Tachycardia is a colloquial term for a heartbeat that is too fast (tachycardia), which is sometimes accompanied by a stronger heart contraction than normal. The heart then literally beats up to your neck. It is not uncommon for the heart to race at night, and many sufferers only report the problem at night.
Is that dangerous?
The tachycardia symptom is often of harmless origin and occurs during increased excitement, tension or even joy. Sometimes, however, there are also serious medical causes behind tachycardia. If other symptoms besides tachycardia, such as shortness of breath, chest pain radiating into the left shoulder/arm, it can be a serious illness, such as a heart attack.
If you experience tachycardia during the night and/or if these accompanying symptoms occur suddenly for the first time, you should seek immediate medical attention. However, tachycardia at night does not necessarily represent an acute danger. If the symptoms occur repeatedly, persist over a longer period of time and do not disappear by themselves or if the accompanying symptoms described above also occur, a doctor should be consulted immediately.
Tachycardia is subdivided into supraventricular and ventricular tachycardia, which describes the point of origin. Supraventricular tachycardia develops in the atria and ventricular tachycardia in the ventricles. Most causes of tachycardia are supraventricular.
In contrast, ventricular tachycardia is a medical emergency and must be treated immediately. However, tachycardia at night does not necessarily pose an acute danger. If the symptoms occur repeatedly, persist over a long period of time and do not disappear again by themselves, or if the accompanying symptoms described above also occur, a doctor should be consulted immediately.
Tachycardia is subdivided into supraventricular and ventricular tachycardia, which describes the point of origin. Supraventricular tachycardia develops in the atria and ventricular tachycardia in the ventricles. Most causes of tachycardia are supraventricular. In contrast, ventricular tachycardia is a medical emergency and must be treated immediately.
Causes
The causes of tachycardia at night are varied and not always immediately apparent. In most cases, the focus is on causes without structural or functional heart disease. The most common and also the most harmless causes that lead to tachycardia at night are described below.
Stress is a phenomenon that can act directly on the heart and not only cause psychological problems. Among other things, stress can also be responsible for tachycardia, which occurs mainly at night. If the person is stressed, this leads to increased activity of a special, autonomous part of the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system.
From an evolutionary point of view, its task was to ensure increased muscle tone, increased blood circulation and improved breathing in dangerous situations. This is still noticeable today, stress is triggered by pressure to perform, exams and all kinds of fear. The release of adrenaline at the heart causes the heart to race.
But also positive stress such as anticipation of something or being in love can trigger tachycardia. Stress induced palpitations occur primarily at night because the body then comes to rest and during the day you have not had the opportunity to think about upcoming situations. This type of tachycardia is usually harmless.
You can find more information here: Tachycardia caused by StressAlcohol shows its effect in many places in the body. Besides the well-known effects, alcohol can also be responsible for tachycardia at night. This phenomenon is so striking that it has been given the name Holiday Heart Syndrome.
Some people, especially young people, are susceptible to tachycardia at night after drinking alcohol. Typically, after a long party night or other situations where excessive alcohol has been consumed, the heart starts beating faster a few hours later, resulting in palpitations at night. This is caused by atrial fibrillation caused by alcohol.
Normally, the atria of the heart contract first and, after a certain delay, the ventricles. The electrical excitation coming from the atrium is transmitted by the so-called AV node. However, if atrial fibrillation occurs, the node cannot filter out every excitation, so that the ventricles contract too quickly, which manifests itself as tachycardia.
Alcohol-induced atrial fibrillation is usually limited to nighttime and limits itself.However, it is strongly recommended to question your drinking habits and to check for any new atrial fibrillation. Pregnancy can be another cause of tachycardia, which preferably occurs at night. During pregnancy, heart palpitations can also occur during the day, as the circulation around the child is expanded and more blood is pumped through the body.
At night, palpitations occur much more frequently, which is mainly due to the position in which the baby is lying down. Pregnancy can lead to compression of large vessels in the abdominal and pelvic area, so that less blood flows back to the heart. However, in order to maintain blood pressure, the heart has to beat faster, which is what you feel as tachycardia.
If this occurs frequently at night or if other symptoms occur, a visit to a doctor is advisable. Furthermore, the sometimes enormous stress of pregnancy also causes palpitations at night. Menopause or climacteric is the term used to describe the years directly before and after a woman’s last menstrual period.
During this time, the female hormone balance changes, which is often accompanied by various physical complaints. The hormone production of the ovaries slowly ceases. The most important hormonal change of the climacteric is the decrease of the oestrogen level.
In sexually mature women, the female sex hormone regulates the menstrual cycle and has an influence on other bodily functions. During the menopause, so-called climacteric symptoms can occur, which in medicine are summarized under the collective term “climacteric syndrome”. The most common symptoms during the climacteric period are hot flushes and sweating, palpitations, sleep disorders and libido deficiency.
In addition, dryness of the vaginal mucosa often occurs, which can lead to pain during sexual intercourse and promotes infections. In the menopause, nightly palpitations are therefore a common complaint and in most cases do not represent a cause for concern. Menopause can occur during the day or at night, although it is reported more frequently at night.
The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped endocrine gland that lies below the larynx in front of the windpipe in humans. Among other things, it is responsible for the production of the thyroid hormones triiodothyronine and thyroxine. These iodine-containing hormones are of great importance for the energy balance of the organism.
Triiodothyronine and thyroxine have a stimulating effect on the heart rate, can lead to an increase in blood pressure and cause the dilation of blood vessels in the skin. They increase the energy turnover of the organism by increasing metabolic activity, increase the activity of sebaceous and sweat glands and increase the activity of the intestines. Various thyroid gland diseases can lead to disturbance of hormone metabolism.
If too many thyroid hormones are produced in the course of such a disorder, it is called hyperthyroidism, or hyperthyroidism in medical terminology. Hyperthyroidism can lead to palpitations, sudden increases in blood pressure, reddening of the skin, restlessness, restlessness and sleep disorders. The stool frequency is increased and weight loss is possible despite increased food intake.
Hair and skin sometimes appear greasy, those affected sweat more easily and tolerate warm room temperatures less well. Psychiatric syndromes occur less frequently. Nocturnal palpitations may indicate hyperthyroidism, especially if some of the above-mentioned symptoms are present.
The family doctor can determine whether the thyroid gland is overactive through a blood test. The most common causes of hyperthyroidism are the autoimmune disease Graves’ disease and the so-called thyroid autonomy. In the latter case, the production of thyroid hormones is decoupled from higher-level control circuits.
Thyroid autonomy is usually based on an iodine deficiency. One speaks of a lowered blood pressure when the upper value of the blood pressure measurement falls below 110 mmHg. This is not necessarily a disease, as slightly lowered blood pressure values are considered to be gentle on the vascular system.
The body adapts to lower blood pressure values via the tension of the muscles of the blood vessel wall, so that these values usually go unnoticed. The heart rate is usually normal. Only when there is a rapid drop in blood pressure, such as when getting up quickly, does the body increase the heart rate reflexively.
The person affected can feel this as a tachycardia. In addition, other symptoms such as dizziness or nausea occasionally occur.According to many personal reports, heart palpitations occur more frequently when lying down, especially at night. One of the possible causes is redistribution processes of blood around the body during changes of position from standing to lying down.
Most people also observe that tachycardia becomes noticeable when one sits down to rest, even when lying down. This can be psychosomatically caused by stress, hormonal causes during menopause or an organic cause. Women in pregnancy have significantly more problems when lying on their back.
Tachycardia that occurs at night while lying down should, however, disappear after a short time. In addition to the causes described so far, there are also a number of structural or functional defects of the heart that can trigger tachycardia at night. In the normal state, excitation occurs at the sinus node in the atria, these contract, whereupon the stimulus is transmitted to the ventricles via the AV node.
In some cases there are additional pathways that disrupt the regulated action of the heart. The most common syndrome of this type is AV node reentry tachycardia (AVNRT), in which a stimulus is passed back and forth between the atria and the ventricles in a kind of loop, which can result in frequencies of up to over 200 beats per minute. The Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome (WPW syndrome) offers a similar picture, in which an additional conduction path connects the atria and ventricles in a similar way.
In addition, all kinds of diseases of the heart muscle or the heart valves can be the cause of heart palpitations occurring at night, as well as a narrowing of the coronary arteries supplying the heart. Atrial fibrillation is relatively often the cause of tachycardia. There are also causes outside the heart. For example, hyperthyroidism, hypoglycaemia and above all psychological problems can be causes of tachycardia that occurs at night.
