What is the cause of heart palpitations or arrhythmias?
Do you ever feel like your heart skips a beat? It feels awful and you wonder if something is wrong with your heart. There are actually many different reasons for this. When it feels like your heart skips a beat or starts to beat differently, this is called a palpitation or arrhythmia. Some arrhythmias are a temporary adjustment of the heartbeat. Other causes are more serious. The heart is a fascinating organ. It sustains our life, yet we often take it for granted because it beats automatically. The heart is a muscle which contracts and expands (beats) to pump blood through your blood vessels to all parts of the body. Blood flows throughout the body in a cycle. When blood leaves the right side of the heart, it travels to the lungs. Here it picks up oxygen, then goes to the left side of the heart and then out to the body. The atriua are the top of the heart chambers and ventricles are the bottom chambers in the heart. The chambers are connected but there are valves between each which ope
