Long story short I've had anxiety all my life but only started getting the physical symptoms about 2 years ago when I was 21. When I first got all the chest pain, palpitations etc it took me a while and many tests to accept it was anxiety, but once i did the chest pains gradually went away for a couple of months. But that was just the start of a long windy road, since then i've diagnosed myself with multiple cancers, from bowel cancer to skin cancer to even ear cancer. Any little symptom i obsess over it and end up googling
Anyway, my biggy on my health anxiety is heart anxiety, It's harder to shake off than other illnesses because you feel like you can drop dead at any point.
So earlier this year i began to get chest pains again which brought back my heart anxiety, kept thinking something something wrong with my heart. I tried to ignore them but i couldnt get it out of my head that there was something wrong with my heart, I became nervous about excercising incase I just dropped dead, then i began to notice the chest pain while i was excercising, i don't know if this is so because i was so nervous about doing it or not and it was pure anxiety pain or maybe it was something else like GERD or inflammatory of the wall muscle as i work out with weights quite a bit. Few pointers below why i'm struggling.
1) For some stupid reason I thought it would be a good idea to buy one of those heart rate watches, Im far from fit but I went for a run with it on, did a run and it was fine, hovered around the 150-160 mark, but then for the last bit of the run i said why i dont go 100% exertion and see what it is, so i sprinted as hard as i could to my house, looked at my watch and it was something like 209BPM. That scared me to death, I went straight inside and started googling, obviously there was loads of stuff I didnt want to see, but amongst the bad stuff was people saying that its very normal to have such a high BPM if your 100% exertion unfit and young, the only problem with high heart rates is when it doesnt match your exertion, for example if i was doing a light jog and i go to 200BPM. I'm sure loads of normal people are the same as me but as i've got health anxiety its hard.
2) I went back to the doctors about the chest pain when i was proper struggling where i couldnt even excercise because i was too scared and any little pain would just make me stop football or whatever. Up until this point i'd had maybe 5x ECG's & 2 stress ECG's, all come back fine but I wanted to go for further testing, went into the doctors like any other time but this time when he listened to my chest and said he could hear a heart murmur. Anyone with health anxiety will know what i was like, i was nearly crying there and then! I didnt know what a murmur was, just that from what i'd hear in the past it wasnt good. The doctor told me not to worry, he said that usually at my age its nothing to worry about its usually an innocent murmur, its only worrying when its either in a new born baby or in older people. That went straight over my head, I was in pure panic mode, I was even googling it while i was sat in the doctors room with him.. A heart murmur is a symptom and not a diagnosis, it can be a symptom of something structurally wrong with your heart like leaky valves. There is such thing as an innocent murmur, where your heart is completely normal its just a sound your heart makes, there are websites that say Extreme anxiety can cause an innocent heart murmur. Anyway to cut to it, he sent me to a cardioligist to get the full works done, an ECG, a 72-hour ECG and echocardiogram to look at the cause of the murmur, everything came back completely normal, it was indeed an innocent murmur. Ive read up and innocnet murmurs have no bearing on your heart whatsoever, my heart is completely fine he said.
Worth noting during the 72 hour ECG i experienced all my symptoms, palpitations, chest pain etc, so i was very satisfied with it, i even went for a run with it all connected and had a bit of chest pain, but the ECG was fine so you'd think i'd realise the chest pain while running wasn't from my heart, but hi health anxiety . During my runs i seem to bring up a lot of mucus, particularly if its cold, maybe thats where the chest pain is coming from.
So basically, now i'm trying to get back on the excercise band wagon but I know when I get on that treadmill or whatever ill be so tense about any chest pain, I've been cleared by a cardioligist at 23.. I've had around 6 ECG's, 2 stress ECG's, a 72 hour ECG, an echocardiogram, all fine but i can't move on from the chest pain!! It's driving me crazy. I hate health anxiety it takes over your life so much, trying to get on my life and finding it impossible.