Whether you spend your vacations near a beach or just hanging out with your friends in the backyard of your farmhouse, it is vital that you spend a lot of time in the heat of summer. It gets easy to sweat when the summer heat bumps down on you while you challenge your friend in a volleyball match.
When this happens, you need to listen to it your body. While the continuous motion makes your body feel tired, the beating sun makes you dehydrated likewise. But if you are a cardiac patient can dehydration cause fast heart rate? Dehydration can quickly affect your mood, your body weight, and your brain if it keeps happening.
People might think what is the connection between a heart with dehydration? The answer is just apparent, when you are continuously working, your heart is constantly by your side pumping around 2000 gallons of blood a day. By taking enough water intake and keeping hydrated, you are actually helping your heart to do its job in a more efficient way. Let’s review the discussion and witness how dehydration affects heart health.
Can Dehydration Cause Fast Heart Rate?
Yes, there’s a direct link between heart rate or heart palpitation and dehydration. If the relationship breaks, your heart may begin beating uncomfortably.
When there’s a dehydration level in the body, your heart has to work harder to supply blood normally to the entire body. This extra exercise will eventually increase the heart palpitation and rate and as a result, it beats faster than usual. In addition, when the body gets dehydrated, your blood begins to get thick with the passage of time. Oftentimes, because of dehydration, your body electrolytes also get disturbed which results in heat palpitation.
Are these Symptoms link an Emergency?
If the heart palpitation had started due to some exercise or just hard work, you do not necessarily need to worry or this doesn’t entail an emergency. However, if it gets difficult to breathe, you start feeling tightness or pain in your left side of the chest and due to palpitation you get faint, you should instantly proceed to an emergency room. You may get hospitalized if you experience one of those symptoms;
- Fainting
- Decreased urination
- Weakness, drowsiness, or dizziness
- Unexplained confusion
- Vomiting or excessive diarrhea
- Mucus in diarrhea or excessive blood
- Debilitating muscle pain
How Heart Palpitation can be Triggered?
Multiple things are there that can trigger heart palpitation such as lifestyle habits, heart conditions, and sometimes medications. Lingering heart issues that would cause heart palpitation to involve;
- Cardiomyopathy
- Arrhythmia (unusual heart rhythm)
- Heart failure or heart attack
- Congenital heart condition
Anxiety and stress levels increase can also have a direct impact on heart palpitation along with intense exercise and lack of sleep. Also, lifestyle habits like vaping, nicotine, alcohol, cigarettes and other substance abuse can have the potential to increase the heart rate. The following conditions also have links to palpitation;
- Anemia
- Hormonal change between menopause and pregnancy
- Inhalers
- Overactive thyroid
Other Signs of Dehydration
There’s not a single symptom or sign that tells you that your body is dehydrated, they are multiple other than heart palpitation. Oftentimes, being lightheaded, dizzy, and thirsty are some of the common reasons for dehydration. Along with this, when your body experiences dehydration, you may also feel darker yellow-colored urination with a stinky smell and your lips and mouth remains dry. Also, you will be peeing less frequently and you get a headache and feel tired all the time.
Recovering from Dehydration and Avoiding Heart Palpitation
What you can do to recover from Heart Palpitation?
When you experience heart palpitation without any other symptoms like dizziness or dark-colored urine may not need any professional help or emergency treatment.
Adhering to these few things, you can get relief from heart palpitation within a few moments. Also, muscle exercises, stretches, and deep breathing can help along with the following;
- Pinch your nose and close your mouth and force breath exhale from your nose
- Immerse the front of your face deep in the cold water or splash cold water at regular intervals on your face
- Place your hand on your stomach and exhale and inhale through your nose with slow and deep cycles. Keep your body relaxed without stressing your chest muscles
While you practice these and you see there’s no difference in your heart palpitation, then you should consult a doctor or contact your healthcare professional. They would have your echocardiogram and identify the cause of palpitation, prescribe OTC medicines, or recommend surgery or other procedure depending on the echocardiogram report.
What you can do to recover from Dehydration?
Once you get to know that you are getting hydrated, start taking fluids more than the quantity needed from an average per day requirement. While you drink, it is best to take smaller sips instead of gulping. If you are not fond f drinking fluids, you can take foods containing water like melons, berries, ice creams, soups, etc.
In case you have been experiencing diarrhea and vomiting which caused dehydration, then you may have to get oral rehydrating powders to regain the levels of salts, minerals, and sugars in your body. These powders are easily available at pharmacies and can be taken with water. Severe vomiting and diarrhea may require medical intravenous fluids that can only be injected while you are hospitalized.
How to Prevent Future Heart Palpitation due to Dehydration?
Getting to know what triggers dehydration is the first thing that you must consider to avoid both heart palpitation and dehydration.
The only advice one could provide is to take a good fluid intake. This means to take straight eight glasses of normal-temperature water that keeps your urination pale yellow and frequent. The amount of fluids and water is also dependent on your lifestyle and greatly on the place you live. You may want to take more fluids again if you experience the following despite having eight glasses of water;
- Fever
- Diarrhea
- Excessive sweating
- Heatstroke
- Vomiting
- Diabetes
- Excessive consumption of alcohol
These symptoms can also take part in making your body prone to dehydration. Moreover, usually smoking, low blood sugar, and alcohol consumption triggers heart palpitation, and following a healthier diet and adhering to a healthier lifestyle can help recover from heart palpitation and dehydration eventually.
After What Symptoms you should see a Healthcare Professional?
If you experience frequent heart palpitation even after following a healthy lifestyle and avoiding triggers (even if you think they are not emergency symptoms) then you should make an appointment with a healthcare professional. Sometimes, it happens when you see the constant heart palpitation and cannot figure out what is making your heart rate spike. This also triggers the warning that you need to visit a doctor.
In addition, when you experience irregular heart palpitation and the pulse rate spikes over 100 readings per minute while you are not even exercising, you need to visit the doctor.
Tips for Increasing Water Intake in Routine
If you forget to drink water in your routine, here are a few things that you can add to your bucket list that would help in avoiding dehydration;
- Use an alarm app to track your dehydration level and remind you to drink water
- Keep a water bottle at your workspace and carry one when you leave your house
- For some flavors, add sliced fruits to your water bottle. Avoid artificially flavored drinks when you are experiencing diarrhea, vomiting, or other health conditions
- Use your phone to set alarms for drinking water
- Exchange your tea and coffee breaks with water breaks
- Keep a jug accessible wherever you are
The Last SIP
When your body does not get enough water intake, your heart has to work hard to pump blood due to dehydration which results in a higher palpitation rate. This is not something that you should be worried about unless you are not having serious symptoms like dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, chest pain, breathing issue, or fainting.
You must visit the doctor if things get out of hand and you feel extreme sweating while your heart palpates, faint, and blood vomit, alongside weakness and dizziness.
In order to avoid dehydration and heart palpitation, you only need to remain hydrated. Keep maintaining your water intake and follow the suggestions mentioned in this article today and stay healthy.
Remember, these are only suggestions, you know your body more than anyone else. Do not overlook your health conditions when you feel something unusual happening inside your body, whether it is a change in urination frequency, chapped lips, dry mouth, or any other symptom – you must determine the reason for them.
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