all the time and it does um it does throw off at topics from time to time and that is not an uncommon thing and neither is that a hugely abnormal thing having ectopics is not abnormal however what is abnormal is feeling them because the majority of times the majority of people who can you know Havoc topics but they don't feel them uh whereas the people who come to me say look I feel these ectopics I feel my ectopics I feel palpitations and I know that the PVCs and the Pacs and they're destroying me and that made my life hell and so then the question arises why do these people feel these ectopics what is making them feel these topics so if you take a hundred people who are now symptomatic with palpitations or symptomatic with ectopics who are saying look I'm feeling these ectopics and you do a monitor on them okay there is undoubtedly a large proportion where you will see that their palpitations coincide with ectopics but equally well you will also see that sometimes when they're complaining of palpitations there are no ectopics and the heart rhythm is completely normal okay so what I'm trying to say here is that not all ectopics cause palpitations and not all palpitations are ectopic Beats and so the question is how does anxiety cause you to have or feel these ectopic beats now the easy way to try and explain this is this some of you may have been pregnant okay now if you think back when you were pregnant or when you found out that you were pregnant I bet that everywhere you looked people were falling pregnant everywhere you looked you'd see pregnant people for example if you buy this amazing card that you've been waiting for that you've been saving up for and you buy it and it's blue and it's a Mercedes the first day when you start driving it everywhere you look you'll see more blue Mercedes than any other any other time in your life you'll just notice blue cars you'll notice the Mercedes you'll notice exact models and suddenly it'll be like everyone's got one so the point is that you have lowered your threshold your body your mind lowers the threshold for picking things up okay and when they are relevant to you and this is what anxiety does it lowers your threshold for picking things up so for a lot of people when I've spoken to them it has emerged that they've had some kind of situation that either have been involved in a in a very stressful situation or they've lost a loved one suddenly due to health issues or they've had a breakup and they've been lying in bed and they've been thinking and because they're they're stressed and their adrenaline is going their heart is beating faster and faster and because their heart is beating faster they notice that as palpitations but as they start noticing this once in a while in a topic will kick in it does that's normal that's not an abnormal thing but at that point because they've lowered that sensitivity um they've lowered the threshold for picking things up they will notice that ectopic once they've noticed that topic it becomes incredibly difficult to forget that sensation and therefore what happens is people then say why do I notice them why do I notice them and this is how it happens you get into this vicious cycle suddenly you're lying there listening to your heart your heart is pounding your heart is pounding because you are stressed you are anxious about something and then an ectopic kicks in because they normally do that's just a normal thing but because you've lowered your threshold and you're listening out um you will notice that ectopic and suddenly you'll think oh my God and that topic then causes so much more anxiety to build up and you feel scared you think oh my heart's gonna stop what's gonna happen to me and your heart races further and then the next one comes along and you feel that and before you realize it what tends to happen is any time you feel anything in your heart be that a normal beat or an ectopic beat when you're stressed you will just start noticing a lot more and that is why people get with anxiety complain of ectopic heartbeats or complain of palpitations um so what I'm trying to say here is that it is the brain playing a trick it's not that there's something horrible going on in your heart what's going on in your heart is a normal phenomena your brain is Playing Tricks on you it's lowering the threshold another analogy I can give you is for example um if you're sitting uh you know in a day for example you know the you can hear um you can hear the telephone ring a thousand times and you don't pay any attention to it now imagine if you're on your own in the middle of the night watching a scary movie watching a movie about a babysitter who receives phone calls from a killer and then suddenly the phone rings you see how relevant that suddenly becomes to you how much of a reaction that will bring in you you know suddenly that Bell will sound much louder that Bell will have so much more meaning and that Bell will um cause so much more um uh arise in your heart rate whereas actually it's just a normal Bell it's the kind of bell that you hear every day but you've suddenly made it so much more relevant to you and therefore you'll load your threshold and this is why um people with um anxiety complain of ectopic heartbeats the answer is to try and understand that the ectopics are not something that are abnormal they're not dangerous okay and once you realize that then the next thing is to work on your anxiety and the next thing is perhaps the first thing to realize is that okay you're not going to fall drop down dead nothing bad is going to happen to you take deep breaths in and out okay and then if you can try and see if you can get some cognitive behavioral therapy to try and cope with the anxiety so that you can then unlearn uh what you have learned about the ectopics already you start subconsciously putting them to the side and beginning ignoring them and that is um I do I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to take lots of medications for your anxiety because medications largely just mask the symptoms of anxiety I think it's more important to try and to get to the root cause of why you're anxious what has happened and you should do this through behavioral therapy and psychological counseling Etc and if you can do that then you will find that you welcome these ectopics as just a normal phenomena that happens in your body and that once you start welcoming them they won't bother you anymore all right so I hope this was helpful I promise to try and do more videos um in the near future we've just been very busy there is a new member in the York Cardiology family I'll call it um and I'll introduce her to you just before we leave so Bluebell do you want come here okay oh here you go this is bluebell my Bluebell say hello say hello this is uh the new member of this is bluebell gifted new member of your Cardiology all right all the best you can find me on um Facebook and you can find me on Twitter and should you want to talk to me or should you want to consult with me then you can always do so through my website or you can ring my long suffering secretary Jeanette on 01904-725-811 if you do like this video then please please subscribe to my channel and please don't hesitate to let other people know about it because I found that a lot of people have found these videos beneficial and this has helped them with their palpitations thank you so much bye now

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 147,197

Keywords: Anxiety Disorder (Disease Or Medical Condition), Palpitation (Symptom), ectopics, Anxiety (Symptom), Ventricular ectopics, Heart disease symptoms, Heart racing, Heart flutter causes, Heart palpitations at night, Racing heart, Fluttering heart, Heart skipping beats, Irregular heartbeat symptoms, Anxiety palpitations, Constant heart palpitations, Heart flutter symptoms, Heart palpitations at rest, What causes your heart to race

Id: zEYlYNmvT-A

Length: 12min 45sec (765 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2015