Increasing heart palpitations and nighttime arrhythmia
Increasing heart palpitations and nighttime arrhythmia for 10+ years despite “normal” heart tests — anyone else experienced this?
I’ve been experiencing an increasing number of heart palpitations / extra heartbeats over the years, and I’m wondering if anyone here has had similar experiences or found anything that helps.
The extra beats usually happen in the evening or at night when I’m lying down. Sometimes they also happen during the day, but not as often. This started around 10 years ago, and the frequency has gradually increased since then.
Today, there are periods where it happens almost every night, and other periods where it barely happens at all. I still haven’t figured out what triggers it exactly. I suspect chocolate, nuts, caffeine, and artificial sweeteners might make it worse, so I’ve removed those from my diet, but I still experience the palpitations.
The biggest issue is that sometimes the extra beats are so strong that they seem to knock my heart out of its normal rhythm. When that happens, my heartbeat becomes irregular (arrhythmia). Occasionally I wake up suddenly at night with my heart beating completely irregularly, which is honestly pretty frightening.
Over the past 10 years I’ve seen multiple cardiologists, had scans, ECGs, and different kinds of heart monitoring done. The doctors basically tell me that everything looks normal structurally, and that they can see the extra beats, but that occasional extra beats are considered normal.
Still, it feels like things have gradually become worse over time, especially at night, and I’m struggling to understand why this keeps happening.
Has anyone experienced something similar, or found anything that helped reduce it or identify the cause?