Gut Consciousness/Heart Consciousness

Over the course of my afib "journey," I have become very aware (perhaps "hyper" aware) of what is going on in my gut. Signals from my gut - anything from mild "what's that??" kinds of feelings to significant "oh sh*t" (and I mean that literally) feelings can (but do not always) indicate that something untidy is going on with my heart.

I have read much regarding the effects of the tension between sympathetic/parasympathetic systems, the effects of various stimulations of the vagus nerve, the state of the "compliant substrate," and various other topics.

What I have never come across is any suggestion that effects go in the other direction. That is, can (or do) heart arrhythmias create disturbances in the sym/parasym system and/or vagus nerve?

My question arises out of my experience with "gut feelings," and their association with arrhythmia. Sometimes I get "that" feeling (the barely perceptible one), check my pulse, and...NSR (or, at least it seems so). Sometimes I get that feeling and, sure enough, that occasional missing beat that signals a PAC, or, more rarely, that I have slipped, once again, into afib. But, if I went ahead and hooked up my little ECG machine, would those times when I seem to be in NSR turn out to be...yes, but not quite?

A case in point: Woke up in the morning (as usual, around 4am), and got "that" feeling. Checked my pulse, and it seemed to be fine, maybe some unusually long spaces between beats. Because of recent (more significant) events, I went ahead and hooked up the ECG. I found a curious thing. My "normal" rhythm includes a slightly elongated pause between the P wave and the subsequent QRS - what my cardiologist has referred to as "1st degree AV block." That means, in my ECG machine, a little flat space between the P and QRS. But that morning, there was NO little flat space! I was still in "normal sinus rhythm," (though perhaps not really "normal" for me), but there was that weird little difference.

So I got up, started doing my usual morning stuff, and when I checked again, I was back to my "normal," with the little pause between P/QRS.

All of this is meant to illustrate a frustrating situation: not having a way to CONTINUOUSLY monitor my heart rhythm, I will never be able to determine, with any certainty, if the gut/heart connection is one-way only, or if an arrhythmia initiated by some other condition may be causing some of those subtle feelings in my gut.

Of course, another possible explanation is that gut disturbances which do not rise to the level of consciousness are initiating undetected arrhythimas, and that they continue long enough that, eventually, I do sense them. Or, even, that arrhythmias initiated by other causes, chugging along just below the level of consciousness, are stimulating "psycho-somatic" responses in my, otherwise undisturbed, gut.

Long post...sorry. What is a lone afibber to do?

The heart is "gut conscious," but is the gut "heart conscious?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2019 11:37AM by wwoofbum.

Difficult to say without a picture but if you are seeing P waves with little to no delay between them and the QRS complex that points to accessory pathway around the AV node (all of which are congenital and don’t just come and go) or possibly a junctional rhythm (AV node depolarizing without stimulation from the SA node). Again, it’s impossible to say without the trace. Preferably a multi-lead (6 or 12). You should certainly share whatever data you have with your cardiologist.

As for the heart affecting the gut, I’m not sure I really believe that. The heart responds readily to nervous system input but it really does a poor job of feeding any of it back. That’s the main reason so many people die of heart attacks. An irritated heart just sends nerve impulses back to where its own innervation branches from the spinal cord. That shares nerve branches with just about the entire upper torso. Acute MI can feel like anything from neck to navel. In females you can almost say neck to knees. It’s really non-specific. So an irritated heart “targeting” the intestines seems unlikely to me. I would tend to think that whatever is upsetting your heart may also be upsetting other parts of your body simultaneously.

Just my 2¢.

Quote
wwoofbum
All of this is meant to illustrate a frustrating situation: not having a way to CONTINUOUSLY monitor my heart rhythm, I will never be able to determine, with any certainty, if the gut/heart connection is one-way only, or if an arrhythmia initiated by some other condition may be causing some of those subtle feelings in my gut.

Contec Holter monitors from China are available from eBay at relatively modest cost (under $200US) and include analysis software. There are some software issues as noted in this review: "The CONTEC 3-channel Holter monitor software has excellent display graphics,providing summary counts of PVCs, etc. I also has sophisticated Poincare plots, histograms, etc. for the cardiology expert. I am learning a lot of interesting new insights.

There is however a serious area of deficiency in the waveform identification. For example, it FREQUENTLY mis-identifies something as simple as a PVC. Two PVCs a few seconds apart are perfectly identical in their waveshape, yet one is tagged "S" while the other is tagged "V". You can right-click it and manually correct the tag, but there are over 80,000 beats in a day. Scanning through a day's worth of data visually to correct those errors would be hopeless. The main reason I bought the unit was to visually learn how to identify EKG problems.
For the price it is unbeatable, but no doctor would spend the time correcting mis-identified complexes.

So you'd have work to do, but you'd have data to play with.

Back in the mid-2000's several members here purchased their own Holters, the cost back then was up around $4-5000. I borrowed one for a while from one of these guys. It was interesting.

I've used beat to beat recording Polar heart rate monitors for looking at long duration (overnight) recording of rhythm issues for 15 years. Wrote about them back in the day. <[www.afibbers.org] and <[www.afibbers.org] Don't get as much info from a tachogram (heart rate vs. time graph), but I can see PVC's, PAC's and afib. I did a simultaneous Polar/ECG comparison to sort out the difference between PVC's and PAC'S. Less hassle with a chest strap than with electrodes.