|
A rotated heart sounds worse than it usually is.
Take an orange or apple or a valentine's day heart chocolate etc. You can rotate that in any number of ways. The heart can rotate in those ways too, although it's very rare to actually go upside down! More common than upside down is a mirrored heart, where front and back are normal, but side to side is reversed.
It is most commonly detected as you discovered by an EKG (ECG)
When your heart beats, the muscles of the heart contract in a predictable pattern. The action of the muscle is the result of small electro chemical impulses that travel through the heart. Now these impulses actually radiate beyond the heart through the body and these impulses can be picked up with electrodes placed at various parts of the body. This is the EKG (also known as an ECG). The impulses generated by the firing of the different muscle parts of the heart are detected in different parts of the body, right down to your feet.
If you have a normal heart, all the signals are detected where they are expected to be found. When your heart is physically rotated, the signals are NOT found where they're expected, which gives some strange results on an EKG. The usual cause for strange EKG results is from swapping leads so they check that.
For common rotations they often know what to look for but they may try to locate the unique place on you to put the electrodes. When they look then at the EKG, they can determine if it's a simple physical rotation, or if it's due to some other cardiac problem.
So, if your EKG is otherwise normal apart from an apparent rotation, then the rotation isn't a problem. But if there are some EKG abnormalities then there could be problems such as an enlarged left ventricle causing the rotation, which may be significant (this is usually associated with hypertension).
If the doctors believe the EKG to be suspicious with the rotation, they'll usually order an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of your heart).
The most common reason for a physically rotated heart is the simple differences in physiology. Very thin people, especially men, tend to have a rotated heart. The relative location of your diaphragm can rotate your heart.
Since you don't mention they ordered additional tests, then I think one can assume that there's nothing suspicious or significant about the rotated heart and in itself is probably nothing to worry about.
The chest pains and fatigue could be related to your heavy workouts and could be muscular. It's sometimes hard to distinguish chest pain on the chest wall from chest pain from within.
Just overdoing your workout can pull a chest muscle (there are lots of small muscles across the chest) and these tend to show up as sharp stabbing pains across the chest. The kind of pain you need to be particularly worried about is a deeper pain, and feels more like somebody's put a heavy weight compressing your chest.
Were it me, I'd reduce the intensity of my workouts and see if the pains subside (remember that if you've pulled a muscle it can take a very long time to repair). BUT if the pains were compressive, I'd be off to the ER to be sure there's no heart damage going around. Do mention that you've been told you have a rotated heart so they don't go around trying to puzzle out a strange EKG if they find it. And I'd probably schedule an appointment with my doctor to discuss it.
|
