Palpitations?

I believe these are pretty common and usually harmless, most often associated with anxiety/stress.

I have had them fleetingly over the years from time to time, like a very fast fluttering in my neck, but the last few months they seem more frequent.

They are several times a day now, most often at work when I am moving fast, but also at rest and not in stressful situations.

I've ignored it up to this point, but wonder if I should get it evaluated just in case.

Yes, I think you should probably have this evaluated. I have what I presume is cardiac arrhythmia. It feels like I have a chipmunk scurrying around in my chest. I haven't had this evaluated. I'm old & I just don't care. But assuming you do I think it would be wise to get it checked out.

I would at least get blood tests.

I had a horrible bout this summer. I got the halter monitor but it was useless because apparently we all have like 250 palpitations per day if we feel them or not so, if you have 249 they will declare you normal. They declared me normal. But it wasn't normal for me.

Also I was frustrated that I kept reading things on line like "water helps because it reduces your heart rate."

Water helped for me but NOT because of heart rate. My heart rate was low to normal. No more than 64 at rest.

This is how I solved my problem.
* I noticed it was worse when I had coffee, but that made no sense because I had coffee successfully all my life. The common explanation was the coffee increased your heart rate but that wasn't the case with me. My heart rate was low.
* I read a doctor on line say that "caffeine" increases the "force" of muscle contractions... including heart muscle.
* I realized that the "force" of my heart muscle contractions must have been naturally being pushed by something... thus when I had caffeine it was doubling the effect. Causing PVCs (or premature ventricular contractions)
* I looked for something natural that could caused that.
* I found calcium in the blood stream.
* I checked my recent blood tests, my calcium level was NORMAL.. but the highest I had ever had it. Normal range is 8.9 to 10. Mine was 9.9. It had never been above 9.3 in my entire life.
* I realized I had been eating a lot more calcium than usual via dieting and eating spinach, ice cream and milk in cereal.
* I reduced calcium, my result went down, they went away.

I discovered later on that being dehydrated increases the concentration of calcium in your blood stream so drinking water reduces that concentration and also the "power" of contractions.

I'm in the middle of this mystery myself. As far as they can tell, it's nothing cardiac which is good. The second most common culprit is gastric reflux/GERD which is, honestly, a distinct possibility. They're doing an upper GI series in a few weeks. In my case, don't think it is at all anxiety related (definitely could have been at some other point in my life -- just doesn't make sense now that anxiety really isn't an issue anymore). My gut suspicion is that it is menopause-related because I've also developed visual migraines at the same time. Menopause -- the gift that just keeps on giving. LOL! Doctors aren't too terribly concerned that it is anything dangerous; neither am I. But it is distracting and a bit of a nuisance, and they agree if we can at least figure out what is causing it, even if completely benign (and most likely is), there are things we can probably do to get it to be less annoying.

It could be. Apparently estrogen increases the amount of time "long "qt" between beats and progesterone reduces it. With menopause the balance of the two can get out of wack and cause long QT.

But, that being said, don't let a doctor just write it off to that. Far too often they just say something like that. If it isn't right for you find the cause. There was a good blog I read that was just devoted to this.. called "life off beat".

I had wondered if this is hormonal too, thanks for that information.

I did check my pulse rate at home and it's consistently low normal(below 60) so unlikely to be arrhythmia etc as that is associated with high heart rate.

Today I haven't even noticed it so it seems to come and go.

Also, how is your magnesium? Magnesium helps in two ways.. reducing calcium and also it normalizes heart rate. In the hospital magnesium is usually given after a heart attack.

For me though the things that worked the best were water / hydration and reducing caffeine.

Cardiologist diagnosed benign PVCs and is starting me on a beta-blocker to see if that will settle the palpitations down. So we'll see how it goes. He gave me his email and we'll correspond about how things are progressing and he'll adjust as needed.