It's been an interesting couple of months health wise and I've finally gotten an answer for why I've been having all my heart rate issues, including going up to 200 when I workout. Anyone who suffers from chronic illnesses knows that sometimes it's like pulling teeth getting seen, your symptoms recognised and getting a diagnosis, rather than being gaslit to say that it's things like anxiety or weight gain causing the symptoms.
I'm very lucky that the hospital I work in has some great cardiologists and I was able to get referred there rather than my local hospital which is amazing. I'm also well aware of the standard of care my trust promotes so I knew I'd be well looked after. So over the past couple of months I've had multiple ECG's, 24 ECG tapes and even an ECHO (like an ultrasound scan that looks at your heart and the nearby blood vessels), all of which has lead to me initially being diagnosed with a condition call Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia (IST).
Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia is a condition that causes you to have an a high resting heart rate. It is thought to be caused by an abnormality in the sinoatrial node (SA), where your heart beat starts in the heart. Instead of your heart rate being 50-90bpm, people with IST will have either a resting heart rate above 100bpm or their heart rate will increase above 100bpm with minimal exertion. There is not one thing that causes you to have this condition, there are currently multiple theories including that a person's SA node is abnormal in some way, that a person can be sensitive to adrenaline, and that it can also be caused by a disturbance to a person's autonomic nervous system.
I got referred to my current cardiologist because throughout the first half of this year I was seeing an ANP at my GP practice and walked roughly 20 feet and when I sat down, I was breathless to the point that I couldn't complete full sentences. When my heart rate and oxygen saturations were checked, my oxygen levels were fine but my heart rate was 165bpm from just a short walk at my normal pace.
After a bunch of testing, my cardiologist say that he believed it to be IST over PoTs because when I'm unmedicated and asleep my resting heart rate was between 90-100bpm. When we went through my apple health app, I've been having issues with my heart rate since at least the beginning of last year but this year I've only just started becoming symptomatic around March of this year so we made the decision to start a low dose medication to keep my heart rate with in a respectable range and up-ing my cardio everyday to keep my heart as healthy as possible. I've been on Ivabradine twice a day now for a little while and it's helped bring my average resting heart rate down to 89 but I've noticed on reviewing my health app on my phone that I'm actually able to get my heart rate down to the 70's and 80's which is a really big improvement. I'm due to go back and see my cardiologist in November which is a good 4 months with medication and lifestyle changes to see how my condition is. One thing I have noticed is that on a semi-regular basis and 9/10 it's after I finish nights, I have nights where I be in bed trying to sleep and my heart rate will rise to 130, I get anxious, palpitations and can't control my temperature so I go from freezing cold to boiling hot. I then finally manage to get to sleep around 2.30-3am which really isn't great especially if I have to get up for 5-5.30am.
How has your Summer been going?
Speak to you next time!
