Heart rhythm disturbances are a symptom of atrial fibrillation. Taking the pulse makes it very easy to check whether the heart is beating normally or whether there is an arrhythmia.
Atrial fibrillation can cause palpitations, ie the feeling that the heart is beating too hard in the chest, that it is racing, that its rhythm is irregular. To detect the reality of this cardiac arrhythmia, there is a very simple gesture to perform: taking the pulse. “There is no other way to know if you have a cardiac arrhythmia than to take your pulse”, explains Dr Mathieu Kerneis of Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris.
How should it be done? Either you take your index and middle fingers and put them at the level of the small gutter that is under your thumb, you then feel a pulse that allows you to measure your heart rate. Either, and this is another way to take your pulse at the level of the carotid, you can put three fingers, the middle finger, the index finger and the ring finger, just next to the trachea. And in both cases, it is then enough to … count: how many pulsations felt in one minute (one can also, it’s arithmetic, count the pulsations during 15b seconds and multiply by 4)?
Between 50 and 100 beats per minute
It is usually said that a normal pulse should be between 50 and 100 beats per minute. Below 50 beats, the heart rate is too slow. However, this can be normal for people who are very athletic and at rest. but the rhythm should never drop below 40 beats. Up to 100 beats per minute, this remains normal if you have just made an effort, but beyond that, it is too fast and we speak of tachycardia. “When the rhythm clearly exceeds 100 beats per minute, there is a heart rhythm disorder, an electrical anomaly in the heart which should lead you to consult”, underlines Dr. Mathieu Kerneis.
The risk of blood clots forming
“At rest, you don’t feel your heart beating. When you start to feel it beating, this is called palpitations, when the heart beats quickly and irregularly,” adds Dr. Kerneis.
Cardiac arrhythmia, the main sign of atrial fibrillation, is linked to an aging process of the heart’s atria and “electrical” anomalies that cause these atria to contract very quickly and irregularly. And as they contract too quickly to ensure good blood circulation, it stagnates in these atria and ends up forming clots.
It is these clots which, in atrial fibrillation, pose the greatest risk: if they travel to the vessels that supply the brain, they can block an artery and cause a stroke. Hence the importance, in prevention, of knowing how to take your pulse to check that the heart rate is normal or to identify when it becomes abnormal.
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-1739366311.jpg "Ellie Bloom: “Seeing the size of the hole in my heart, the cardiologist told me that I had a guardian angel”")
