Hi, I’m new to the forums so please bear with me…
I’m looking for help regarding Ectopic Heartbeats that are directly linked to my running. Any advice or help on this would be greatly appreciated.
I’m a 47 year old male with a BMI of 24. Throughout my life I have been fairly active with 5-aside football, although I gave this up about 5 years ago. I don't drink or smoke.
About 2 years ago I started running and preparing for a 10k. I made basic mistakes in my prep (not using a heart rate monitor) and overdone it and gave up after 5 months. I gave up because I developed really bad Ectopic heartbeats. At the time I consulted my GP and I was put on a 24 hour monitor and the feedback I got was that everything was fine and that I was ok to run. I decided however to give up as the Ectopic heartbeats were worrying me. About a week after I stopped running the Ectopic heartbeats disappeared.
About 3 months ago however I decided to give it another go but this time I researched properly and trained with a HR monitor. I have been running in Fat Burn Zone and Aerobic zones to build my basic fitness however in the last 3 weeks the Ectopic Heartbeats have returned again. I have had a Stress ECG and the Dr's say that everything is fine with my heart and they even suggested that I was "imagining" the Ectopic beats although they picked them up on the ECG.
The Ectopic Heartbeats are most noticeable at night at rest and occur every 3/4 minutes and although I've had tests done it's still worrying as I know they will disappear again if I stop running which I don't want to do.
I run for about 50 minutes on a Treadmill and as I'm running in Aerobic HR zone my treadmill is set at 8km/hr which I appreciate is slow but I'm reluctant to crank it up until I understand what may be causing the Ectopic heartbeats. I sweat a lot during the running and try to drink a lot of water but end up peeing all day long :-)
Has anyone else experienced these and/or have any ideas as to what could potentially be causing these Ectopic hearbeats ? Also, is it ok just to try and ignore them and keep running as I'm a firm believer in that's its my body's way of telling me something is not quite right.
Any advice would be really appreciated
Thanks
Andy.
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Comments
Hope you get some good medical advice, and some useful responses on the forum.
It seems like the advice you got was the same as I’m getting just now in that it’s nothibg to worry about. I’m not comfortable with that so will keep pushing for answers which is difficult.
What did you need to do to convince the Drs that you needed this procedure ?
Any other advice from anyone else would also be appreciated.
thanks again
Andy.
My wife has an irregular heartbeat, that sometimes goes into fibrillation for sustained periods (I've heard it going for over 10s). It's scary. Coughing helps restore normal beats. She doesn't run or do other strenuous exercise.
My 'flutter' was constant for more than 18 months before I had the procedure.
So, Andy, I didn't have to do any convincing; I was just told the three options, although cardioversion was eliminated straight away due to probability that the flutter would be straight back. So that left the 'do nothing' or the ablation. Hope you soon get sorted.
If anyone has any additional help / feedback then that would be appreciated to as I'm trying to decide my best options - i.e. keep running or stop again and seek further specialised medical help.
What makes you suspect ectopic beats?
Apologies for this being my first post, for some reason I can't find an option to begin threads.
I think you've just overdone it. If you do sensible exercise - so not doing flat out every day and resting properly you'll be fine.
I know I've had my heart skipping beats but it was with a period of intense exercising for a specific event.
I backed it down after that and not looked back - so I don't think there's any need to be scared.
Trust your cardiologist - it's his job after all.