I am a 34 year old female who has suffered with anxiety for about 14 years. I have recently be having panic attacks and have noticed my heart "fluttering," which concerns me. I have no pain associated with the flutters, but I obviously have concerns that there is an underlying issue. Is this normal? Obviously when I have the flutters it automatically kicks in my anxiety. Please help.
Hello and thank you for using Chat Doctor. I carefully read your question and I totally understand your concern. But you should not worry. These fluttering sensation have to do with some electrical issues in the heart. Some electrical impulses that generate in a part of the heart different from normal sinus rhythm cause a premature heart contraction that you feel like a fluttering or skipped beat, because it's not a normal one. These electrical issues might be different to simple sinus tachycardia, meaning frequency above 100/beat/minute to extra-sistolic beats or other arrhythmia. The extra-sistolic beats generally are followed by a pause till the next normal heart contraction. A sinus tachycardia means regular normal rhythm with high frequency that gives you the sensation like fluttering. If the rhythm is fast and chaotic than we are dealing with an arrhythmia like fibrillation CTIF this fluttering are not frequent, in Young and normal heart, it is nothing to worry about. There are different factors that might cause this fluttering/skipped beats like emotional stress, excessive coffee consumption, coca-cola or energy Chat Doctor.  It is quite known in medicine that anxiety, stress disorders might cause rhythm problems, so you have to ménage them. Pathology like anemia or hyperthyroidism might be other causes. So, if I was your treating doctor I would say that you have nothing to worry if this happens once a wile, its normal, and we will try to deal with your stress disorder. But if they begin to bother you and interfere in your live, and as you say they trigger your anxiety we can decide to do some examinations like a blood analyze, your thyroid hormones, an electrocardiogram, echocardiography and of course a holder rhythm monitoring to have a full view of your rhythm and the extra-sistolik beat frequencies if any. Only than we can decide what we should do and if it is necessary to treat them medically. Hope I was helpful. Best regards.