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Autism and heart rates

JD-on-sea

Does anyone have a raised heart rate or trouble sleeping (and realising their heart is racing) that isn’t related to another heart or medical condition?

I’ve started wearing a sports watch to monitor my heart rate and sleep patterns as I’m tired all the time (which I put down to exhaustion due to masking) and felt like my heart was racing a lot of the time when I had challenging days at work. There’s nothing wrong with me physically in this area, but it’s been fascinating to have a message on my watch say that I’ve had a really stressful day when I’ve just been sitting at my desk. But it was correct because I’d been masking all day and felt worn out. It’s also corroborated what I’ve been saying about not getting good quality sleep and then still feeling tired the next day.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar (with or without technology to back you up)?

  • Thanks for your replies - interesting to hear your experiences with this.

  • For years before my Autism diagnosis I was worried about my sleeping heart rate

    I could wake up in the middle of night - thinking my heart was racing away and feeling very odd.  I found it difficult to explain this to my Doctors, as think I may have Alexithymia too.

    I bought stand alone heart monitors  that you held in your hand, so I could do a trace in the middle of night, and about two years ago got a Smart Watch , which seems to show my heart rate fluctuate between high 50s to 100, and every night it can be 60 one minute and in the 90s the next whilst I'm asleep

    What I believe this is all down to Autistic Anxiety - why I woke up.  When I had an ECG , daytime at the doctors, then all is fine.

    I've reduced the amount of time I now wake up, following some therapy ,which was largely focused on worry, but I still suffer with anxiety (i'm not medicated)  and wake up in the middle of the night occasionally , it seems to be returning again, but not to past levels yet

    The smart watch though - does sometimes contradict how I feel, so when 've had a good night sleep the watch shows otherwise, so I'm not too sure if its reliable they are tbh.

  • in reply to Hergé
    Hergé said:
    I probably sleep around 4 hours a night, sometimes it all in one go, other times it's in small chunks

    How do you function? I’d be a zombie trying to cope with that amount of sleep. 

  • JD-on-sea said:
    Does anyone have a raised heart rate

    I've always had a heart rate higher than normal - resting is about 70 bpm and when working out on a mild cardio exercise (crosstrainer on a low/mid level) it will be around 130 bpm but I am not breathing heavily or straining - and can do this for an hour with barely breaking a sweat.

    My wife is a bit fitter than me and her heart rate is about 20 bpm lower in both cases.

    My heart is otherwise very healthy but does seem to run faster than normal people.

    If you do have a lot of anxiety and/or stress then the chances are that this is impacting your heart too. I had 4 decades of this sort of exposure so it could be a long term effect. As it never caused me issues I've never had the doc consider it worth investigating.

  • I've had quite a few ECGs recently for a medical study and my heart rate at rest sits between 60-65bpm, but as soon as I get into bed it's like someone has given me an adrenaline shot and up it goes.

    I probably sleep around 4 hours a night, sometimes it all in one go, other times it's in small chunks.

    I think my brain gives me just enough to scrape through the following day.

    In saying all of this, I am being assessed for ADHD next Friday!

  • I did think a few years ago that some of my ill health could be down to a heart problem and so got a 12 lead ECG (a patient monitor as used in hospitals) and had a look at my ECG - I found that my heart waveform looked very odd compared to the standard literature and so purchase a book "ECG Interpretation made Incredibly Easy!" and managed to work out that I had a right axis deviation (which is something you can have if you are tall and thin) with no defects.  To confirm this I had an ECG done at hospital and although they didn't confirm the right axis deviation verbally they said there was nothing wrong and the printout showed a QRS Axis of 173 degrees (a right axis deviation).  I also wrote to the author of the book to let them know that the conduction paths were labelled incorrectly on one of their diagrams, however that was no longer relevant as more recent information in Grays Anatomy (p1088, 42nd edition) states "specialized pathways have been alleged to connect the sinoatrial and atrioventricular nodes, but there is no evidence that tracts insulated from the working myocardium, as occurs in the ventricular conduction pathways, exist within the atrial walls".  I also stated it would have been helpful to have an example waveform for right axis deviation as it is normal for tall thin individuals.

    Regarding a raised heart rate that is something I seem to get from just getting up moving across the room and sitting down when I have a migraine.