Wanderings and Musings

For the last couple of days I’ve been having strange heart issues. My heart goes… beat, beat, pause… BEAT, beat. Maybe every 10 or 20 beats I get an irregular one. This has been disconcerting to me to say the least. Well as I’m driving in to work yesterday morning it was particularly bad and I was actually worrying enough to start some research into it.

I did a little Google research and found many descriptions of this phenomenon. Like just about any physical symptom it can be caused by a number of different and completely separate things, and may or may not be a serious issue depending on how often and what other symptoms are present… like dizziness, high beats per minute, etc.

I haven’t found any good explanation about why I might have started to get them the last few days. I’m not stressed (at least I don’t feel stressed… although I did start working again), I guess my caffeine intake has increased and my potassium intake has decreased (bananas). For many months I have been having protein shakes with a banana and blueberries in it, but recently I started eating a lot more eggs and went away from the banana shakes. Maybe this had some unintended side effects.

Knowing a little bit about how the body functions, my first thought was being deficient in potassium as this mineral is highly important in regulation of your heart beat. Also being in very good shape with no other issues present and the condition happening out of the blue and for a few days also points to a lack of something in the diet.

So my first order of business was to eat a banana. This did seem to help within an hour or so, and I haven’t felt them since. Was it a coincidence and would have gone away on it’s own anyway, or did something in the banana… most likely potassium… do the trick?

Either way I’m going to cut out some of the coffee and just do green tea at work, plus make sure I get my regular banana each day in a shake. There are two parts of the body I just do not want to have problems with… my heart, and my brain.

So if you are having weird heart beats, eat a banana it just might help. If the banana doesn’t help, go see your doctor.

Tags: Health, Tracking