Rapid Heart Beats, Palpitations At Night Just Before Sleep

Palpitation is an unexpected awareness of heart beating in the chest. Patient experience a rapid forceful or irregular cardiac impulse and describe this as thumping, pounding, fluttering, jumping, racing or skipping. Palpitations may occur in anxiety, atrial fibrillation, tachycardia, arrhythmia etc. But i want to discuss a special type of palpitation which many people feel during rest or just before sleep. Most of these people feel like dying when they close their eyes to sleep. They feel that their heart has stopped beating for some time then suddenly starts beating again but this time it beats rapidly and forcefully. This is a very fearful condition and patient become worried and the resultant anxiety may aggravate this condition and a vicious cycle begins and the patient can't sleep. This is a common irregularity of heartbeat and the premature beat is responsible for this. Ventricles need adequate time to fill with blood. If a beat occurs early, partially filled ventricles send less blood in the circulation and patient feels like fainting. But This is followed by a compensatory pause, In This pause, the heart doesn't beat for 2 - 3 seconds and the patient feels no pulse. This pause allows the heart ventricles to fill adequately and then heart beat more forcefully and loudly to push maximum blood into the circulation and towards the ischemic organs. The patient feels a throbbing heartbeat in his chest for 4- 6 seconds and he becomes anxious and this anxiety psychologically affects the patient.

This type of palpitation goes away through exercise. When you feel similar palpitation having similar characteristics as mentioned above, do some exercise, like walking, running, dancing, etc. you will feel better, if in any case, your condition becomes worse, you start having chest pain or abnormal breathlessness stop immediately and rush toward the hospital. Because in this case, the palpitations are not benign.