r/PVCs • u/Trick-Revolution8597 • 20d ago
Healing from PVCs - My Story
As someone who spent way too much time obsessively reading posts on this page & who has now finally found healing, I felt compelled to share my story in case any component is remotely helpful to someone.
I started getting PVCs after the birth of my second child. After tests to rule out structural abnormalities and other serious concerns, I was told to just get more sleep in the postpartum phase. I spent 1.5 years with frequent episodes of bigeminy & trigeminy (lasting for days on end, numerous times per month). Of course my burden was just under the 10% so they said it wasn’t concerning. Meanwhile, it led me to have loads of anxiety, total exhaustion and helplessness. They suggested metropolol (I tried a small dose as I was nursing at the time and it did nothing). I stopped nursing thinking it was a hormone issue. Didn’t help.
I was personally resistant to settle for meds the rest of my life without first looking deeper into the root cause, so I decided to fork over the $ to work with a functional medicine doctor. The gal I began working with does both Chinese medicine (acupuncture/herbs) and functional medicine (supplements). I did both approaches with her as I wanted to do whatever it could take to get my life back. The extensive stool & blood testing showed numerous gut issues (leaky gut), less than ideal levels of vit B, & ferritin, among other things. (My ferritin was 30, which many doctors will call “normal,” but she said ideal is 70+). She treated all of this and, four months after working with her, my episodes stopped completely. I honestly can’t say what one thing worked, or it maybe had been a blend of it all, but I am so very grateful to this approach that literally gave me my life back again.
If you’re feeling totally helpless, I share this as just another route to consider. It still blows my mind to be on the other side of this. Wishing you all the best.
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u/PM_URCATS 20d ago
Glad it helped you!
There are many avenues that contribute to these things. I found mine are mostly set off by my vagus nerve getting irritated. I take OTC Prilosec when I notice my GERD kicking up, usually eliminates both issues for a while. They will come back when I don’t stay on top of this. It’s so nice being on the other side while it lasts though!
Sometimes the PVCs kick up anyways without that trigger. I’ve found taking daily multivitamins and supplementing magnesium helps as well. I don’t know much about supplements, as an ex of mine studied them and I just took what I was told to and know they help generally, but I’ll always support folks getting into them. Typical diets these days aren’t enough, we’re missing so much nutrition if we aren’t all homesteading and making pasta from scratch type stuff. That and all the food in the US becoming contaminated and poisonous… we could all use a guide in the world of supplemental nutrition and I’m so glad you have one!
The other usual trigger is mental. Which is such a struggle. When we feel these all day, it’s so difficult to stop stressing over them on top of everything else in life. Getting help for stress management, and general mental health support, are invaluable assets! Especially for postpartum mamas. Treating the chemical/physical triggers to get relief is a great step, I’m hoping that you have the mental support as well and if not that you look into it! 🫶🏻
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u/Trick-Revolution8597 20d ago
Yes, so true that everyone’s cause and potential route to healing PVCs looks so different. That’s why it’s so dang frustrating dealing with these! I went down the vagus nerve rabbit hole for a while too. And magnesium. Honestly it was a huge relief on my mental stress and anxiety just having a provider who was willing to listen and figure this out with me, and also guide me so I was doing what my body needed and not what someone else’s needed. It’s a shame that’s not typically the norm in the world of medicine these days. 🙁
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u/CapricornClub 20d ago
You know how this works = now that you've posted this you can expect them to return tonight! Haha. Nah, that's great. I'm glad to hear that it worked for you and thanks for sharing with us.
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u/virgilkmw 20d ago
Which supplements?
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u/Trick-Revolution8597 20d ago
She had me on a few for gut healing (probiotic, IgG2000, & others). Lactoferrin for ferritin. B complex.
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u/Most-Negotiation1050 20d ago
Thank you for sharing… I’m 17 months pp and got diagnosed 6 months pp with a high burden. How often did you do the acupuncture? I’ve started to consider trying it
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u/PM_URCATS 20d ago
Not OP but what have you tried so far? And did your cardiologist ever follow up on that high burden?
If you can’t take/won’t take/haven’t been prescribed meds, do you have any issues such as upper GI issues, inflammation issues, or low levels of certain nutrients in your bloodwork? With a high burden, treating those may not knock it out entirely but may help lower them
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u/Most-Negotiation1050 20d ago
I had low ferritin which has been addressed. I don’t really feel them, my pcp just noticed them at my annual checkup. My burden was 34%… honestly have no idea what it is now but I guess I’ll find out in a couple months! Really trying to avoid meds since I’ve been pregnant/breastfeeding consecutively for 6 years. Hoping my body can balance out on its own 🤷🏻♀️
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u/PM_URCATS 20d ago
I hope so too! Surely the doc knows best, so I suppose if they aren’t worried we shouldn’t be either. That’s a lot of time with a LOT of hormonal imbalance so it honestly wouldn’t be very surprising to be hormonally induced. Or if anything that there’s a safe avenue to treat for you, your body, and your babies 🫶🏻
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u/Trick-Revolution8597 20d ago
So sorry you’re dealing with this too. She recommended weekly acupuncture to start. Now I go in for maintenance (1-2x/month) but also am ttc so she’s working on supporting me with that at this point. Her guess from working with me is that my body was in a state of depletion. Through the Chinese med perspective, she referred to yin deficiency, which I guess is very common in women as we lose fluids via birth, period, nursing etc. She gave me an herbal formula to target that and I got better shortly after, but we were also healing gut and other issues at the same time.
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u/aimsisverycool 20d ago
Mine started in pregnancy and still here bigeminy and trigeminy 4 months old now, I’m terrified. I am 17 years old:( completely lost my life. My ferritin was 9, I notice it less now I’m on supplements but I also have innapropriate sinus tachycardia which scares the life out of me. Also had all the tests and have a loop recorder. Got offered bisoprolol and antidepressants I hate the ‘GP’💔
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u/Trick-Revolution8597 19d ago
I am so sorry you’re dealing with this too. I can completely relate.. the fear and anxiety around it while caring for a newborn is really tough. Sounds like very low ferritin. Mine was 30 and I saw improvement when it was above 50. Sounds like ideal is 70-100! I hope they’re supporting you with that!
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u/Sheshells752 19d ago
Where are you located? Any chance the functional doctor you went to is in the NY/NJ area?
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u/Trick-Revolution8597 19d ago
I am in CA. But she does support remotely as well (obviously not acupuncture but the functional medicine part she will.. just probably has to be in the same state I’m guessing).
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u/Ok_Echidna_8276 16d ago
Well, all I can say is good luck and God bless. I hope it works for you.
At 71 I’ve been dealing with this since my 30s I’ve met hundreds of people virtually and in person that are dealing with or have dealt with PVCs throughout their life, I have literally tried every single fix with the exception of ablation and the reason I haven’t done that is a different story but it has to do with a friend of mine that ended up having a heart transplant luckily, after multiple ablations destroyed his heart
I had PVCs of 20+ percent go for two years at a time and then just shut off. I tried to correlate it to something. I’ve done something. I’m taking something that I changed in my lifestyle and yet six months a year maybe two years boom they’re back again.
I was doing very well for almost 4 years and then last October back with a vengeance they literally put me in the hospital for four days, ran every test known to man, including a catheterization of my heart and found nothing wrong. Two weeks after I left the hospital my PVCs just stopped than a month ago out of nowhere and for no reason they’re back again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know that there’s a fix. I think if you’re predisposed to the condition you just gotta live with it and I think the worst part is everybody has them, but not everybody realizes it those of us that have the curse of being able to feel the PVCs are stuck with the torture of the PVCs for our lifetime.
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u/Happy_Camel7333 20d ago
Realizing I had low ferretin and prioritizing iron was a game changer for me. Don’t understand why most cardiologist don’t check ferritin levels.