wenkeback

Hi all, I just read shoes post below and saw where he mentioned wenkebach. About a month ago, I noticed that after a rather hard push while biking, I felt winded and very tired. I had also started training to run a 10k in the spring and noticed the same thing after a long run on the treadmill. I called Medtronic customer service and had a chat with a very helpful rep who told me that we who pace 100% and are active, can experience "winkebach" syndrome when our HR exceeds the pacers upper limit (150 in my case). At first I thought he wa pulling my leg but it turns out to be a real deal..I recall the tech at my in house interogation tellig me that he modified my upper setting to go 2 lower for every 3 upper beats, which explains why I was feeling funky.
Anyone out there have similar experience? By the way, I've bagged the 10k idea and have started swimming laps at the Y.

Peace, Rick

1 Comments

programming

by Tracey_E - 2013-01-15 10:01:57

Yep, been there, done that. If your heart problems are fixed by the pm and you are otherwise healthy, you should not have to bag your 10k plans, they just need to work a little more to get your settings tweaked. Can they turn it higher than 150? Most of them go to 180. They often don't like to turn it higher than 150, but they can. That will feel better than putting you in an artificial block, what they're doing when it's beating 2:1 or 3:2. Either one can kill a workout and is not really good for us. If it's not safe for you to go over 150, then the choices are keep your rate under that when you workout, or try a low dose beta blocker to keep your rate down.

At first, I was able to get by by turning it up. It was up to 175 and as long as I kept my rate under 165-170 while working out, I could do pretty much whatever I wanted. When my hr got too fast, I'd just stop and breath deeply and slowly until it came down. That worked for a couple of years, then my rate gradually started getting faster. I got annoyed with the more frequent stops to let my rate come down but the pm couldn't go any higher. I opted to try the beta blocker, now I don't get over 150 anymore, feel pretty good and am back to whatever I want at the gym.

First thing to do is ask for a higher limit rather than the 3:2 block, hopefully that's all it will take!

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