Tachycardia does not always have to do with the heart

He arrives like this, suddenly, with his heart starting to beat wildly. But it’s not always all the fault of the heart system. Here are all the possible causes.

Suddenly the heart begins to beat wildly, there is a strong feeling of exhaustion and general breathlessness. Sometimes even with cold sweats, dizziness and nausea.

It is what doctors call tachycardia. And it also gives that unpleasant sensation of “feeling” your beats as blows in the throat or chest.

The thought immediately runs to a serious heart problem or imminent heart attack. And, in fact, many of the causes are to be found within the heart.

However, this is not always the case. Let’s see when it is appropriate to worry and when, instead, palpitations can be caused by a trivial problem or even by a physiological state.

What is it

Technically, tachycardia is the increase in heart rate, or the number of beats that the heart makes in a minute beyond normal values, which for a healthy adult at rest oscillate between 60-100.

The limit of 100 beats per minute, however, should not be considered an absolute threshold value. There are individuals who under normal conditions have a slower heart rhythm than others. In addition, the heart rate varies according to age:

To avoid underestimating an increase in frequency it would be more correct to consider tachycardia as the increase in heart rhythm above the normal value at rest of each.

However, it is not necessarily a symptom of disease. The heart rate also increases normally with physical activity, stress, strong emotions, the intake of tea, coffee or other stimulants such as cigarette smoking. And that’s not all.

Heart-pounding moms

The increase in heart rate is to be considered physiological, for example, in pregnancy so that discomfort such as fast breathing, the perception of heartbeats and a sense of exhaustion are frequent and normal, especially in the first and third trimester. They are the consequence of the adaptation of the organism to pregnancy.

The woman’s body, in fact, already from the first weeks of gestation undergoes several physiological changes, some of which directly affect the cardiovascular system and can predispose to the appearance of tachycardia and palpitations.

If the cardiovascular system is to blame

Only the increases in heart rate compared to the norm of each and in the absence of one of the possible causes just seen must suggest a tachycardia due to organic or functional problems inside or outside the heart.

Arteriosclerosis, coronary insufficiency, heart attack and any other problem that alters the system that initiates and regulates the contraction of the muscle fibers of the heart, and therefore the heartbeat , are among the most frequent.

And when an alteration of nerve impulses is found, we speak of pathological tachycardia, and it can only be resolved by identifying the primary cause that originates the nerve conduction defect.

But the most difficult to solve if you don’t intervene with specific therapies or directly on the heart are tachycardias of cardiovascular origin, such as Atherosclerosis .

Keeping your cholesterol , triglycerides and other important parameters under control on a regular basis to reveal the problem early, helps protect yourself from more serious outcomes.

Less worrying origins

Extracardiac causes of increased heart rate include fever, gastrointestinal disturbances, hyperthyroidism , and Diabetes tags. Which worry less, from a cardiological point of view, because when they are treated there is also a complete disappearance of the cardiac symptom.

Transient or episodic tachycardia phenomena that can be more easily managed even alone are instead those that occur in the case of hypotension, stress and anxiety disorders.

But how much do stress and anxieties upset us?

Stress, in medicine, is always on the crest of a wave. Also in the case of tachycardia it is an important cause in otherwise healthy people: tensions alter the control mechanism of the nervous system causing the heart to beat faster to pump more blood signaling that there is a state of emergency.

The same is true for those who experience a sudden and intense emotion or live in a constant state of anxiety. In all these cases it is absolutely advisable to avoid cigarette smoke and the consumption of coffee or other substances which can accentuate the state of nervous hyperexcitability, and therefore the recurrence of episodes of tachycardia.

Rhythm disturbances from non-cardiovascular causes can also benefit from natural remedies such as linden and hawthorn .

Pathological tachycardias, on the other hand, always require the intervention of the doctor who will have to ascertain, after a series of specific tests, the cause and decide which therapy, pharmacological or surgical, to undertake.