Someone scares you, and you feel like your heart skips a beat. You race up the stairs and your heart pounds due to the effort. Or, out of the blue, your heart feels like it’s fluttering or flip-flopping in your chest. These are all examples of heart palpitations and, some are perfectly harmless, while others might indicate a more serious problem.
To help you better understand heart palpitations, Dr. Satjit Bhusri and our team at Upper East Side Cardiology present a few common causes of this prevalent condition below.
About 16% of people see a doctor for heart palpitations, so our goal is to give you an idea about when to come see us.
Each day, your heart beats about 100,000 times, and it does so without you taking much notice. When you do become aware of your heartbeat, this is what we call a heart palpitation. These palpitations are often described as:
Heart palpitations are perfectly normal much of the time, and most of us experience them, even on a daily basis. There are times, however, when these palpitations might signal a more serious cardiovascular issue that could benefit from our medical attention.
We started this blog post with a few scenarios where you might become aware of your heart beating, such as when you’re frightened or when you get your heart rate up through exercise. Even drinking a cup of coffee with caffeine can lead to heart palpitations. And these are all perfect examples of when heart palpitations are harmless.
While not necessarily harmless, another common driver of heart palpitations is anxiety or panic attacks. A full blown panic attack shares a number of symptoms with a heart attack, which can be scary, but these heart palpitations aren’t medically worrisome.
A quick note on this one — we’d rather you head to the ER anytime you‘re concerned. If you have heart palpitations, sweating, nausea or vomiting, and chest pain, err on the side of caution and call 911.
In most cases, it’s easy to identify when heart palpitations are harmless because you can identify a direct cause and effect — someone scares you and your heart jumps in your chest.
If your heart palpitations seem to come out of nowhere, they may be signaling an issue with the rhythm of your heart. Called an arrhythmia, this condition affects am estimated 1.5% to 5% of the population, and it’s a major risk factor for more serious heart disease, such as heart attack and stroke.
The most common type of arrhythmia is atrial fibrillation, or AFib, a condition that’s becoming increasingly prevalent and is projected to affect 12 million Americans by 2030. With AFib, your heart flutters and the chambers of your heart aren’t in sync, so blood isn’t flowing through your heart well.
So, if you’re unsure as to why you’re experiencing heart palpitations, we want you to come see us for an evaluation. Identifying an arrhythmia early on can make all the difference, so it’s well worth your while to come see us for unexplained heart palpitations.
To schedule your evaluation at our New York City practice on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, you can click here or call us at (212) 752-3464.
