irregular heart

maybe someone with irregualar heartbeat can help me out. i am very active. play tennis, jog etc. my heartbeat is around 80. when i get on a threadmil maceovhine and say i get a heartbeat reading of around 85. every few minutes, at same speed, it will spike up 20 to 25 points and immediately come down to 85. then go from say 85 to 78 than to say 90 back to 85. my heart feels good, no pain or short of breath. if i increase speed and my beat goes to say 110 after a few minutes it might spike to 130 and immediately back to around 110. when i am finished and begin to lower speed my beat does come down nicely. so, my question is what can be done about this problem. is it dangerous. would a pacemaker help. i never go below 65 or ab0ve 100 at rest. i am on 50 mgs of toprol to slow down my heart thank you

6 Comments

some questions!

by tcrabtree85 - 2007-05-04 11:05:47

Hi,
I just have a couple questions for you. I don't understand why you would need a pacemaker with such an amazing heart rate. Have your doctors talked to you about needing one? I might be missing something but i'm not sure. When doing things your heart jumps around. I have never heard of it being a problem for that to happen as long as you aren't feeling any symptoms and it going back to a normal pace is a pretty good thing. My second questions is before you started taking toprol was your heart rate high? By everything that I have read and experienced I think that your heart rate sounds pretty normal. I may be wrong but if I wasn't feeling any pain, no symptoms, and had the functioning you had I wouldn't want to get a pm put in. I would get more opinions from different doctors before making such a strong choice.
I have my pm for an irregular heart beat. If you have questions or would like to know anything feel free to send me a message.
I wish you luck and wish I had more answers for you. I'm sure some others will be able to help you out some more.
Blessings,
Tammy

irreggular heartbeat

by r7ich - 2007-05-05 06:05:20

smitty what is an irregular heartbeat and how do they treat it. is medicine used. thousands of people have it what are the symtoms

Heart Rates

by SMITTY - 2007-05-05 12:05:11

Hello,

I think, for that is worth, that Tammy makes some very good points and asked good questions. If you haven’t talked to your doctor about the help you might get from a pacemaker, I would say that should be your next step. I don’t normally think of a PM being used to slow a heart rate. Of course the exception to that statement is if that person is having fibrillation then an ICD may be in order. However nothing you say indicates that is your problem.

From what I read, your heart rate does what it should – increase – when your physical activity increases. There is one thing that I think is unusual and that is the way the rate bounces around. I do think quick, and sometimes drastic, changes in the rate like you are having is cause for discussion with your doctor. I also notice that you are taking Toprol, which is a beta blocker and this type medication is frequently used to slow heart rates. Slow the heart rate is one of several things a beta blocker will do but for me that is the most noticeable.

You mention wanting to hear from someone with an irregular heart beat. I am one of those people, but mine is so totally different from yours, that the only similarity in our changing heart rates is the irregular part. I know all I’ve done is say I read your message and your questions are different from what we usually see here. I wish you good luck in getting an answer.

Smitty

Irregualr Hear Beat

by SMITTY - 2007-05-06 11:05:23

R7ich,

Your question is simple but in reality not so simple to answer. I think doctors usually call them heart rhythm disorder, and to me an irregular heart beat can be the description given several types of heart beat. For the sake of keeping this simple so that I can possibly give an answer, let’s say your heart rate is 60 bpm. That means a regular beat is one each second. Let the heart beat deviate from 1/second and it is an irregular heart beat. This is where is gets a little deep for me, but irregular heart beats can come in different ways. You can have premature ventricular contractions (PVC) and have a heart rate of 60 BPM, counting the PVCs but your heart is not pumping blood with each of the beats you are counting. In this case you have 60 BPM but in reality the heart beat is irregular. To confuse the issue even further, we can also have skip beats, which I am told is the same as a PVC. It is a PVC that is not strong enough for us to feel if we are checking our pulse manually.

Then there is my situation, which has now been going for several weeks, but starting to get better I think. I am having PVCs and skip beats but my pacemaker interprets some of them as normal heart beats and does not assist my heart with a beat that time. Let me inject something here. Before our pacemaker sends out an impulse to make our heart beat, it checks to see if the hearts natural pacemaker is sending out such signal and in which case the PM will send none. In my case my PM thought some of those PVCs were going to be natural heart beats and it sat on its rump and did nothing. The result was while my pacemaker was set to maintain a minimum heart rate of 70 BPM, I am sometimes finding my heart rate to be anywhere from a low of 43 to 65. In other words my heart’s natural pacemaker is sending out signals that are too weak to cause my heart to but they are strong enough to fake out my PM.

I have dwelled on only one type or cause of irregular heart beat, but there are others which I cannot even began to describe.

As for medicines, there are several which I know about several that are used to treat heart rhythm disorders. The one used is usually determined by what the doctor thinks is the base cause of a person heart rhythm disorder. These medicines perform miracles for some, but they have tried me on about 10 different kinds none of which have been very successful for me. There are other ways to treat heart rhythm disorders and for many discussions on this you might try one of the many web sites that will have information on this subject.

I hope I haven’t confused the issue further for you.

Smitty

irregular heartrate

by Vai - 2007-05-06 11:05:46

From your description, you don't sound like you're a candidate for a PM.
You are prescribed with toprol at a maintenance dosage presumably to regulate (slow down) your irregular heart rate. So it seems you have a irregular heart rate that tends to be fast (flutter, fibrillate, tachy?). With the toprol, its unlikely your heart rate will exceed 130 bpm even with exercise unless you are really pushing it deliberately. Usually you would be told not to push it.
With the toprol, you say your heart rate does not fall below 65 bpm, then you don't need a PM which is to assist you only when your heart rate falls below a certain minimum (usually 55 - 60 bpm).
Check with your doc.

Talk with your doctor

by IBelieveICanFly - 2007-05-06 12:05:22

Hi
A healthy heart increases rate to boost blood circulation when we exercise. Your heart rate variation during exercise seems normal. However, you'd better to talk with your doctor about this. There are tests available to determine whether you need a device or not.

Henry

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