
How the heart influences what we perceive and fear - CapitalistCartr
https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-your-heart-influences-what-you-perceive-and-fear-20200706/
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rootinier
My heart brought me a solid anxiety disorder. I have ventricular
extrasystoles, been to a couple of different cardiologists, done longtime ecg
monitoring, echocardiograms and everyone told me my heart is fine, and I
should chill.

Coupled with low blood potassium levels and increasing distrust in my heart, I
developed a fear that I could get ventricular tachycardia, and basically die
instantly. I'm 33.

I know it's slightly off topic, but just be happy if you don't feel your heart
beating and it's doing its work without you noticing. In my case, my anxiety
disorder and fear is increasing adrenalin, making my heart stumble even more.
It's so annoying knowing all that, but the emotions are just overwhelming and
it's really hard to fight this.

~~~
nonbirithm
I have had this exact feeling regarding my heart for a year and a half and
until now felt nobody understood.

For me it is constant chest pain that comes and goes essentially whenever it
wants. It is quite varied and never fails to keep worrying me with its
novelty. Sometimes burning, sometimes squeezing, sometimes stabbing. Been to
the doctor and ER dozens of times. No diagnosis. And it isn't even correlated
with anxiety as far as I can tell, although the anxiety only makes it worse.
Sometimes NSAIDs make the pain unbearable. Sometimes they don't.

It doesn't even make sense because as far as I understand the heart isn't
innervated, so why is the pain _always_ on the left side of my chest?

I went to urgent care and they reported my cholesterol levels, etc. were
excellent.

It's so terrible because the heart is critically tied to our ability to
continue living through unconscious action, and so anything regarding it feels
completely out of control in the moment. Meaning your instant death is out of
your control. Now have that on your mind for 365 days and see how it feels.

So after spending dozens of times trying to figure out if something's wrong
with my body, seeing as it's probably trying to send some sort of signal, and
completely failing to come up with an answer, what else is there left to do?
Worry about dying every single day?

Early on I got so many palpitations I was sitting in bed holding a heart
monitor on my chest until 3 in the morning. This was when I was 23 and started
to regret all the life decisions I had made in college to feel this awful and
scared about my health that young. Today if I get like three palpitations in
the span of five minutes I'll be completely unable to keep focusing on work
and go off trying to manage the anxiety in the hopes of not dying.

If anything it's pushed me to eat more vegetables and such, but I don't know
if it will end up helping.

~~~
UncleOxidant
> Sometimes NSAIDs make the pain unbearable.

This sounds like an upper digestive tract issue. You should look into Roemheld
Syndrome. [https://cara.care/digestive-disorders/upper-
abdomen/roemheld...](https://cara.care/digestive-disorders/upper-
abdomen/roemheld-syndrome/) I was having a lot of feelings of skipped
heartbeats and my doc realized I was also having a lot of digestive issues so
he told me that Roemheld seemed most likely. What I noticed is that skipped
beats occurred around the time when I needed to burp. The burping releases
pressure on the vagus nerve which goes to both the heart and the stomach. When
I realized this my anxiety was much reduced.

In my case I found that I needed to limit chocolate consumption, sit up
straighter and practice deep breathing.

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082349872349872
Shootout eyes are probably just a western trope (I would guess "soft eyes"
would be more effective) but if saccades are tied to the cardiac cycle
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00100...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027719303233)
it would, in principle, be advantageous to draw during an opponent's saccade.

(compare the scramblers in _Blindsight_ )

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sradman
> Cardiac activity can be divided into two phases: systole, when the heart
> muscle contracts and pumps out blood, followed by diastole, when it relaxes
> and refills with blood.

Respiration, acting through the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system
(breathing in) and the parasympathetic (feed and breed) nervous system
(breathing out) also impacts the heart as measured through Heart Rate
Variability. Like many systems in biology, I suspect there is a network of
feedback loops at play and they act in both directions.

~~~
elric
The way I understand it is that this is partly a mechanical property as well:
the chest cavity expands/contracts while breathing, which impacts how much
room organs have, which can then stimulate nerves etc.

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bllguo
A bit off-topic, but this has puzzled me for awhile: there are times when at
night I will suddenly feel like my heart is beating ridiculously quickly and
loudly. It subsides with deep slow breaths. The strange thing is that I've
tried putting my hand over my heart during these episodes and physically it
does not feel that my heart is beating abnormally. Any ideas what's happening?

~~~
pkaye
Heart palpitations? I had a similar feeling when I got up in the night to
urinate. I used a pulse oximeter to reassure myself that its okay and
eventually over the weeks it stopped happening. I think there a lot of common
causes as listed in the link below.

[https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-
palpita...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart-
palpitations/symptoms-causes/syc-20373196)

~~~
bllguo
thanks, didn't know what to search. striking to me that it seems to be all
mental. I suppose it's reassuring that this is somewhat common

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known
Heart has got its own brain
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy)

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Nasrudith
Reminds me of a personal experience I had with general anesthesia and a
remembered "dream" segment of calmly wondering if I had died of complications
and the afterlife was just this void. The current theory of mechanism for
anesthesia is that it stops nerves from carrying signals to the brain which
would be consistent with the lack of fear in considering what would be a
premise of horror short story.

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themodelplumber
Q: Is the described effect moderated by blood pressure? In other words, if
one's blood pressure is higher, does the systolic effect rise in intensity
relevant to the neurological processes discussed in the article? I would guess
so but the article doesn't really get into that.

