Posted By Margaret (Chicago, Il) on 08/21/2009

I am 57, about 40 lbs overweight, and 2 months ago started walking, about 3-4 miles a couple of evenings a week and 5-6 miles on the weekend. I started feeling faint about the same time, and noticed palpitations. They got worse and after 48-hour monitoring I had 47% of heartbeats in tachycardia (fast beats), mostly sinus (upper part of heart) but also ventricular (lower part of heart). I had lengthy runs, i.e., 22 beats at 172 bpm for sinus and 26 beats at 128 bpm ventricular. This is all very scary to me. They put me on 25 mg Toprol 2 days ago and I'm having a cardiac MRI this Monday since they don't know what's causing this. I passed my echo stress test, which is good. My blood pressure is generally low, so initially when I felt faint I just thought it was that, but I've even felt faint while driving, had the monitor on at the time and it showed a long run of tachycardia (wacky waves) just before I recorded feeling faint while driving.

Since having breast cancer (chemo/radiation) 20 years ago, I've been fairly good about nutrition, but also erratic. I have gone through 'raw' stages, fasted for a month, cleansed, etc. I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the information you have recommended here. It seems like common sense to me that once I started exercising more, this started happening more, even though all the docs I've seen say they don't see a connection. I need to concentrate on juicing, more raw foods, will try the magnesium, salt, fish oil, molasses this weekend and hopefully there won't be structural heart issues found on Monday during the MRI. I hope to keep walking to lose weight and stop the Toprol. Thank you so much. Any other advice is appreciated!

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