Irregular Heartbeat and Freediving

[Dr.Freedive]

Hey Linda
in bradycardia there is a higher chance that a sves/ves will occur but after that the normal sinus rythm will kick in again so don't worry. Also because your heart is trained it is larger than average thus having a larger atrium were an extra systole can form more easily. Don't worry about your heart stopping before that happens the lower rythm generators in the AV node and then the ventricle would start to initiate heartbeat.
In depth freediving our heartwall is under more tensile stress because of the pressure and the centralisation of the blood so it will lead to more arrythmias at depth in theory. But as i said don't worry as long as your heart is healthy , which it is as far as i can guess from reading your posts.
Just for the fun of it, a doc could either do an Echography or and Ecg to see if your heart is enlarged. But the best would be an holter ecg for 24 hours so one could quantify how many of those extra beats you get. But this is unnecessary as this is harmless for the reasons I mentioned.
Your heart will never stop just because you have some extra systoles.
Bernhard

 

[cdavis]

There is quite a lot that most, if not all, heart docs don't know about how a perfectly healthy heart reacts to what freedivers do. My heart will do some crazy stuff, triple beats, skip a beat and similar if I begin hard exercise after being strongly blood shifted (lots of frc or exhale dives). Went to the doc about it before I figured out what was going on. He did a bunch of tests, heart wall thickness sonograms, wearing a ekg recorder for several days, etc. Perfect bill of heath. Even under hard exercise, nothing showed up(but I could not wear it in the water). He thought I was a hypochondriac.

Connor