| binaryboyUser Since: Apr 2019Posts: 1 | I wanted to share my story with the hope that it might help others avoid the frustration that I experienced. Two years ago, when I was in my mid-40s, I started to have digestive issues. Having suffered from IBS for more than twenty years, I chalked up these issues as the syndrome changing or worsening. However, one night as I tried to fall asleep, my head rested in such a way that I could hear my heart beat. I noticed that my heart sounded as if it would skip a beat. I woke up the next morning with severe anxiety, which I thought was caused by stress (I was in the midst of renovating my place). However, when the anxiety didn't dissipate, I made an appointment with my GP. He prescribed me Lexapro to help deal with the anxiety. When I explained to him that I also felt a soreness right below my heart, he recommended I visit my gastroenterologist as it sounded like acid reflux to him. My gastro had me undergo an endoscopy which revealed that I had a small hiatal hernia (>2 cm), erosive esophagitis, and GERD. My father has a HH and GERD, so I figured it was just my genetic legacy. I was then put on a PPI for three months to allow my esophagus to heal. My gastro recommended I go on an alkaline diet and avoid alcohol, acidic and spicy foods, etc. When I asked him about my heart issue, he suggested that the two weren't related. I then made an appointment with a cardiologist. A week before the appointment, my heart palpitations started to worsen, so I went to the ER as I thought I was having a heart attack. The doctor put me on an EKG and diagnosed me with premature ventricular contractions/ectopic beats. He told me to follow up with my cardiologist. But he also stated that these PVCs could be related to my digestive issues. I went home and performed research, reading thousands of web pages, discussion groups, and medical studies online. I learned about the gastro-cardiac system and diseases such Roemheld syndrome, which theorized a connection between digestion and your heart. Recently doctors have become very interested with the role the vagus/vagal nerve plays in regulating functions such as heart rate, digestion, breathing, etc. There were also theories that a hiatal hernia could encroach on the atrium or ventricle of the heart and cause PVCs. However, my hiatal hernia was too small to cause this problem. When I went to my cardiologist, he had me do an echocardiogram and a stress test to see if the PVCs were caused by irregularities in my heart. The results were definitive: my heart was not only good, it was strong. It didn't surprise me as I regularly work out and focus on cardio. My cardiologist told me I should learn to live with the PVCs as they were benign. If I wanted to, I could take betablockers to help make the symptoms abate. He also recommended taking magnesium supplements, which I did, but they didn't do much. After researching betablockers, I decided I did not want to take them because of the side effects. So for two years I just lived with them. Some days were easier than others. It's amazing how you become so used to the rhythm of your heart that when it deviates, you feel it. I go my GP every six months for blood work (I have high cholesterol, so I take a statin and my doctor tests my liver levels), so I had blood work done regularly. Nothing out of the ordinary ever showed up (though they were all CBCs, a point that will be significant later). Finally, one week my PVCs were so bad that I became exasperated and did more research. It's amazing how changing one or two words in a search engine will yield such dramatically different results. I came across a discussion website, similar to this one, in which a man wrote about how he rid himself of his PVCs by drinking apple cider vinegar (the kind with the mother in it). He said that he was diagnosed with GERD, but discovered that his reflux was caused not by too much stomach acid (hyperchlorhydria), but low stomach acid (hypochlorhydria). He mentioned a test you can do at home: before you eat anything in the morning, drink four ounces of water with a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. If you burp in fewer than five minutes, your stomach acid levels are fine. If it takes longer, you might have a deficiency in stomach acid. It took me more than ten minutes before anything resembling a burp emerged from my gut. I then researched the side effects of hypochlorhydria and discovered that one of them was your body's inability to break down food so that you can leach the vitamins and nutrients. From there, I did a search on symptoms of vitamin deficiency and one of them was PVCs. I decided to drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar with four ounces of water before every meal. I also started taking digestive enzymes. Additionally, I started taking supplements. Anything I could buy as a liquid I could take sublingually I did. I bought B complex and took it orally. I also started taking amino acids such as L-Arginine and Taurine, which your body gets by breaking down proteins. After a week on these supplements, my PVCs started to disappear. For the first week they diminished; for the second week they almost disappeared. Here I am three weeks later and I rarely have them. I have my yearly appointment with my gastro in June, when I will talk to him about other possibilities (e.g., taking HCL pills before meals). I will also ask my GP to do a more thorough crit of my blood to check for other vitamin and nutrient deficiencies. I love my GP a great deal, but the problem with medicine these days is that doctors are trained to deal with the symptoms, not identify the underlying causes. Integrative or holistic doctors, who work on the whole person, are not covered by most insurance companies, so we're left as patients to serve as our own advocates and try to understand our bodies as a complex group of systems that work together so we understand what happens when one of these systems breaks down or struggles. I know that there are many causes of PVCs and not all of them are related to the gastro-cardiac system. However, I wanted to post my story on this discussion board in the hope that someone who suffers from something similar might find an answer more quickly than I found mine. |