Hey all, 

I am a 26 year old male and I’ve been experiencing a lot of anxiety about my health, more specifically my heart .. AKA “cardiophobia”. Around this time last year and up till now, I’ve been hyper-aware of my body and how my heartbeat and heart rate fluctuates so much throughout the day. One day I woke up and felt my heartbeat felt oddly faint, since I’m so used to experiencing palpitations or feeling my heart pound in general it felt unusual to me. So Being the hypochondriac I am, I went to see my cardiologist who ran the following test: 1) CT scan 2) Echocardiogram (ECG) 3) Blood test 4) Ultrasound … which ofcourse, all came back normal. But I wasn’t satisfied. I do have a family of high blood pressure and my BP tends to get high when I am not eating right. In general I try to maintain a healthy lifestyle (walking, low-fat diet, water, multivitamins) but I’m not always consistent. I actually felt my cardiologist was negligent being that I expressed how I haven’t been getting quality sleep these last few months, getting barely 4 hours sometimes. He opted out from doing a stress test on me. Now I’m more worried about my health after doing some research on “Sick sinus syndrome” which isn’t always detected with those tests that were done on me. It requires me wearing a holter monitor for 24 hours to really get a full view of when I experience those faint heartbeats and low heart rate. I always feel like its never my true vitals in the doctors office thanks to ‘white coat syndrome’.. but I digress. I am wondering if I should go ahead and get this holter monitor. Or am I over reacting? I’ve seen that the solution for this would be a pacemaker. FYI, my heart rate can get as low as 42 bpm during rest which I feel is low. Or is it? I also feel small aches in the upper left part of my chest going into left shoulder and arm. This is debilitating pain but an noticeable ache that comes and goes. I’ve seen that anxiety can cause this feeling but It’s so hard to know what’s real and what’s not. The internet can be your worse enemy sometimes when it comes to cardiophobia and health anxiety in general. This sucks. I wish I wasnt so in my head about this and I surely want to get any underlying problem fixed asap. PLEASE your feedback will greatly be appreciated.