When the body is under stress, physiologically, the body responds. One of the main ways the
body responds is to ask the adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol which
is anti-stress.
This is Dr. Lam, founder of DrLam.com and in this discussion we will look into how stress
can lead to heart palpitations.
Now, physiologically, let's take a step back. When stress comes on your doorstep, the body
activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis or the HPA axis. With this, hormones
are released from the brain to ask the adrenal glands to release cortisol. The cortisol,
as I said, comes off and it helps to reduce inflammation, it helps to stabilise blood
sugar, and it helps to reduce stress. Under normal circumstances, this works quite well
and you don't feel it, not every stressful situation results in the activation of the
HPA axis.
Prolonged stress or acute stress like the death of a loved one, accident, toxic relationships,
etc. can lead to a chronic or overrelease and overactivation of the HPA axis. When this
happens, the body's adrenal glands are put on overdrive. Now, this is fine over a short
period of time, but if you keep doing it over and over again, every day, every month, every
week; in time, and sometimes this can be over ten years or five years or twenty years, the
adrenal glands become worn out.
When the cortisol levels start to drop, the body is not able to handle the stress anymore;
and what happens, the body, fortunately, has a reserve system called the fight-or-flight
response. Now, when the body senses the cortisol level is insufficient to do its job it will
then activate the fight-or-flight response as a last resort.
Now this fight or flight response is the body's last, last way that it can help itself to
prevent collapse. So, two key hormones are released, one is called norepinephrine, and
one is called epinephrine or adrenaline. When noepinephrine is released, it circulates first
in the brain because that is where it begins first, and then in the brain it causes anxiety,
it causes alertness, and many street drugs are used in the same category including medical
drugs such as Adderall that uses the same concept, to help people to stay focused and
alert. That is a mechanism of survival.
Now, unfortunately, there is an overflow of these neurotransmitters that allow norepinephrine
to the heart as well; and in the heart the neurotransmitter norepinephrine behaves as
a hormone and causes the heart to have a faster heart rate, and many people also report a
pounding heart. So sometimes you will be under stress and you will feel that your heart is
pounding, you can almost feel it. Often times this is a phenomenon that people will say
it feels like my heart is jumping out, that is a common description. That is actually
a combination of various factors including the key one called norepinephrine at work.
So, if you are under stress, and you feel your heart pounding you know you have already
activated the alarm response and the alarm response is activated because, why? Because
your adrenals are no longer capable of dealing with that without activating this system.
So, feeling the pounding of your heart on a continuous basis, or getting more sensitive
to keep having these symptoms is an alert of underlying dysfunction and it helps us
to understand physiologically that the body is crying out and telling us that is in stress.
The body does not know what to do, so it releases these hormones, so we feel it physiologically.
Of course there could be other reasons as well so if your doctor cannot figure out why
and you also have other symptoms of adrenal fatigue. This is certainly one direction you
want to go into to understand more of what your body is going through.
This type of phenomonon tends to get worse if is not taken care of so you have to pay
attention because after a while the pounding becomes so severe that it then goes into arrythmias
or tachycardia, or fast heart rate, and ultimately can lead to atrial fibrillation, PVC, and
a lot of other cardiac arrythmias that will really be very serious, requiring medications,
and one could be a cardiac cripple if not taken care of early.
I've written several articles on this particular topic, one, in particular, is called 'POTS
or Post Orthostatic Tachycardia'. Many of the people with POTS have palpitation issues,
as well as the article 'Adrenal Exhaustion' and it will explain to you how the sympathetic
nervous system is tired and as we talked about in this video so I encourage you to read both
of these articles available on my website.
I hope you've enjoyed this video. For more information on this topic, head over to DrLam.com
where I have written over a thousand articles to help educate people. You can also call
me at 626-571-1234 for more information on Adrenal Fatigue and how to navigate it. Finally,
if you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to my YouTube channel. Thanks for watching.