Fluttering pulse

[iLoveSugar]

Any idea what this means? If I put my fingers up to my temple vein, and feel my pulse, it's pretty strong. But every 10-15 beats, it flutters out, then re-starts.

 

[MyUsernameHere]

Sounds like a lesser version of what I've been dealing with for 15 months now... admittedly the past few months it's been getting better, but progress is very slow.

Check your cortisol and adrenaline. Try progesterone or pregnenolone. Stress hormones can cause serious heart rate problems as well as estrogen.

Can you feel your heart beating in your chest without putting your hands on it? Do you hear pulsing in your ear drums? Does any of this change with increased / decreased activity? Any particular posture like standing up, stretching etc. that makes it worse?

 

[iLoveSugar]

The last I checked, my cortisol and adrenaline were high. Of late, I have to noticed faster hb, and I do feel it sometimes. My biggest issue is this chronic jittery feeling that I have, instance of non-well-being. Also dead tired. What has helped you?

 

[iLoveSugar]

I do regularly take pregnenolone and ProgestE, but notice nothing.

 

[MyUsernameHere]

Currently I just take taurine and ashwagandha. I tried all kinds of thyroid but it either did nothing or made things worse, what with all the stress hormones rampaging through my body. Going to try pregnenolone next.

I used to have BIG problems drinking OJ a few months back which leads me to believe adrenaline is the culprit but now I seem to be able to drink it fine, as well as cheese gave me problems but now I do fine with that too. So I have some improvement but still not out of the woods.

I know what you mean. For me this started in Nov 2012 and ever since then everything seemed unreal as if time was just flying by without me. It's a state of constant elevated stress hormones that affects even the perception of time and makes you disconnect from the world. I had some crazy panic/adrenaline attacks which mostly concentrated in my chest, I could exacerbate them even just by simple things as stretching. I think taurine helped here because the past 2-3 weeks I barely had them at all. There also seems to be a circadian aspect to it in my case as things get better late at night.

The worst part is that I have been in hell since Nov 2012 and it looks like I am only now picking myself up from the floor. Time and making sure to get plenty of calories are probably responsible for most of the improvement thus far... it hasn't been pretty, I can tell you that much. I posted about this here way back and never suspected it would still be here 15 months later.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Yeah nothing had helped me. Thyroid hasn't done squat either. Even things like a milk/sugary shake seem to flare me. I currently don't leave bed, I can't.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Took 1500mg Taurine tonight and noticed nothing.

 

[narouz]

I've tried it maybe 5 or 6 times when my heart was racing,
and I think it has worked at least some of the time.
It's maybe a little subtle.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Just sucks for me since none of Peats ideas have ever helped me and I have tried nearly every one. My next attempt is moving from PA to the beach (probably South Carolina). Life blows for me. I literally hate it right now.

 

[MyUsernameHere]

Just sucks for me since none of Peats ideas have ever helped me and I have tried nearly every one. My next attempt is moving from PA to the beach (probably South Carolina). Life blows for me. I literally hate it right now.

They haven't helped me either. But I have yet to try progesterone and pregnenolone. If none of those works then I am going to be at a bit of a loss.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Hopefully they work for you. Thyroid, ProgE, nor pregnenolone has done squat for me.

 

[MyUsernameHere]

Yeah... past few days I was doing relatively decent (compared to how it used to be), now today I binged on some home-made donuts and my heart is just trying to lunge out of my chest with each beat. So forceful that I can hear it in my ear drums, feel it in my throat, if I hold my fingertips against something I can feel them pulse... it also misses and skips beats...sometimes a beat comes too early, then the next one is way stronger to make up for the loss in volume I guess... in short it works nothing like a normal heart.

It'll calm down to an extent within an hour or two but I just don't understand the state that I am in, for something like this to affect me to such a degree. On top of that I have these random muscle twitches that also happen for no reason. Like my nerves are super-excitable. Could be estrogen. I know I wanna put an end to this story as much as you do, cause I never felt my heart work all my life... and now for 15 months it hasn't given me one moment of piece. As worried as I am about the physical aspect of it, the mental aspect is far worse... feeling your heart beat all day long for this much time is enough to drive you up the wall, especially when there is no one you can rely on to help you.

 

[narouz]

Kale & Collards and Palpitations

I just recently figured out why I was having fairly intense palpitations
(racing, skipping, shallow beats, mixture):
collard greens and kale.

I am hypothyroid and take T3/T4.
In an interview (can't recall which right now but think I made a note)
Peat said that some indians (I think in South America) had a traditional diet
heavy in cooked greens and meat.
Peat said the greens supplied a lot of calcium and balanced the phosphate-heavy meat.
So that got me interested.

Now I do know that those greens are goitergenic.
But I figured if they were very well-cooked, maybe not a problem.
I made a big pot of kale and oxtails, cooked about 2 hours plus.

For about a week I started having badly skipping, racing, erratic heartbeat.
The kale wasn't on my radar.
I thought I must be dosing too highly on my T4/T3
because the erratic pulse was not
the classic hypothyroid skipping beat Peat has discussed in interviews:
skipping every sixth beat.

Instead, my pulse was all over the map--
skipping every 3rd or 4th or any number you can imagine.
Sometime just racing up into the 120's.
Sometime with like half-beats or weak beats.
Sometimes so shallow as to be hard to palpate.
And sometimes hard to count with all the skips.
At different times of day and night.

I just couldn't figure out what was going on.
I tried going completely off T4/T3: that didn't stop it.
I tried adding in doses of T4 while the erratic pulse was going on
(which could be for hours).
That didn't seem to make it worse or better.

It took me over a week (it was a BIG pot of the stew) to finally make the connection,
that it followed after the kale/oxtail soup.
Sometimes pretty directly after, sometimes the next morning after a supper of the stuff.

After over a week of the palpitations it just dawned on me, that the kale might be the cause.
Stopped eating it and haven't had palpitations reoccur in a couple of days,
so I think that was the solution to the mystery.

So: looks like thyroid suppression due to goitergens can be very potent,
and can cause very severe "palpitations,"
even if the greens are cooked for a long long time,
affecting at least those, like myself, who are hypo and taking T4/T3.

But some of you posting in this thread may have weakened thyroid/conversion
that you haven't recognized,
and this goitergen-induced palpitation should be considered.

Also: the signature heart disturbance would seem not to be
just the specific hypothyroid beat (missing every 6th beat) Peat has mentioned.
Kind of counter-intuitive to me:
I was expecting a racing/erratic beat to be associated with overdosing of T4/T3.
I was expecting a suppressed thyroid pulse to be slow
and skipping specifically in the "every-6th-beat" way Peat noted.

To complicate and confuse things,
at the same time this heart stuff was occurring
I also was experiencing severely itchy corners of my eyes.
And I saw that that can be associated with hyperthyroidism or Graves.
This reinforced my notion that I was taking too much T4/T3.

I sympathize with those of you who struggle with palpitations.
It can be very stressful.
Messes up sleep, makes one worry.

 

[j.]

narouz's posts reminded me that I got very potent thyroid suppression once, I believe due to the goitrogenic effect of peaches, after like 4 months of consuming canned peaches as my main source of fruit (the oranges available at the time weren't very good), at least a pound per day.

Peat said peaches' goitrogenic effect is supposed to be mild, but I wasn't taking thyroid then, so maybe it was enough.

The main symptom was very powerful constipation. Lethargy too.

 

[iLoveSugar]

Can taking to little amounts of thyroid cause suppression? I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

 

[j.]

Can taking to little amounts of thyroid cause suppression? I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't.

I take it in a very random fashion and even then it didn't cause suppression I believe (erfa).

 

[MyUsernameHere]

I found T4 to do nothing, while T3 and NDT made me feel quite a bit worse. I concluded that thyroid supplementation was not the right choice at the moment and ordered pregnenolone.

 

[iLoveSugar]

When you say it made you feel worse, can you elaborate?

 

[MyUsernameHere]

So, as I mentioned, I had these rushes of what I believe to be adrenaline concentrating in my chest. During these attacks I would feel helpless, disoriented and unable to devote my attention to anything that didn't involve immediately getting rid of said horrible feeling. They would occur seemingly randomly but always intensify around 6 P.M. Often accompanied by unexplained sweating, random muscles twitching and feeling 'pins and needles' shoot all over my body (basically symptoms of too high nerve excitation).

There was a point where I could not drink orange juice whatsoever because it would exacerbate these feeling greatly. I also had problems with cheese as it increased my heart palpitations. I think the two symptoms (the 'adrenaline' rushes and the heart palpitations) are closely related as they started shortly within one another.

The T3 basically provokes these feelings back. If it is indeed adrenaline (I will know within 2 weeks after I get my blood test results back) then it makes sense as T3 is supposed to increase sensitivity to adrenaline. The thing is that for someone who isn't experiencing this it's easy to say "your body will adjust in 2-3 months etc etc" but trust me when I tell you that you do not want to be feeling like this for 3 months just on a potentially false promise... these feelings are really.... well, let me just say that in 21 years of my life no matter what the stress or occasion I haven't felt anything quite as awful as that, and I do NOT want them back. Thankfully I have them mostly under control at the moment.

So yeah. The idea is to level out the terrain a bit with pregnenolone or progesterone if needed. Normalize the adrenal response a bit ( I currently take taurine and ordered ascorbic acid as well) to help stabilize the catecholamine levels. And that should make for a gentler landing for thyroid hormones - if you feel you need them at that point then.

 

[j.]

The T3 basically provokes these feelings back.

That happens to me too on the wrong dose. I couldn't take 30 mg (ERFA) every day without too much sensitivity to adrenalin, so I took it every other day and I was fine. You can always lower the dose by either taking it less often or breaking the pill.

After I took it every other day for a while and the adrenalin came down, I was able to increase to 2 pills every 3 days (average of 0.66 pills per day) and so on.

I don't believe you should go every day having muscle spams thinking they will stop. Or at least I don't like it. So I stop until the symptoms go away and then start on a lower dose or a less frequent dose.

That said, I tried pregnenolone first. I only took thyroid after feeling pregnenolone helped me as much as it could.