by Jeff

Back in 2006 I spent the better part of the year (from January until mid-November) with thousands upon thousands of PVCs a day.  My heart would skip a beat once every 5-6 beats, all day, every day.  Multiply that out (100,000 regular heartbeats per day on average) and you get around 5 million PVCs.

But here I am, 3 years later, having had exactly 80 “bad” days of PVCs since then, or just under 8% of my days since that awful period.*

How Did I [Nearly] Cure My PVCs?

To tell you how I did it, I need to take you along on my journey, beginning in September 2006.  Actually, it starts back in late 2005.  My company was building the waterfall pictured to the right as well as the surrounding landscape.  It was a big project for us and I knew going into it that I was making a deal with the devil taking on this project, the devil in this case being the general contractor.  We’d done work for him before and every time we did I swore we’d never work for him again.  But this was a big project with great visibility and we needed the business, so we took it on.  As could have been predicted, each day on that job site was like living in hell.

You’re probably wondering “Why is he talking about this waterfall?  I thought he was going to talk about his PVCs.”  For me, stress is the primary trigger for PVCs.  And this project was nothing if not stressful.  It started six months late, and when it was finally time for us to do our work, we were racing against the start of winter, battling freezing temperatures, a property owner who changed his mind daily and a general contractor who was pretty sure everyone was put on the earth to serve him.  And getting full payment out of him was nearly impossible.

About a week into the two month project, I noticed I was having quite a few PVCs.  Much more than usual, but nothing alarming.  We pushed through the project, miserable as I was, got paid most of our money and then closed up shop for the winter on November 22nd.

At that time we had a beautiful little one-year-old.  My wife, who had been the primary breadwinner for years, left her job in May that year to be a stay at home mom.  And 2005 was not a great year for the business, so money was tight.  Trying to figure out how all of our bills were going to get paid was not something we were accustomed to having to worry about, but were quickly getting initiated.

As the winter wore on, the funds dwindled and prospects for the 2006 construction season weren’t great.  Stress was ridiculously high.  I noticed that I was having near constant palpitations now, from the moment I woke up until I went to bed.  Every fifth or sixth beat, all day.  Every day.  I’d had PVCs that bad before, so I waited the usual week or two for my heart to settle down.

It never did.

The 2006 season started and we had to return to the waterfall project to do a few little things here and there.  And we had to fight to get paid.  I was already a wad of stress before the season started, and with the normally hectic pace of spring, fielding client calls, designing, selling and supervising construction, I just got stuck in a stress and PVC rut.

One good thing about the hectic pace of spring in a new construction season is that there just isn’t time to worry about things.  You’re just too busy to think of anything but the next task in front of you.  And so on it went through May, June, July and August.  I was always aware that I was having constant PVCs, but I was busy enough that I could just manage to push the worry out of my head enough to function.

But by September the work schedule was set for the remainder of the season and calls typically dwindle to a trickle, which gives me time to start focusing on other things.  My PVCs pushed themselves into my consciousness, front and center.  I was no longer able to ignore them and those fears - you know the ones I’m talking about - started making me afraid to do anything.  Afraid to live and afraid to die.  I started wondering if my little girl would have to grow up without her dad, and how my wife would get along without me.

I wallowed for weeks in depression and fear.

Then, like many of us do after PVCs make an uninvited, extended stay, I decided I wasn’t going to go down without at least a little fight.  I was going to do something.  Try something. Try anything to get these heart skips to stop.  I got on the computer and started researching everything and anything to do with reducing or eliminating irregular heart rhythms.

I cut out soda completely.  Regular, caffeine-free, diet - they were all off limits.  No more coffee.   I started cutting back on products with refined sugar.  I swore off chocolate.  But after a month I was still having as many ectopics as I had with the soda, sugar and chocolate.

I tried getting more sleep.  My sleep patterns had been terrible, especially since now we had a second child on the way.  I started drinking lemon balm tea.

I tried some methods of stress relief.  I stopped watching the news completely - nothing but doom and gloom coming out of that box.  I started unplugging from the world about an hour before bed, taking my time getting ready to go to sleep, then spending 30-40 minutes in bed every night reading a book.  This quickly became time I looked forward to, time that was nobody’s but my own, and I could just turn my brain over to the story being told on the pages in front of me and shut everything else out.

Three months later, my heart finally started to settle down.  Soon I’d have so few PVCs per day that I stopped counting the beats between the last and next palpitation.  I stopped taking my pulse.  I could finally start laughing again and enjoying time with my family.

Fast forward to 2009 - I still have flare-ups that are as bad as my worst days in 2006.  But those flare-ups stop as abruptly as they start and rarely last more than a few days.  When they do occur I think back to all the things I did in 2006 to shut down those overly excited heart cells.  I unplug from work, take some time for me, cut back on the caffeine and chocolate (oh yeah, did I forget to mention?  I eat chocolate and drink soda again!), and within 3-36 hours my heart has mellowed out, thumping along happily.

I wish I could tell you there was a magic bullet for these PVCs, but for most of us I don’t think there is.  I don’t think there’s a point where you can be certain you’ll never have another palpitation, no matter what you do to prevent it.

For many of us I think stress is the primary cause, and chronic stress can make your powerful brain do some strange things to the rest of your body.  And the worst thing about stress is there’s no outward, telltale sign.  Your fingers don’t turn blue and you don’t break out in hives.  And for me, stress doesn’t fall like a bag of bricks.  It’s a slow river, it’s acidic waters slowly etching away at the insulation of my nerves, changing me so slightly from day to day as to not notice any change at all, until suddenly a bit of the raw nerve is exposed and my heart starts tripping and skipping.  But if I can back away from those things that may be making me anxious and just let go of some of my worries, my heart settles right back down.

I hope an idea or two here can help you, too.

*I keep a running excel spreadsheet with notations to track my arrhythmias, so that I can look for trends in either time of year or circumstances, so that I can limit my exposure to those things that are likely to cause me too much stress and consequently too many PVCs.

by Jeff

In 2006 I’d had many consecutive months of near-constant PVCs. I would usually start feeling them soon after I woke up and they’d go on all day.  Every day.   Toward the end of the year I was quickly reaching the end of my mental rope with this arrhythmia issue, so I went to my family doctor to look into having some tests done . My doctor agreed and ordered tests and blood work.  Unfortunately, and as is often the case with my heart, once onstage in the setting of Holter monitors and echocardiograms, my heart got stage fright and more or less stopped performing back-flips in my chest, save for a handful of premature beats.

Not surprisingly, after the tests came back my doctor said I was fine, and I enjoyed a few months of very limited PVCs - and I’m still not sure why.

But when the PVCs returned a few months later, I was not content to just live with them. Whether you have 20 or 20,000 PVCs in a day, they can occupy your every thought, cause you to think constantly about your mortality, taking the fun out of even the most pleasurable activities.

I was tired of wondering if today was the day I was going to die.

I didn’t want to go through more rounds of tests - while I was afraid of what the PVCs might mean for my heart and longevity, I was also feeling embarrassed to be considered one of “those patients,” the kind that doctors roll their eyes over when they see their name on the appointment calendar. The kind that think they’ll die from a papercut.

So I decided I was going to try to reduce or even cure my PVCs on my own and started looking online for ways I could eliminate them. I’m not a fan of lifelong medications, so I wanted to find a solution that was natural - or even better, healthy. I scoured the web for strategies of stress relief, home remedies for palpitations and anything else I could think of that might help.

Then I found one possible ally in my fight with PVCs in Melissa officinalis, or lemon balm. It’s a plant that’s a member of the mint family^[1], which is widely used in food products.  Even lemon balm itself is frequently used for it’s lemon flavor in food products like ice cream.^[1]

And then I found an article about it on the University of Maryland Medical Center website where historical medicinal uses (such as for anxiety, insomnia and even herpes) were explained as well as current scientific findings, such as it’s anti-viral properties. ^[2] In that article no side effects or symptoms of toxicity were reported, which eased my mind that much more.

Wikipedia has an in-depth article on the plant and it’s uses.^[3] There were even anecdotes of people drinking lemon balm tea every day for their health, including King Charles V of France (but he died when he was 43 -  though it was back in the 1300’s, so take that with a grain of salt). ^[4]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lists the herb as “generally recognized as safe.”^[5]

But the final piece of evidence that made me comfortable enough to jump in and try lemon balm tea to calm my nerves and my heart palpitations wasn’t found on the internet or in a book. It was found at my local big box home improvement store, in the seed display of the garden section. I wondered how harmful it could really be if you can buy the seeds for this herb at your local store.

I tried growing the seeds, and though many online gardening resources claim it’s easy to grow and can take over a garden, the seeds I planted took nearly 15 months to germinate. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have 15 months to wait, so I tried, unsuccessfully, to find lemon balm tea locally.  However, I did find it reasonably priced at Amazon.com,  in tea bags, bulk and seed. (I like to order the tea in larger quantities to save on shipping - pictured below is three of the ten or so boxes I usually buy at a time.)

And in all fairness to you and the medical community, it’s entirely possible that my experience with this herbal tea was the result of a placebo effect, or a combination of the tea and other lifestyle changes I made at roughly the same time. But I keep an excel spreadsheet to track all my arrhythmia issues, and my PVCs were dramatically reduced within a few days of starting a regimen of drinking two cups of lemon balm tea a day. And by dramatic, I mean going from 10,000-20,000 PVC/day down to 1-100 PVC/day.

After a few months I cut back to one cup of tea per day, only drinking more on heavy PVC days. But since 2006, I’ve only had 36 of those heavy days (like I said - I keep a spreadsheet) - after suffering through thousands every day for 8 months straight!

I want to make sure I reiterate that my results might not be what you see for results. My reduction in PVCs could have been from other steps I was taking to remove stress from my life (which is the biggest trigger of PVCs for me), including exercise, diet changes and taking up hobbies to unplug from the daily grind. I’m not a doctor, and you should do your own research before taking any steps regarding your health, including talking to your doctor.

But I’ve been where you are - you’re looking for anything to help you with your palpitations, and when something works it feels like you were just granted a new lease on your life, and you want to shout about it from the rooftops so that others can be helped. For me, lemon balm tea appeared to be (and continues to be) a safe, flavorful addition to my day that helps keep the PVCs at bay.

References

Lemon Balm plant photo courtesy of J.S. Peterson @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database.