Hello,
I am a 25 year old guy. Been on Keto for 3 months. last year I had an stressful event that gave me my first unbelivably scary heart palpitation. very similar to A-fib.
ever since , I started having heart palpitations here and then especially with coffee. went to cardiologists, did all the tests , doc says I’m fine. I have no family history of heartdisease. all of this when I was eating carbs like I always did with no issues.
when I shifted to Keto, the palpitations almost disappeared! however they were replaced with sharp pains instead, sharp quick jolt in the chest , they are much more frequent when I drink coffee. when I don’t drink coffee they still come but rarely. so i highly doubt it’s caffeine.
it could be potassium or magnesium deficiency but I am eating sardines and spinach on a daily basis with table salt in 2-3 liters of water.
my blood pressure is always low that’s for sure since I am doing very low carb probably under 10 a day. I notice when I run I don’t get chest pains , they only come later when I rest.
could low blood pressure cause sharp chest pains ? is it a nutrient deficiency ? it’s killing me every time it feels like I’m gonna die. please help with some advice !!
Chest pains!
How much Potassium and Magnesium? How much salt?
I don’t know? Do you? Are you tracking what you’re eating? If not your just guessing and that’s never going to solve your problem! Assuming you’re not, sign up for Cronometer and start tracking everything. After day 1 is complete scroll around and look at both your macro and micro-nutrient profiles and see where your shortcomings are. Willing to bet you’re WAY off from where you think you are! Most people are. Also, if you give it your BP regularly as well as exercise you can create charts and correlate all this stuff.
I’m not in the medical profession at all, but am agreeing with Ifod14. You are probably not getting the electrolytes you think you are getting. Tracking with an app like Cronometer (my favorite) is a good idea. Also, you may want to look into supplementing with magnesium.
Personally, I have had weird heart stuff, no pain but irregular heart rate, high BP, when my potassium, salt, magnesium ratio is off. You will have to do a bit of research, but I think electrolytes make a huge difference. Most people are deficient in magnesium, but don’t bother with magnesium oxide, it is mostly good to move your bowels, but not much else. Try a form that ends with -ate. I use mag. glycinate.
I do try to combine or change up my meat and keto veggies to get most of my potassium there, but do sometimes use Lite Salt to help that along when it is low, such as in eggs.
Hope you work this out!
I eat about 200 grams of spinach and 200 of sardines. I only eat one meal a day.
let’s suppose I’m consuming less that I’m supposed to. How come I never had these symptoms when I used to eat junkfood and rarely if any ate a potassium/magnesium food ? Over a year ago…
and if we make the calculations , to be able to hit the right macros of potassium/magnesium from sardines and spinach I would have to eat a lot more than that which would make me reach the 1000 calorie a day zone. I’m trying to lose wait. people do 500 calories a day and are fine , check Dr. Jason fung, some people fast for 48 hours like Dr.Boz on youtube.
Actually the chest pains that I felt were when I did an extended fast of 36 hours of water fast.
usually keeping up with one meal a day for 24 hours only gives me slight dizziness due to low blood pressure , that’s it(unless i take coffee)
Here’s the mineral breakdown of those two
So you’re getting an insignificant amount of both!
Well first, it makes no difference because you can’t apply now to a different context when you were eating a completely different diet. But to answer it anyways you were eating crap, processed junk which contains so much salt it’s insane, then all the sugar from all that crap makes your kidneys re-uptake it over and over and over again. THAT’S why you didn’t have that issue, because without knowing it you turned your body into a salt storage facility. Keto does the total opposite and makes us flush electrolytes.
Oh are they? If your definition of “fine” is a completely destroyed metabolism then sure, they do fine! Y
AND? My 6yo eats more than that! You think that’s a lot of food? You are going to do serious metabolic damage to yourself you keep eating that little! That’s not my opinion, that’s how our metabolism works. You reference Jason Fung, which I’m not a fan of however he himself constantly uses the analogy of “turning down the furnace” when you eat too little. That’s EXACTLY what happens when you keep under eating.
So you only eat one meal a day, and doing so only gives you slight dizziness?.. unless you drink coffee.
How many more hints do you need from your body that it does NOT like what you’re doing to it? Not trying to chew you out here, but holy crap! This stuff is right in front of your face! You need to start reverse dieting and watching what you eat and tracking and make SURE you’re getting in what you need to get in. You can absolutely loose weight but you need to do this right or you’re going to do serious damage to yourself.
I’ve been rebuilding my metabolism for over a year now and it’s still not right, and I was eating over 2000cals/day, but I was eating to satiety, fasting and doing OMAD, sound familiar? Difference is I felt great the whole time, if I had your symptoms I would have resversed course long before it messed me up! I was doing AWESOME until I started that stuff. Know how all that came into play? Reading a book I though at the time was awesome by ummmm, oh yeah… JASON FUNG!
Go research PVC.
extra heart beats. I truly had that feel like I am one step from a massive heart attack and death and just couldn’t figure out why. I went ‘low carb’ eating and it helped til I added back tea and fake sweeteners to make substitute foods etc. Scary as heck! Especially at night trying to sleep with the weird chest pain situation. Then I thought OMG heart troubles and hit a cardio guy and it was off to the races then. 
I had it. ended with a daily extra of like 3,000 per day but when I drank caffeine or diet soda, that aspartame crap…they would ramp up. Like a heart attack waiting to happen with sharp pain, flips and flops, and extra beats and missed beats. Drove me bonkers and I was scared to the max.
Hit cardiologist. Had stress ekg, heart monitor, sonogram and ended up WITH a heart cath procedure and when that cardio surgeon got in there he said…your everything is perfect? Why are you doing this procedure?
So they diagnosed me with PVC. I tell ya when I read up on it, yea it was me and it can be lower level like me, or so high, like some people it is a real med condition but very very aggravated by caffeine, lifestyle, fake sweeteners and way more junk on the ‘food list’ to avoid. Dr wanted me on statins, said hell no, went home and dropped all diet soda, tea, and such an improvement it was crazy!!! So I fixed me in the end with their help figuring out what the heck was going on 
So this is just me…this is me and what I dealt with and it “”“might”"" be you so go and see and research and check with cardio guy etc. I mean if I help ya great, if this is not you then I wish ya the best!!!
@sartre
I can relate exactly to what your describing and the doctors said all looked great.
I have to keep my magnesium up and the pains don’t happen. Let the mag get low and bam, there they are. Up the pot/mag and I bet that go away.
What were your results from getting baseline blood tests in clouding electrolytes. Start there.
Chest pains are a serious symptom. Go to new doctors until you get it fully diagnosed.
I have been experiencing the same thing for over 2 years now. It sometimes feels sharp, stabbing, sore, and many times ive felt like i was having a heart attack. Went to many many doctors and specialists, had all the tests done and was finally diagnosed with chronic costochondritis, which is inflammation of the cartilage that connects the ribs to the breastbone.
I was told that they dont know why this happens and that i just have to live with it. I manage it with motrin, hot and cold packs when the pain gets bad. Its not everyday, but i do get “flare” ups occasionally.
That a daily thing to keep it at bay? Ever try a CBD pain cream in that area? Constant NSAIDs will literally DESTROY you over time. I have an L5/S1 disc herniation and when it gets pissed I have a small window of time before the sciatica comes in behind it. Even with that my doc will KILL me if I start popping Motrin to help the pain, that crap is REALLY REALLY REALLY bad! Nobody gives it due credit because an an OTC medicine. I do have a strong NSAID (diclofenac) for if I really need some relief but even then if I start having to take it too much he wants me on the narcotics because they don’t shred your system the way an NSAID does, or he just gives me an actual steroid which obviously works better. The CBD cream has been awesome when I start getting the pain there. It’s pretty rare that I have to take the NSAID anymore.
I only take motrin when the pain is almost unbearable. The doc sent me to a pain management place and all they wanted to do was pump me full of pills, no thanks! I have tried the cbd creams and im actually trying out a few different ones to see which one is the best for me.
So far the one that’s worked the best for me is the ShiKai CBD+, sadly so many of them are underdosed it’s stupid. You should see if they’d give you the crap I got (diclofenac) still an NSAID so not perfect for 75mg of that stuff is like a couple 800mg of Motrin. Also, depending on where you line is for drugs is stacking any of them with Gabapentin makes the pain relief effect better. If you’re iffy on narcotics it’s a good way to get a higher level of pain relief. Luckily (not really lucky) with mine being a disc my pain place just gives me the ol’ shot in the spine and I’m good for a descent amount of time. Being a cartilage / musculature thing you ever try acupuncture? I’ve never done it but know a lot of people that swear by it.
I’m not sure how to answer you. I already went to 2 cardiologists. both said I am fine. could they be wrong ? both ? or are they right and its another issue ?
honestly I was on and off magnesium bisglycinate pills and didn’t notice a difference. I still had the pains but I don’t know , what if i didn’t take them for long time ? i took mag for about a month , also potassium in pills is impossible to get in my country.
first i want to know something.the pill bottle says 400mg of potassium (75mg is equivalent in bisglycinate)
if I’m trying to eat one meal a day how am I goint to take pills if I have to eat them with food?
if I have to count 75 , how much should I have to stop chest pains ?
how long does it take to take effect ? since day 1 of taking mag do the pains stop?
iron was good
potassium was a bit higher than normal
mag was good
calcium was good
those are all the ones i did, it was expensive and couldnt afford more.
mag was good but that day i didnt have pains when i drew blood. could mag fluctuate that easily from a day to another to cause pain one day and not on another ?
could be possible that the normal mag was the effect of taking pills which i stopped about a week before test ?
my thyroid was fine.
but that is non cardiac …that basically doesnt mean its related to the heart. I doubt it.many doctors misdiagnose people but you know your self better. I mean i feel mine deep , its not external pain in the ribcage , it feels deep inside the ribcage where the heart is
do they come suddenly and go awat suddenly ? or build up ?
mine come and go suddenly eve when Im relaxed or sitting like no movement at all.
how do I know I have the same issue as yours ? how did they diagnose u with that ? did they do an xray? or how were they so sure that it was an inflammation of the cartilage ?
if thats true , then how come when I only eat one meal a day and basically no supplements at all and very probably not even meet my mag needs , I only get the pains at night if I get them …some times they come for weeks and some times they leave for weeks…i can’t piinpoint the issue !
I really appreciate your input. I did wrong and I must admit. I was poor and corona got people fired and i found my self in this way anyway. I reached a state where I would find it hard to breath and would sigh all day long and would sort of take willful assisted breaths to satiate my air hunger otherwise i would feel hungry for air. it felt as if my diaphragm had slept or slowed down or my metabolism had slowed down so much…i remember barely being able to walk in the street due to extreme deficiency and energy. what i do not understand is now that i am out of keto, I still have those gasps for air from time to time . did I mess up my metabolism ? did I hurt my diaphragm ? is there a way to fix things ? will it go back to normal ? if yes how long and how do I do in order to help my bdy regain the same level of metabolism without eating excessively and putting on weight.
I’m drinking coffee but I dont know if it would help.
It’s salt. You’re peeing it all out and your body doesn’t store it without carbs. Just suck on a few salt chunks or drink some salt water and you’ll feel better within an hour. From personal experience…