I am already planning on seeing my primary care doctor and hopefully being referred to a radiologist. I just wanted to hear others anecdotes and experiences until then.
My mother last year had a stroke and learned it was from PFO. Shes still going through the recovery process (she’s been keeping it somewhat to herself) but from what I can see she seems to be like her relatively normal self. I believe that sometimes these things are genetic and can be passed down.
As per me, I am a bodybuilder who has been training for almost two years on the date and I’ve always been a high volume, almost everyday for a couple hours (the gym is my safe space, what can I say!) during that time. I’ve constantly pushed myself to failure, I drink like 250-300 mg of preworkout everyday and life’s been wonderful.
I started doing dragon flags a week ago for my core movements which are extremely intensive. They require you to hold your breath and brace your entire body at the same time while lowering your entire body using your neck as the lever point. I also added hanging leg raises to follow up. I noticed that after I started doing these, I started feeling this strain in my heart are. I chalked it up to maybe a pulled pec and didn’t think much of it. This feeling only kept persisting though until about 4 days later, after doing these and proceeding with leg day, I started feeling extremely weak, dizzy, and like my heart was just struggling. Like it just wasn’t able to keep up. To the point where I asked the gym staff to call an ambulance because I legit was fearing that I was having a heart attack or something. Coincidentally, the day before I started doing dragon flags I was discharged from the hospital because of an acute psychosis episode that occurred form weed abuse (yeah I know my life’s a mess rn there’s a lot going on alright!). I chalked this up to the antipsychotics interacting with the preworkout and after speaking to my psychiatrist, stopped taking them as I had only just begun them.
Next day, I hit a glorious chest day where I happen to skip core because of time reasons and it was an extremely intensive chest/bi day with cardio afterwards and didn’t feel a single flutter.
Yesterday, I went to the gym and started with the damn dragon flags. Immediately, upon the first rep I felt that strain come right back. I stupidly pushed through a few more reps but at this point I was like ‘okay this is not right’ and after doing research, dragon flags happen to be one of the most strenuous movements on the cardio vascular system due to the amount of blood your heart needs to pump through basically the entire muscular system as you hold your breath and brace your core. I left the gym, the rest of the day I definitely felt like my heart was tired but I felt overall okay.
Today, my energy feels okay but my heart just feels heavy. Like it’s tired. I went to the gym, did like 15 minutes of super light isolated leg movements and even with that I could feel things were off. My legs started getting waves of coldness as my heart definitely felt like it was working way too hard considering how light the weight was and how little intensity there was.
Like I said, I’m already planning on going to my doctor to get this checked out. I think I’m just looking for others opinions, and if anybody has ever had this happen to them in similar gym-environment circumstances. Thank you for reading.
TLDR: did dragon flags after coming out of psychosis/weed withdrawls and heart feels fluttery and very tired. Thought I was having a heart attack. Two days later, can’t even do basic ass light leg movements for 15 minutes