Heart palpitations

Overview

Heart palpitations are sensations of a hammering, fluttering, or rapid heartbeat, and are brought on by a medical condition, stress, exercise, or medicine. Although unsettling, they are not harmful. Rarely, heart palpitations may be a sign of a more severe heart issue, such as an arrhythmia, which may need to be treated.

Symptoms

Heart palpitations can have the following symptoms of the heart:

• Pounding
• Flip-flopping
• Skipping beats
• Beating too quick
• Rapidly fluttering

The heart palpitations can occur during activities or when you are resting and can be felt in the neck, throat as well as the chest. The majority of the time, brief, occasional palpitations don’t require evaluation. Consult your doctor if you have a history of heart disease and have frequent or worsening palpitations. To determine whether the palpitations are brought on by a more serious cardiac condition, you might require heart-monitoring tests.

If you get heart palpitations together with these symptoms, call for emergency medical help:

• Fainting
• Severe dizziness
• Severe difficulty of breathing
• Chest pain or discomfort

Causes

The cause of heart palpitations is frequently unknown. Typical causes include

• Strong emotional reactions like anxiety, stress, or panic attacks
• Depression
• Exercising hard
• Fever
• Stimulants like coffee, nicotine, cocaine, amphetamines, and pseudoephedrine-containing cough and cold remedies
• Changes in hormones brought on by menstruation, pregnancy, or menopause
• Inadequate or excessive thyroid hormone levels

Sometimes, significant issues like an abnormal heart rhythm (arrhythmia) might be detected by heart palpitations.

A heartbeat that is abnormally fast (tachycardia), unusually slow (bradycardia), different from the normal heart rhythm, or a combination of the three can all be caused by arrhythmias.

Risk factors

These are the risk factors of heart palpitation:

• Panic attack or anxiety
• Stress
• Taking medications for cold or asthma which are stimulants
• Having other heart conditions like history of heart attack or heart surgery, or heart rhythm that is irregular.
• Hyperthyroidism-having a thyroid gland that is extremely active
• Pregnancy