Dr. Carrie Lam, MD: Do you have episodes when it feels like your
heart is skipping a beat or beating too quickly? These
symptoms are known as heart palpitations, and they can be
very frightening and make you feel as if you're going to die.
But fortunately, most of the time heart palpitations are
harmless, but you should still get checked out with the doctor
just in case there are signs of something more serious. Most
people don't realize that if their heart is beating most of
the time, they can't feel it as it contracts to push blood
throughout the body. This is a normal phenomenon. There's a
specific hormone that's responsible for making your
heart feel as if it's throbbing or pounding harder than usual.
That hormone is known as norepinephrine, or
noradrenaline. This hormone works as a neurotransmitter in
the brain, and also can travel to the heart where it causes
your heart to contract harder than usual, and it makes it feel
like it's pounding. This hormone makes your heart pound after
exercise and during life threatening situations. But if
you have the symptom when you're just sitting on the couch, then
it indicates that something is off balanced in your body. Heart
palpitations can be a cause of a wide range of issues including
defects in your heart structure or function in the heart stress,
mood disorders, thyroid hormone imbalance, adrenal imbalance,
pregnancy or menstruation or menopause, and strenuous
exercise or drinking stimulants like caffeine or smoking with
nicotine, increased temperature medications that can contain
pseudoephedrine, like decongestants, and even drugs.
Heart palpitations can also be strongly linked to adrenal
fatigue. And Adrenal Fatigue is caused by excessive ongoing
stress, which results in ongoing high cortisol levels and
adrenal, produced by the adrenal gland, the adrenals also produce
epinephrine and norepinephrine. So when you're stressed, it's
going to be producing this high energy type of hormone and
neurotransmitter that we talked about. And so this
neurotransmitter goes and can sometimes cause imbalance in
your cardionomic circuit, which includes the heart, the
adrenals, and the sympathetic nervous system. And when this
circuit becomes unbalanced and dysfunctional, because over
time, you're releasing too much norepinephrine and epinephrine,
then that can lead to heart palpitations. And so if you
suffer from these kinds of symptoms, make sure you go see
your doctor. And if they give you a clean bill of health and
there are things that you can do that will help to reduce your
symptoms. Some effective things to try would be breathing
exercises to help calm the body in limiting triggers like
caffeine or nicotine and alcohol. Talking to your doctor
about medications or supplements that you could be taking that
could be causing these symptoms. Because even vitamins and
minerals can sometimes glandulars can be
overstimulating. Talk to medical professional about supplements
that might help they're more calming, whether it's magnesium
or GABA, or melatonin, or valerian, five HTP,
passionflower, depending on your body and its constitution. Make
sure you stay well hydrated and stay out of the sun wherever
possible to avoid temperature fluctuations. Keep your
electrolytes nice and balanced, especially your sodium and
potassium levels. Adopt strategies to help better manage
stress like meditation, yoga or Adrenal Breathing exercises, and
then eliminate as many causes of stress from your life as
possible. We understand that is very difficult, but we are here
to help you if you ever have any questions on how to control your
heart palpitations and how to get to the root cause. So thanks
for listening. We hope you get some helpful tips from what
we've shared. Make sure you like and subscribe and share this
video with your friends who you think might also be dealing with
this. And remember, we're here to empower you to take control
of your health.