# PVCs who's got them?



## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

Premature Ventricular Contractions, who's got them?

Supposedly did fine on my stress test, then spent two weeks with one of these things glued to my chest -- again no problems.

My cardiologist says that PVCs are common and nothing to worry about. Sure, but I don't know anyone else who has them and the feeling of your heart 'skipping a beat' (or two or threee) isn't exactly encouraging.

I've had these since I was a teenager. I notice them when I'm sitting around doing nothing. Stress, caffeine, and cold all seem to be possible triggers.

Anyone else got em? What have you heard?


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## crazyc (Jun 5, 2008)

not a cardiologist, but if I remember correctly up to 6 PVC's per minute is
considered within normal limits. hopefully you have nothing to worry about.


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## MonkeyClaw (Feb 3, 2012)

I get them occasionally. I get them when I'm tired and (seemingly) when I think about them a lot. I think mine arrived when I started training after a long (20 yr?) break. Maybe they were there before but I never noticed. Never been an issue.


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## vetboy (Oct 11, 2005)

I get them occasionally as well. Had a holter monitor for 24 hours recently which captured heaps of PVC's (as well as some PAC's as well). I've had them since I was a teenage. None of my docs have seemed at all concerned. Mine come and go - haven't had any for months.


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## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

PVCs can be asymptomatic. I've seen forums were people talk about their Holter monitor results showing thousands of PVCs a day. But not for me. A tight feeling in the chest and the sensation of your heart stopping kind'a gets your attention..

Experience tells you that it always restarts but sitting there with your finger on your carotid artery, slowly counting 1... 2... 3, waiting for your heart to restart does sort'a make you think


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## crawl4uball (Mar 7, 2012)

i dont have them


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## Rhino4Five (Nov 5, 2009)

Premature Ventricular Contractions (PVCs) are a benign ventricular arrhythmia which generally doesn't require treatment. They become problematic IF they progress to ventricular tachycardia. Your cardiologist knows your history better than anyone on the web, so I’d go with his advice. If you don’t trust him or if he is not adequately answering all your questions and concerns, I would look for another cardiologist.

Just for the record, PVC may give a feeling of a skipped beat, but it is actually an extra, uninitiated beat (hence the “premature”). The OP probably already knows this as evident by his careful wording, but I just wanted it to be clear for anyone skimming the thread.

The carotid sinus massage (rubbing your carotid arteries) enhances parasympathetic activity to the heart to SLOW heart rate. It is used to differentiate supraventricular tachycardia from ventricular tachycardia. In other words, to figure out if the heart is beating faster because of the atrium or the ventricles. It doesn’t play a role in restarting your heart.

Out of curiosity, what is your resting heart rate? Cyclists tend to have lower heart rates, which may give more opportunity for the pace makers in the ventricles to fire before initiated in the SA node.


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## CABGPatchKid (Dec 5, 2011)

Rhino4Five – that was a very good summary, well stated.

I have them.

I seem to have developed them about 6 months ago, which was 6 months after a 4x bypass.
My Cardiologist put me on Coreg to see if they could be eliminated. The PVCs did appear to go away BUT this led to Rhythm Related Heart Block when I hit a certain Heart Rate. NOT a good feeling for me.
I went into 100% heart block 1 year ago during an angiogram, and that was very scary feeling. So I do not like the heart block feeling at all. 

I did one ride and when I would hit a HR of 150, my heart would go into rhythm heart block and my HR would be 75. Not a good feeling going up the hills. I had to stop 6 times that day on the hills. Each time within 30 to 60 seconds my heart would reset, going to 110, and then I would continue up the hill. It was a bit concerning.

The cardiologist and I agreed that the PVCs were a better alternative the rhythm related heart block so off the Coreg.

When I first noticed them they bothered me, now I guess I am used to them and I very seldom notice them. 

My cardiologist and my other doctors / health professionals do not seem to be concerned about them.

If they get to the point where they are happening too frequently, or to the point where they are bothering me my cardiologist said that then we will talk about a pacemaker.

So slow.climber,
Bottom line, I am feeling great, I feel like I am riding stronger this year than I ever had. The PVCs I can live with. 
I am not a Dr, so not a medical opinion here, just my experience.


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## Gatorback (Jul 11, 2009)

I had some show up on a stress test, which were not a concern to the cardiologist and the invasive cardiologist. My 4 episodes of rapid heartbeat following or during intense exercise, 2 caught on my heart rate monitor, were a big concern. In one recorded one my heart rate was going from 210 to 249 for a few minutes. In another it was between 200 and 214 for about 13 minutes, with dizziness and a lactic acid feeling coming and going in my arms. 

I ended up having an electrophysiology study and successful cardiac ablation. The doc said the irregular heartbeat would not kill me right now because I had an otherwise healthy heart, but that it could become a killer if I developed other heart problems later in life. They were also concerned that I would be hemodynamically unstable if it happened again when I was riding, in other words my blood pressure bottoming out and me taking a tumble. 

It is all good now. I was lucky because they were able to find the aberrant electrical pathway between the atrium and ventricle during the electrophysiology study, reproduce the irregular heartbeat, and then ablate (cauterize) the area that was a problem. It has been 2 years and I haven't had another episode.


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## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

Rhino4Five said:


> Just for the record, PVC may give a feeling of a skipped beat, but it is actually an extra, uninitiated beat (hence the “premature”). The OP probably already knows this as evident by his careful wording, but I just wanted it to be clear for anyone skimming the thread..


Sort of.

I'm sure that you know this but as a bit of background for people who may be new to this, the muscles fibers in your heart are like little rechargable batteries. They store up electrical charge by moving sodium ions from your blood into the body of the cell. This is called polarization. Then they contract. That's an electrical process that uses up the charge they stored. Then next beat can't happen until the cells repolarize.

Normally the depolarization starts in a little piece of heart tissue called the sinus node, the heart's 'natural pacemaker'. An electrical wave then propogates through the heart in a specific pattern. This is called the sinus rhythm. You'll here that a lot on House 

A PVC is a heart beat that's triggered by the tissue within the heart's ventricles rather rather than the sinus node,
'In a normal heartbeat, the ventricles contract after the atria have helped to fill them by contracting; in this way the ventricles can pump a maximized amount of blood both to the lungs and to the rest of the body. In a PVC, the ventricles contract first, which means that circulation is inefficient.'

PVCs can happen sort of randomly or they can be very regular. Some people have one normal beat and then one PVC, or two normal beats then a PVC, or three normal beats then a PVC. The patterns are called bigeminy, trigeminy, or quadrigeminy.

And PVCs can happen for a number of different root causes.

For people like me there will be a feeling of tightness and then a period of no heat beats that lasts two or three normal cycles. What's happening is that the wrong part of the heart triggered the heart beat and it takes a while for the heart muscles to repolarize (rebuild their internal electrical charge) and then for the sinus node to spark off a normal rhythm.



> The carotid sinus massage (rubbing your carotid arteries) enhances parasympathetic activity to the heart to SLOW heart rate. It is used to differentiate supraventricular tachycardia from ventricular tachycardia. In other words, to figure out if the heart is beating faster because of the atrium or the ventricles. It doesn’t play a role in restarting your heart..


I'm not doing a masage. I'm just pressing a finger on the artery to feel my heart beat. For me, the carotid artery process is the quickest, surest way to find a pulse.



> Out of curiosity, what is your resting heart rate? Cyclists tend to have lower heart rates, which may give more opportunity for the pace makers in the ventricles to fire before initiated in the SA node.


Kind of depends. Resting in the evening may be low 50s. Resting in the afternoon may be in the low 70s. My HR is farily dynamic. I can go from resting in the 50s to 90+ just by standing up, walking across the room, and sitting back down.

As you might expect, my PVCs always happen when I'm at rest. As far as we know, they never happen under exertion.

There are three different correlations between heart rate and PVCs. I'm the pattern they call 'bi-directional',
PVC-Heart Rate Correlation. What type are you? - Skipping Hearts


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## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

CABGPatchKid - I can see how that would be very ummm, interesting.

FWIW, I'm not too concerned about min. Rather, I'm puzzled by the notion that PVCs are relatively common. I don't know anyone who has them and is aware of them.

My guess is that the asymptomatic types are much more common than the more interesting types. Like when your heart stops for a few beats and you sit there wondering when it's going to restart


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## Gatorback (Jul 11, 2009)

slow.climber said:


> CABGPatchKid - I can see how that would be very ummm, interesting.
> 
> FWIW, I'm not too concerned about min. Rather, I'm puzzled by the notion that PVCs are relatively common. I don't know anyone who has them and is aware of them.
> 
> My guess is that the asymptomatic types are much more common than the more interesting types. Like when your heart stops for a few beats and you sit there wondering when it's going to restart


I'm pretty sure PVCs are quite common and most people just don't know they have them. Standing alone, they are benign. When I did my stress test I never "felt" anything irregular with my heartbeat, but quite a few PVCs showed up on the ekg strips. 

A key is that some types of irregular heartbeat can be deadly. Others are completely benign. And yet others aren't too big a problem but may need treatment (for example atrial fibrillation which can be a problem in some cases, such as through giving rise to blood clots that can migrate out of your heart and cause a stroke so that blood thinners are appropriate).

My suggestion for any heart related issues is that everyone have a good cardiologist investigate for them. It is just one of those conditions that it is better to have an expert take a look and give the all clear because the risk can be so high depending on the particular type of irregular heartbeat.


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## Jenny B (Feb 8, 2021)

I know this thread is older. Has anyone here found a heart rate monitor that works well? I am getting very erratic data. Clearly, my current chest strap is counting PVCs as beats. Been through customer service and they said mine uses electrical impulses to count heart rate, which makes sense that it is mistaking PVCs for beats. Wondering if anyone has tried an Optical Heart Rate Monitor? Like a Wahoo Tickr that fits over the forearm instead of the wrist or chest. Also wondering if it is able to see the PVCs or no. Makes using HR almost impossible when the monitor counts the PVCs as beats. It's always telling me I'm in too high of a HR zone.


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