For the past 6-9 months, I have been getting a strange feeling right immediately below my heart near stomach pit. With that I get a tingling sensation in my arms ,feel a bit dizzy and stiff sensation near my jaws. Have met cardiologist and has told nothing to worry about. Not sure whether its related to anxiety or Hiatal Hernia and I feel dizzy. Sometimes scared that it might be HA.
Hi
Its a good example of why we call emotions, feelings. We feel them in our bodies. Anxiety is a particularly powerful one because its effects so many of our body systems stomach symptoms are particularly common, we even have terms to describe some like "butterflies" in the stomach. Anxiety also effects the way we hold our muscles, it gets them ready for immediate action by tightening them up. This can cause all sorts of symptoms all over your body, you can get aches and pains anywhere, clenching your jaw tighter, even if your not aware of it, often causes symptoms. The muscle tightness can effect the way your nerves pick up information and the anxiety effects how you interpret these symptoms in the brain, tingling sensations and pins and needles are common. Anxiety increases your blood pressure, heart rate and breathing any one of these can make you dizzy.
If your feeling anxious, its usually as a response to some threat and we always try to identify what this is, unfortunately the causes are not always obvious. Its very common for the symptoms of the anxiety to be labeled as the source of the threat and we start to think that they must represent a serious illness. This of course makes the anxiety far worse and the symptoms increase, its a vicious circle. All of these things are normal and important ways in which our body&mind try's to keep us safe and they happen pretty automatically, the trouble is the whole system is oversensitive, we always over predict risk. Again this makes sense in terms of survival but it also means it goes wrong fairly easily and we get stuck, we can feel we are at risk all the time, its a real problem if its physical symptoms we are aware of. You don't say how old you are, but you've seen a cardiologist, who says he can't find any problems, normally they are pretty good at identifying any obvious problem.
If I were you, I would take up a hobby like meditation, yoga or Tia Chi, as you get better at these things they tend to lower your general level of tension and your symptoms will fade, these activities can also improve your general health. You want to avoid letting this go on for a long period of time, it gets more difficult to get rid of.
If you don't have pr-existing Hernia issues I would say it sounds like this is just anxiety related. I get bad anxiety too, and I get all sorts of weird physical symptoms. Ive had chest pains, chest muscle spasms, bad muscle tension in my head/neck, dizzyness like I'm on a boat feeling, numbness & tingling of my hands, feet, arms & legs - you name it, I had it haha. It's amazing what your mind can do, not only to you mentally but physically as well. All you can really do is go to the Dr and check it out, if they don't seem concerned then just try to find ways to calm yourself down and release some stress. Exercising is great for anxiety, and also seeing a therapist can be a big help.