Hello doctor,
I am 23 years old and have been diagnosed with PVCs which I know are harmless, but I have been reading a lot and people are saying PVCs that are constant or in a "run" three or more are considered ventricular tachycardia now I have had a stress test done ekg ultrasound and everything came back fine. I am scheduled for a holter in about two weeks and it is a week monitor than the last test. I am deathly afraid of this arrhythmia (I am just a kid and I know it can be worse but I thought I was doing better. Let me explain. I smoked weed and cigarettes for about six years and am quite overweight. I am 6'2 in height and 350 lbs. I quit cold turkey, all weed, cigarettes, and my horrendous eating habits about two months ago. When I was smoking heavily I would sometimes get PVCs and sometimes I would get them all day for one to three days and then I would not get them for months or weeks. I was not very concerned at the time because I was told they are benign and they did not cause any harm so I went on my merry way. Well, one night I thought I was having a heart attack, and long story short it was not heart-related but in fact, stomach, Indigestion so I went to the GI doctor and tested positive for H.pylori, I am not aware if I still have it for I just took the antibiotics for it and am waiting to get tested again. I also have a hiatal hernia and some reflux. Now I know the hiatal hernia can irritate the vagus nerve which can cause PVCs but I rarely get them while resting nor during weight lifting or any type of cardio it seems like I only get them during sexual activity. Now I do not understand why all of a sudden I get multiple PVCs in a row now. They do not last longer than 30 secs and my pulse is not over 100 bpm when I get them nor does it skyrocket as people with ventricular tachycardia get for ex something like 175 or 200 heart rate. Now I was able to measure my pulse with a reader I have during this PVC or ventricular tachycardia incident and it was around 35 bpm what that means but it confuses me considering I know ventricular tachycardia is usually a fast heart rate tachycardia meaning anything over 100 bpm. Now I did get this sensation of "ventricular tachycardia" before, three weeks after quitting my old habits and it would only be at night when I hopped into bed but it went away and I was fine after that. Does ventricular tachycardia just happen suddenly or is it induced by something? Do I even have ventricular tachycardia? My heart rate never has gone over 90 when having PVCs run episodes. So I am uber confused and scared. I have high anxiety from all the health problems that have arisen. It seemed like they came out of nowhere cause I never had problems when I was smoking. Also, what does ventricular tachycardia feel like? Is it a super fast heartbeat with irregular heartbeats? And should I be worried? I am a very obsessive person and very worried about this which I know makes my PVCs worse. I will tell you they have never been this bad in my whole experience with them. Please help.