The #1 Remedy for Heart Palpitations

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 very 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 overworking 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 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 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 yang 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's 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 yang, 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 irregular. 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 at 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 just 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 yang 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. Now the heart, it's like, I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, and then it drops the ball. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, and it drops the ball. That's what's happening. Now there's a very simple base of formulas we use for this called gui zhi tang or a singular herb gui zhi that we'll talk about in just a moment that nine times out of ten 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 gui zhi decoction and syndrome of gui zhi gan cao decoction which indicates the exact curative effect of gui zhi decoction on palpitations. At present, many pharmacological studies have confirmed that gui zhi 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 gui zhi. 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 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 too 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 their throat, they have acid reflux, they're prone to indigestion, but in general they tend to be phlegmy types, right? Since they were a kid they tend towards having runny noses, a lot of mucus 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 up about 95% of the palpitation cases I see. Heart yang 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 Guajir, right? And formulas that are high in the herb called Fuling 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 be low, staying away from stimulants and really trying to understand what about your lifestyle produced that in the first place, right? Sometimes it's medications too but in general, look at your lifestyle, what 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, too many oils and sugar and just basically overfilling 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.