Sports and tachycardia / arrhythmia

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I've read that ASD might be related with too much responsiveness of the autonomous nervous system, exaggerated responses from the body to ordinary stimuli. I think that that might explain why, most times (but not every day) I cannot do aerobic (cardio) exercises without the machine stopping me saying my heartbeat is too high.
Once I decided to run while doing a 24h heart exam, and, next day, the doctor came scared asking what happened at a certain moment my heartbeat was 218 bpm.
I was wondering if other people have the same problem, and what they do to cope with it, and to be able to do more intense exercises.

I have supraventricular tachycardia. Diagnosed as a teen after my mom took a pulse of 250 and floored it to the ER instead of waiting for an ambulance. Spent awhile in a cardiac unit another time something similar happened.

My heart rate rarely goes that high anymore but it's generally on the high side resting and easily goes into tachycardia with exercise. Unfortunately I have no idea how to handle exercise because a completely different condition makes me exercise intolerant (I go limp, vomit, can't breathe properly, and my skin heats up to disturbing temperatures on certain parts of my body... and by "exercise" I mean stuff that even the laziest of nondisabled people wouldn't consider exercise). So I'm just flat-out not capable of anything except light strength training. Wish it was different, but it isn't, so meh. Sorry I can't be of more help.

I have arrhytmia, mitral valve prolapse, and a flow murmur. I don't have problems with my heart racing, though, just switching rhythm on me or feeling like it stops for a couple of beats. It's worse when I'm stressed. Exercise seems ok.

Yeah, my heart does the "skip a beat" thing, too, regularly. Doctor says it's all psychological. I think he's talking out of his butt, considering that he never actually checked it out and "it's all in your head" is something you only say after you rule out the important stuff. Vast majority of the time, these things are either benign or minor keep-an-eye-on-it type issues. I'll just have to hope that's the case. All the possibilities I've studied tend to be along the lines of "it's almost always nothing; when it isn't, it tends to cause more problems than just arrhythmias".

Thankfully I have no major problems exercising unless it dehydrates me. Then I do tend to get irregular heartbeat. Potassium levels are normal--had those checked when they put me on a diuretic.

About four years ago, I ended up passing out for no good reason (except a really bad period) and went to the hospital with bradycardia. I forget what the heart rate was. 40s, I think. In any case, it resolved itself and never happened again. Who knows? Anyway, I was spending most of my time very active that summer; I guess the heart rate could've been a result of exercise.

I'm not going to get any answers until I can switch doctors. Since nobody else is taking patients, that's all I get.

i can't say if this relates strictly to AS - i only know that before the beta-blocker treatment, i had malignant hypertension [over 200/100] in response to even the mildest stress. the atenolol got rid of that but in exchange my aerobic capacity went down to almost nothing. my ticker just can't pump fast enough nor hard enough to do anything useful anymore. i can barely swim laps, and real running [NOT "jogging"] is out of the question now. but i can accept this because when i had the hypertensive episodes i would get these splitting headaches. i don't miss those at all.

My anatomy prof tells me that hypertension never has symptoms except when it's ridiculously high. But I got headaches when my blood pressure hit only 145/90, which is stage 1 hypertension and only dangerous in the long run. I think he's wrong--that the correct statement is that hypertension may not cause symptoms, and will cause only vague, nonspecific symptoms when it does. (The hypertension was caused by birth control pills. Girls, take note: You do not have to be a smoker to get that side effect.)

I'm quite hypersensitive to many sensations, though, and I can detect physical sensations that many people wouldn't notice, as well as being overwhelmed by physical sensations that many people would consider merely annoying--while at the same time not particularly noticing other kinds of sensations that many people would consider significant.

This hyper/hyposensitivity combination tends to get in the way when it comes to medical matters--I never know whether something needs to be checked out or not. Generally, I do a lot of research (I have a good, detailed anatomy book as well as my school's subscription to lots of useful sites); and usually I conclude it's something that doesn't need medical care. Apparently, most people don't need to think so hard to figure out whether or not to go to the doctor for something; they just know "I feel really bad", and go. Me... I can feel horrible over nothing, or else think it's nothing but discover hours later that I've got a several-inches-long second-degree burn from when I touched the hot cookie sheet... (True story. I knew it was hot but didn't think I had hurt myself. Similar stuff happens all the time--I've got about ten bruises on my legs at the moment and haven't a clue where I got them.)

I figure the more I know about medicine, the more I'll be able to triage stuff and know what's important and what can be ignored.

When I was 24 I found out my hear skipped some beats, mainly after eating too much high caloric food. Since then until starting with Bupropion, I had been taking Sotalol, a beta-blocker that concentrates into the heart. I still take it occasionally, and it turns me into an athete at the gym, while if I don't take it, I am a sedentary... I am afraid of doing that magic.