 I'll never forget the day about six years ago when I rushed myself into the ER ironically after recording the second audio book of my life and I was having persistent heart palpitations, this feeling of fluttering in my chest, a lub-dub, my heart being quiet then really loud and very active and I was noticing tingling down my left arm and anxiety. Now I was pretty confident I was not having a heart attack maybe it was just a panic attack but the heart palpitations sent me into the ER and I had heart palpitations for years after that time period. Now for those of you who have had palpitations you know how scary they can be if you've never had that sensation in your chest before but thankfully there are some easy fixes for palpitations and for most people they are not something that serious so let's jump into this video and share a little bit more East versus West what is going on. Hey guys I'm Dr. Alex Hine author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine so before we jump into this video I've put together two very important links right below the first is for a free guide which is four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine and the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine you can contact my practice and my clinic right below this video. So what are heart palpitations? Very often it is just an irregular heartbeat that can be caused from myriad different things that range from stress to medications to certain conditions like hyperthyroidism to all kinds of different things if I give you just a general overview of what can potentially cause palpitations it ranges from what we just talked about to even sometimes food allergies like gluten certain medications over exercising or over working with not enough sleep so more of the nervous system can be magnesium deficiency can be even EMF exposure there's some research on that it can be bile sludge for some people we're going to talk about digestive palpitations in just a moment but in general there are two general buckets that these palpitations fall into that we'll talk about in just a second but the reason I bring it up is because I want to point your attention to this one research paper now this particular paper is called resting heart rate and the risk of cardiovascular disease total cancer and all cause mortality now I want to point out this one little comment here where the researchers found that there was a correlation meaning there was an increased risk of coronary heart disease sudden cardiac death atrial fibrillation stroke cardiovascular disease and all cause mortality with a greater resting heart rate now for those of you who are reading this and have a rest you know a heart rate above 75 or above 80 don't let this freak you out whatsoever I want to point it out because it's going to illustrate something very important for our next point here from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view there are two general buckets of diagnoses that palpitations fall into the first bucket is what we call heart young deficiency and I want to describe this progression as well as how we treat it when a person is ordinarily working hard or let's say they physically work out the body will create an elevated heart rate right because the body the heart the cardiovascular system the oxygen the body has to respond to these increased demands like if you are physically exercising but sometimes that happens when the body is not physically being used and that's during the stress response right that's why somebody can work all day on a computer their body is not physically moving they're not digging ditches all day they're not even physically moving and yet they're noticing their heart rate in their chest and if they have an apple watch or they're using some kind of method of tracking their pulse rate the pulse may be 70 75 80 95 110 that's a result of the stress hormones that are shooting through that person's body now from our point of view the heart is the mirror of the nervous system right the heart young the heart function is not only the mirror of the spirit in many ways right we're shocked or we're heart warmed by something we clutch our heart our chest so what happens is as the heart rate gets elevated with stress let's say you have a really stressful phase of life or you're working 60 70 hours as a grad student or a tough job right you're working in a competitive industry so your heart rate is elevated over time and eventually that elevated heart rate the way we view it as every let's say day your heart rate is highly elevated it's almost like you're taxing your batteries that much more that is the time that your nervous system is on on on on charge push push push push work work work you're taxing yourself right but right now it's just nervous system now prolonged exposure to this kind of stress and urgency you're placing on your nervous system will then sometimes cause a palpitation where now the heart skips right or begins beating a regular now most of the time this is no sweat it is not something serious or pathological it is just stress I see cardiologists and physicians over medicating young people with beta blockers every day for this it is not that serious typically it is just a result of this prolonged stress so now the heart rate which is at once I rest now it's elevated you can feel it more you notice it more at rest it's elevated some days after a long work day you'll notice your heart rate being elevated all day or all night so that is again the secondary consequences of this stress exposure and then as it goes on now you have palpitation so every now and then your heart will skip right sometimes it's in the middle of the night when you're sleeping it's very alarming so this from our point of view in TCM is what we call heart young deficiency it's basically nervous system sympathetic dominance let's call it that you're existing in a state of fight or flight or pushing too much and now the heart it's like I think I can I think I can I think again and then it drops the ball I think I can I think I can I think again and it drops the ball that's what's happening now there's a very simple base of formulas we use for this called Guajetang or a singular herb Guajir that we'll talk about in just a moment that nine times and a 10 can treat this with no no issue whatsoever no sweat for people that come into my practice palpitations are generally very very easy to treat pharmacologically with traditional Chinese medicine formulas now let's take a look at one paper which talks about this from a TCM point of view this paper is called correlation between palpitations below the heart in traditional Chinese medicine and autonomic nerve function based on heart rate variability and I want to point out a really nice passage they have they say the ancient book of TCM a survey of abdominal syndrome often describes the abdominal syndrome of these palpitations as abdominal syndrome of Guajir decoction and syndrome of Guajir Gansau decoction which indicates the exact curative effect of Guajir decoction on palpitations at present many pharmacological studies have confirmed that Guajir decoction plays a therapeutic role by regulating autonomic nerve balance and repairing sympathetic and vagus nerve function so very often we are using high doses of the Chinese herb Guajir so this is medicinal or medical grade cinnamon twig or cinnamon bark now the second class of palpitations is one that is very often misdiagnosed now these are what we call fluid or GI palpitations so this kind of palpitation the way you can diagnose it is that very commonly people get them worse with meals they are prone to getting these if they really overeat if they have a huge meal they can get a really hard palpitation with that meal and they're they really feel themselves being way too full now from our point of view it's indicative of one particular herb called poria fooling now this particular herb is something that helps with what we call fluid metabolism so these people tend to be genetically or constitutionally to damp in TCM terms and what that means is like me they always have to clear their throat so the gut mucosa have an issue with too much moisture and so these people are either chronically clearing the throat they have acid reflux they're prone to indigestion but in general they tend to be flemy types right since they were kid they tend towards having runny noses a lot of mucous in the throat lots of saliva and they tend to benefit or feel better from eating small meals not eating at all or they tend towards being sensitive to dairy or sugar or oils and that kind of thing so for these types prone to fluid palpitations gi palpitations we often use formulas that treat the digestive system like Li Zhongwan regulate the middle decoction or regulate the middle pill these two categories make about 95% of the palpitation cases I see heart young deficiency is basically the nervous system and gi palpitations because very commonly people have upper gi or stomach issues that lead to these being really that's when they flare up typically we use formulas high in Guajur right and formulas that are high in the herb called fooling or poria to treat these now in terms of lifestyle practices for more of the nervous system type of palpitation to help decrease the heart rate decrease the stress response it is as simple and as hard as it sounds maximizing eight hours of sleep will help the baseline levels of stress hormones below staying away from stimulants and really trying to understand what about your lifestyle produced in the first place right sometimes it's medications too but in general look at your lifestyle which you did the last year or three or five years and just do the opposite for the gi palpitations eating much smaller meals staying away from dairy to any oils and sugar and just basically over feeling the stomach which can exacerbate that so my two cents for you today here guys again check out the links right below this video and I will see you soon