Tachycardia and Stiff Person Syndrome

Hi @meadows. I'd like to invite @sheeva888 and @ingritamoreno to this conversation as they have discussed stiff person syndrome on Connect and may be able to share some of their experiences with this diagnosis with you.

You can also read more members' experiences in the "Stiff Person Syndrome" discussion: https://connect.mayoclinic.org/search/discussions/?search=stiff+person+syndrome

@meadows, if I am understanding your post correctly, you are experiencing issues with tachycardia before you experience your foot/leg attack with stiff person syndrome? It is acting as a warning for your before you are going to experience your leg attacks?

@meadows
I am not aware of anyone experiencing this with SPS. I experience heart palpitations at times, but it seems to be tied to hormones and anxiety/stress. I just recently saw a cardiologist and had a lot of testing done. The halter actually revealed an average heart rate of 60, which is kind of low for my age. I am in my 40s. I think it may be due to all of the medications I take. I wonder if your body goes into some state of anxiety when the spasm is beginning and increases your heart rate. It seems as though most SPS patients battle with anxiety on a daily basis.

Thanks for writing. It's really the heart that wakes me from sleep and then usually within 15 seconds I get the feeling where I know that spasm is going to happen - I believe it's the heart first racing although certainly I agree the heart can race from the anxiety an attack causes. I have mostly partial (in legs/feet) stiff-person. I have seen the "intense pushing out" of the feet in stiff person videos - one that did not have stiff person might not realize the intensity/force of that pushing out feeling - it pulled a muscle one day. Let's hope there is a cure some day!

My right leg has shot straight out in the middle of the night after my 8 pm meds have worn off. Now I sleep with a small heating pad around my quad that has Velcro straps. It’s meant for an arm or leg. Amazon sells them. Sunbeam is the brand. If I keep it at a fairly low setting it seems to keep the muscles just warm enough to prevent a spasm from happening.

Thanks for that info. Looking to get myself one right now on amazon.

My suggestion is to keep it on a lower setting if you are sleeping with it on. I believe all of the heating pads have a warning to not sleep with them on. But I can’t sleep if I don’t have one behind my neck and one around my leg.

Yes, that is what happens. I'm wearing a heart monitor now for 10 days - my doctors are trying to figure out what is actually happening at that point. It happens most nights. Thanks so much for responding to my questions.

I had a bad mold problem in the crawl space of a house I bought in 1999. After 5 years in 2004 I started to develop symptoms. We didn't know the house had mold much less that mold could cause a lot of neurological problems. My first problem was I awoke with anxiety attacks in the middle of the night. Later I developed fasciculations in my lower extremity muscles which then moved into trunk and arms. Then I developed severe spasms in my lower legs with my ankles and feet especially when I was laying down. Then I started having events of SVTs that where quite disturbing. I will not bother with all the other symptoms. For 2 1/2 years, after first seeing a neurologist who was clueless I was treated for Lyme disease by "Lyme Literate" doctors who were also clueless. I found my way to an MD who was at the forefront of developing testing and treatment for mold and within 6 months I was mostly recovered. The one symptom that took the longest to recover was multiple chemical sensitivity. MCS acted up when I would smell a chemical which could be anything from perfume to soap or paint or newly paved asphalt and on and on. That took a couple of years to recover. MCS also made me sensitive to drugs.

What do you take for SVT ? That’s a long time to have it .

If I gave the impression that the SVTs were constant then I need to clarify that they were not constant. SVTs were intermittent.