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Abnormal Heart Rhythms: Can You Feel The (Irregular) Beat?

August 07, 2018

Listen to Andy’s story on the “Connect To Healthier” podcast. It’s free! Download your guide on irregular heartbeats – and how they’re diagnosed and treated. 

The heart is a complicated part of the body  – so complicated that it even has its own electrical system. It’s the heart’s electrical systems that creates the impulses to control your heart rate (beats per minute) and heart rhythm (synchronizing the pumping action).

And, just like any traditional electrical system, the one running your heart can short-circuit. It’s likely you’ve felt the flutter in your chest known as a palpitation when you’re scared or surprised.

It’s actually a common occurrence. Fear. Anxiety, exercise, caffeine, alcohol, lack of sleep: all of these can cause your heart to palpitate. If your heart is healthy, it goes right back into a normal healthy rhythm.

But if your heart isn’t healthy – and doesn’t go back to a normal rhythm, you are at risk for any number of other, more serious heart issues, including blood clots, heart attack or stroke.

For Andrew Pinkes of West Hartford, the issue of an unhealthy heart rhythm issue arose when he was 54 years old.

His is a story of finding the right care at the right time with the right providers – in his case the electrophysiologists who could put his heart back into a healthy rhythm – at the Hartford HealthCare Heart & Vascular Institute.

Listen to Andy’s story on the “Connect To Healthier” podcast. It’s free! Download your guide on irregular heartbeats – and how they’re diagnosed and treated.