Hello, Chris, and welcome. I am truly sorry that you have had such a struggle with these symptoms starting with an early age and I appreciate your detailed report.
Overall, yes, stress can give you those symptoms and the fact that your body's balance of the critical minerals (aka electrolytes) is also undoubtedly skewed and deficient, contributes to the symptoms.
I'm pleased to read that you are focusing on improving dietary choices and lifestyle changes. These have a significant impact and on more than just the irregular heartbeat.
The Strategy is a good start. Along with that, it's important to use
pure water (get a filter if you have municipal water.) And consider making the magnesium bicarbonate water concentrate to help alkalize your tissue pH and give provide you with a highly beneficial form of magnesium. The formula or recipe is in this post: [
www.afibbers.org]
Stress depletes magnesium...quickly and big time... so drinking pure water made from this concentrate which we call WW or Waller Water.... helps give you, small additional sources of a unique type of magnesium.
First, I'd like to address the doctor's comments on the usefulness of the ExaTest. He said:
"I would also suspect to check the cellular level, you need actual tissue samples, not blood." Well, he's correct with that assumption as the ExaTest is not a blood sample but rather a tissue scraping done with a wooden tongue depressor from under the tongue. You can do it yourself. Easy. But the point is... it does evaluate intracellular levels of magnesium, potassium, sodium, calcium, phosphorous and chloride as well as their functional ratios...plus gives an assessment of the findings and what that means to the body. As I commented in another post, ExaTest was developed for NASA's use on astronauts for reliable, easy, quick assessments.
I realize he won't order it for you but perhaps you can find a holistic doctor such as an Naturopath or holistic Chiropractor in your area who will order it. I had the same problem and asked a holistic Chiropractor if he would just do the paperwork and I'd take care of the rest. He did order the test kit and I did the tissue scrapings, returned them and then retrieved the results from the Chiropractor. He just acted as my 'facilitator'... and included the paperwork as part of one of my treatments.
Well... my point is that your serum potassium at 3.5 is very low. When mine would be measured at anything under 4.0, I'd be in arrhythmia. The high salt diet (sodium) rapidly depletes potassium; plus quite likely, you are also deficient in magnesium which lies at the core problem. You can look up food sources of potassium (K) at this link by Oregon State...[
lpi.oregonstate.edu]... and try to take in the daily requirement of 4700 mg. Some people find that using a blender to make a veggie smoothie is an tasty easy way to get some of it. Others find they also need to supplement food sources. The NOW brand of powdered potassium gluconate is both economical and easy to add... iHerb has it here: [
au.iherb.com].
Give up alcohol until you are totally stable. Alcohol is not only dehydrating, but it depletes magnesium.
As you start your new program and if you need help, send me a PM. there are many helpful posts and reports that to which I can direct you for further reading and support. Glad to try to help.
Best to you,
Jackie