Slow heart rate or Bradycardia: Will my heart stop?

hi guys my name is Sanjay Gupta I'm a consultant cardiologist in York and today I wanted to do a little video on the subject of bradycardia or slow heart rate this was requested by my friend Leah who's on my Facebook page and she said a few weeks ago actually could you do a video on Friday kardia and I promised I would do this but unfortunately it's taken me this long to do it now the normal heart rate the normal heart rate at rest should range between 60 and 100 beats per minute if your heart rate is over a hundred beats per minute then that is defined as tachycardia if your heart rate is below sixty beats per minute at rest then it is defined as bradycardia and nowadays we're surrounded by technology lots of people have fitbit's and smartphones and apps and some people have blood-pressure machines and oxygen measuring machines and therefore all these devices give us a measure of our heart rate and when the heart rate is below sixty beats per minute some of these machines will flash up and say the heart rate is slow and this causes people a great deal of concern because they say well why's my heart rate slow and particularly if the heart rate is say 40 beats per minute or something like that a lot of people have actually written to me expressing concern about the fact that why is my heart rate slow slow could it stop could I die because my heart rate is so slow that I could die could it just stop okay and I thought I would do a video to try and clarify some of this clarified some information about slow heart rate and also put your minds to rest that your heart will not just stop okay there it rarely ever happens that the heart stops because of a slow heart rate let me just talk you through a few things okay the first thing is when our machines flush up this number 45 or 50 the only way to make sense of this too is to understand the relevance of the number all right so let me talk you through this what is the heart rate and why is it so important the hearts function is to pump oxygen rich blood around the body and to be able to pump enough blood round it has to beat a certain minimum number of times okay if it doesn't beat the minimum number of times not as much blood will get round and therefore our vital organs which you need oxygen-rich blood will not function as well okay although a heart rate of less than 60 is considered slow it often has no impact on us because as the heart slows down the heart has more time to fill with blood and therefore although the heart is beating less fast its pumping out more blood with each beat and therefore the product of the heart rate and the amount of blood is probably the same let me show you this all right here we go the heart is pumping let's say 70 beats per minute all right pumping like this now if you slow it to 50 beats per minute what will happen is that the heart will go see it's filling with more blood it's going a bit slower but it's filling with more blood so probably the same amount of blood is going out when it's B as compared to when the heart's beating at 70 beats per minute okay and that is why even though your heart may be slower it does not necessarily mean that less blood is going around the body of course at a certain point the heart will become so slow okay that it isn't able to pump out enough blood but at that point our vital organs will start complaining that they're not getting as much blood now let me tell you a little bit about the vital organ the vital organ which is most sensitive to less blood going around is the brain and the reason is that the brain is the farthest away from the ground and therefore the hardest point for the heart to get blood to and if the heart slows down or if it's not pumping out enough blood then the back of the brain will be the first area that will start noticing it and if you're getting less oxygen blood to the back of the brain then the immediate result is that you start feeling dizzy or you black out all right so if there is indeed a shortage of blood going round the body then the symptom one of the first symptoms that people experience are sudden transient dizziness or potentially blackouts but if you're not experiencing that then it means that the blood is getting to the hardest point to where it needs to go ie the back of the brain which is the hardest place for the blood to get to simply because it's the furthest away from the ground from gravity and so if you're not feeling dizzy or not blacking out then the Bloods getting where it needs to get and therefore it doesn't really matter what the heart rate is it doesn't really matter what the number is that you're looking at it is getting whatever it is it's getting the blood round in some ways it's good because if you're getting the blood round with your heart only working at 45 beats per minute then why do you want it to work harder because you know it's doing the job without having to work so hard okay so that's the first thing now and that's why I say it doesn't really matter what the number is the more important thing is does it actually are your vital organs being perfused at that number if if you're not feeling dizzy if you're not lightheaded if you're not blacking out then that number is doing what it's meant to do and therefore the absolute value of the number doesn't matter so much all right the second thing to say is that if the heart if the heart is doing what it's doing you don't need to treat it if the heart if the heart rate is 40 and the blood is getting round you don't need to do anything you don't need to treat it because you're not getting any symptoms so treating the number is not going to make you feel any different the second thing to say is the heart rate is situational all right you may think that a heart rate of 40 maybe is too slow but actually when you're sleeping then a heart rate of 40 is quite normal because your body doesn't require much blood at that time so when you have these Holter monitors and they say oh at night the heart rate is 35 or 30 beats per minute it doesn't matter you probably don't need that much blood at night anyway so the heart rate is okay as long as you're not feeling light-headed or blacking out or having fits in the middle of the night it doesn't really matter all right the third thing to say is then this is really important because it'll tell you why the heart work just stop okay now you have to understand the electrics of the heart a little bit and let me explain this to you alright the the heart is what is called myogenic which means that the electricity that makes the heart pump is generated within the cells of the heart what that means is for example if I take the heart out of if I take my heart out for a few minutes it'll keep beating that tells me that it isn't reliant on anything else to keep beating these cells within the heart make it beat okay eventually it'll stop beating because the cells will die because they're not getting any oxygen but initially the heart will keep beating now the part of the heart which produces the electricity to make the heart beat is called the pacemaker or the sinus node all right and that produces the impulses at the highest rate and that's why it is considered the pacemaker it is considered the orchestrator it makes the heart beat however if you cut out the pacemaker the heart will not stop beating alright it will continue to be because other parts of the heart are also capable of generating electricity and so they will take over the difference is if your pacemaker is an intact your heart will be beating at say 60 beats per minute if you cut the pacemaker out the heart will beat a bit weaker and a bit slower say 40 beats per minute but it is beating and therefore because it's beating it will keep getting some blood and at that point where there's a shortage of blood you will get symptoms of dizziness or blackouts and therefore you'll go and seek help and someone will pick that up and treat it so those are two or three reasons why you shouldn't worry about your heart stopping in the middle of the night or anything like that or get too worried about the number that you read on the Fitbit or the blood-pressure machine the more important question is how do you feel if you feel fine don't worry about it doesn't really need anything doing if you feel dizzy don't worry it's not going to stop but yes it is important to go and see your doctor because if they fix the slow heart rate by either putting in a pacemaker or taking away medications which may be slowing your heart then you won't feel dizzy and you'll feel back to normal so most of the things that a slow heart rate does relate to quality of life rather than your length of life if you have a slow heart rate you will feel dizzy you will are more likely to fall and therefore it's worth getting fixed on the other hand if you have a slow heart rate and you're functioning completely normally and then don't worry about it because ultimately that's what the heart was meant to do and it's doing the job at that rate so I hope this helps I will do another video at some point to try and explain to you why people develop bradycardia but usually the pacemaker of the heart is sensitive to other influences so adrenaline vagus nerve medications at infections etc if the heart and and usually treating those things which are influencing the pacemaker will improve the heart rate sometimes the pacemaker itself becomes ill and that is usually either in relation to infections such as Lyme's disease or something like that or more likely due to old age so slow heart rates because of it of a diseased pacemaker usually occur in people who are elderly all right most of the other times if you see a slow heart rate it's because of something external to the heart like medications like thyroid dysfunction like jaundice like low body temperature that kind of thing alright so I hope this was useful please please please keep your comments coming I really enjoy reading them I like it built me with motivation and I'd like you I'd like to thank you for listening and if you can please do consider subscribing to my channel and sharing this video with your friends either they'll find the content really interesting and really get into it or they'll find me so boring that they'll fall asleep and as you know I've already mentioned how important it is to get some sleep so it's a win-win situation thank you so much alright bye

Channel: York Cardiology

Views: 485,987

Keywords: Heart palpitations anxiety, Heart palpitations after eating, Heart palpitations causes, Heart palpitations symptoms, Heart palpitations treatment, Heart palpitations cure, Heart disease symptoms, Heart racing, Heart flutter causes, Heart palpitations at night, Fluttering heart, Heart skipping beats, Irregular heartbeat symptoms, Anxiety palpitations, Heart flutter symptoms, Heart palpitations at rest, slow pulse, slow heart rate, bradycardia, sinus bradycardia

Id: HGsYpBNMjdQ

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 05 2017