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As you know I have done a ton of videos on the subject of ectopic heartbeats and as a consequence have spoken to several thousand people who have ectopic heartbeats and listening to their individual stories and by far the one common thing I have found is that virtually everyone who complains of ectopics will also admit to having some degree of health-related anxiety i.e they carry with them this fear that something bad will happen to them and this is something that they have usually carried with them even before the time they suffered their first-ever ectopic beat.

When I speak to people they will often say ‘i was lying in bed and suddenly I started noticing this fluttering or skipped beats’ and this caused me great worry and I didn’t know what to do and thought my heart was going to stop or that I was going to have a heart attack and I often ask these people what made you feel so uncomfortable – was it the sensation of the ectopic beats or was it the fear of not knowing what may happen as a consequence and most people after giving it some thought came back to me and said it was the fear rather than the ectopic beats.

If you think about it carefully, yes the ectopic beats can be a little uncomfortable but we withstand so many more uncomfortable things on a daily basis anyway and never give it any thought.

However the fear that they may mean something more sinister makes us a lot more uncomfortable. It makes our heart go fast, it makes our stomach feel like it is all knotted up, it makes us restless and warm and this can be a self-propagating cycle because fear causes adrenaline and cortisol release, fear causes us to hyperventilate and fear is hugely inflammatory which in turn causes more ectopics to happen and then patients become even more fearful and they start curtailing the things they do, they avoid going to the gym, they become more sedentary and paranoid and this, in turn, causes more ectopics and suddenly the poor patient becomes embroiled in a horrible vicious cycle which is so difficult to break away from.

So today I wanted to tackle this issue, the issue of FEAR because I truly believe that if you can tackle the FEAR the ectopics will disappear by themselves. In fact, I also believe that many stomach issues such as irritable bowel syndrome can also be a physical manifestation of FEAR and if you are able to tackle the FEAR you will find that many stomach issues will disappear as well.

I hate to say this but there is really a huge amount of scaremongering and generation of fear that goes into the world because FEAR is extremely profitable, the media plays and profits from your fear, the drug companies profit from your fear, even healthcare professionals profit from your fear.

Every day we read a fearful story about how someone just like you dropped down dead all of a sudden, and we become fearful…but actually what we forget is that there are millions of other people just like you who are not dropping down dead. Every day I get people contacting me and say oh my cholesterol is 6 and I am terrified and I say to them it’s a just number, why are you so terrified? and they say because if your cholesterol is high you can have a heart attack and I say to them actually no it’s just because your number is high doesn’t mean you are going to have a heart attack at all!

People with low cholesterols also have heart attacks all the time. All it means is that if you study a million people with higher cholesterol maybe a few more may have heart attacks in several years down the line compared to people with low cholesterols but that doesn’t mean that will be you.

The way I look at it..life has only 2 dimensions…1) Length and 2) Quality Having spent the best part of my life in medicine I can confidently say that when your time comes it comes no matter who you are, where you are and what tests and treatments you have had no one can tell you how long you are going to live and no one can guarantee that they can make you live longer, just because I am here talking to you now does not make me immune to being hit by a car when I go out tonight , so length of life is something we can’t alter and therefore we don’t need to worry about…if its gonna happen..its gonna happen.

This post is also available in: हिन्दी (Hindi)