Funny story. I have occasional irregular heartbeats. A number of years ago I was given a monitor to take home and use periodically when I was getting episodes of skipped beats.
This was a while ago, and after I ran it for about an hour I was supposed to call a phone number and basically modem in the data.
I dutifully uploaded my episodes for a few weeks, and apparently the doctor or specialist who was reviewing the data saw nothing out of the ordinary.
With a friend of mine we decided to reverse-engineer the signal the device was making to the telephone. It turns out it was a simple frequency modulation of the EKG Trace.
Long story short, we found the skipped beats, printed out the traces, presented our own printouts to my doctor and confirmed a diagnosis of premature atrial contraction.
There's something about routine diagnostics that causes docs to not put a lot of effort into interpreting the data. I had a sleep study plus MSLT done because my doctor suspected narcolepsy. The MSLT results came back just shy of the textbook definition of narcolepsy. Basically you take 5 15-minute naps and if you fall into REM sleep during 3 or more of the naps, insurance will accept a narcolepsy diagnosis.
When I read the summary though, it was obvious there were at least some mistakes in interpreting the data. I can't remember the details, but my doctor wasn't impressed and wanted to look at the data himself. Long story short, the place I got the test done at had no protocol for transferring that data anywhere. Which, btw, is a requirement under HIPAA. I have a legal right to have access to that data and to have it sent to another medical professional. From what I understand, the software they use has a proprietary file type and my doctor couldn't open it with anything he had. They could print it out, but it would be hundreds of pages and I'm not convinced they actually would do that unless I threatened to file a HIPAA report.
I ended up having to go to a different facility for another sleep study so that my doctor could actually see what was going on. If you've ever had one done, you know exactly how pleasant they are. 2 within 2 months of each other because the doc at the first place phoned it in is just ridiculous.
The data from the last study was clear enough that my doc was able to diagnose me with narcolepsy. That diagnosis allowed me to have Xyrem covered by my insurance. Between that and nuvigil, I'm still tired sometimes, but not the way I used to be. It took 8 years of being exhausted and miserable to finally find a doc that had the knowledge and the motivation to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Even with a good doc, I still had to deal with the lack of effort some docs put into interpreting routine diagnostic tests.
Data mobility is a huge problem in the sciences and medical field. For years, companies have been leeching off researchers by trapping them into their proprietary data types which forces them to purchase expensive software licences and prevents sharing due to the need for again, expensive software
This is why open source and open data is important
> my doc was able to diagnose me with narcolepsy. That diagnosis allowed me to have Xyrem covered by my insurance.
That’s a very effective but highly controlled substance.
My introduction to Xyrem was via a simple statement: “Sometimes people sleep but don’t get rested. Those people can take gamma hydroxybutyrate, which is found in passionfruit.” I haven’t found any confirmation of passionfruit having this substance. I got a friend some passionflower tea, and she found it remarkably effective for helping her drift off to sleep.
It’s a safe simple compound, easy to synthesize with lab chemicals. But it also has nefarious uses, so it got scheduled.
“Sodium oxybate is the sodium salt of γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB).”
The new monitors are great - I had a Zio patch stuck on me for two weeks, also due to some ectopic heartbeats (especially when exercising) with a button to press and a notepad to log symptoms when button was pressed.
The cardiologist had the entire two weeks of EKG trace, with the times I'd pressed the button (and a minute either side) highlighted, as well as other times it had detected something out of the ordinary.
Luckily in my case turns out I have fewer ectopic beats than the average person, I'm just more aware of them.
Maybe your doctor further explained this but PACs are extremely common and not considered out of ordinary. Not sure if you were implying that the first doc missed it or not.
The kardiamobile 6-lead EKG device is down to $100 now, it's rather fascinating to use daily especially if you have heart concerns.
It's actually a very simple device, recording the electrical impulses between the hands and a third point like a knee contact to make six signals which are broadcasted as positive/negative numbers describing the curves/spikes over bluetooth.
It just makes simple small files on the mobile device with those list of numbers, which someone could write a program to intercept and interpret far beyond what they offer for free.
For legal reasons between most device makers and the FDA it appears they are not allowed to diagnose more than a few kinds of arrhythmias like afib but there is no reason why a bio-hacker collective couldn't figure out more automated interpretations.
adding: note you can not only analyze HRV info from EKG but also detect several different kinds of electrolyte disorders (too much or too little of potassium, calcium, magnesium etc)
Just want to point out that Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial Flutter are (usually) very benign, chronic conditions. Many people have for years without symptoms.
Ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia and torsades are acutely deadly. You have seconds to minutes to get a normal rhythm back.
The charts colors made me feel like they were implying a-fib was the worst rhythm listed. (Though they list the severity in the descriptions in small text)
While atrial fibrillation does not present anything close to the immediate and critical threat of the three you mentioned, it should not be ignored, as it increases the risk of stroke and embolism through blood pooling and clotting in the left atrial appendage of the heart.
When it is not asymptomatic, it is difficult to ignore anyway.
There is the problem that the irregularities may only appear infrequently. Often data collection may be done for a day or multiple days to capture irregular patterns and try to understand how various activities impact those. Seems unlikely that one would be able to self diagnose with an Apple Watch due to limited data. Unless the condition was very dominate.
Though I went through a phase in uni (probably due to finals stress + drugs) where I had heart palpitation and would feel palid out of nowhere, and just how scary/futile it feels when your heart is acting up.
Anyways, I like to think that my daily exercise does something to counteract my drug use. The waveforms in this infographic will surely pop into my head next time I'm passing around a baggy of coke and notice my chest a tad tighter than usual.
Interesting but would have been more useful if the charts showed slight variations you could look for in the ekg that were suggestive of developing problems. anyone who’s seen any amount of tv would be able to tell looking at any of the abnormal charts there that “you either bugs bunny or you ded”
Readit News
This was a while ago, and after I ran it for about an hour I was supposed to call a phone number and basically modem in the data.
I dutifully uploaded my episodes for a few weeks, and apparently the doctor or specialist who was reviewing the data saw nothing out of the ordinary.
With a friend of mine we decided to reverse-engineer the signal the device was making to the telephone. It turns out it was a simple frequency modulation of the EKG Trace.
Long story short, we found the skipped beats, printed out the traces, presented our own printouts to my doctor and confirmed a diagnosis of premature atrial contraction.
When I read the summary though, it was obvious there were at least some mistakes in interpreting the data. I can't remember the details, but my doctor wasn't impressed and wanted to look at the data himself. Long story short, the place I got the test done at had no protocol for transferring that data anywhere. Which, btw, is a requirement under HIPAA. I have a legal right to have access to that data and to have it sent to another medical professional. From what I understand, the software they use has a proprietary file type and my doctor couldn't open it with anything he had. They could print it out, but it would be hundreds of pages and I'm not convinced they actually would do that unless I threatened to file a HIPAA report.
I ended up having to go to a different facility for another sleep study so that my doctor could actually see what was going on. If you've ever had one done, you know exactly how pleasant they are. 2 within 2 months of each other because the doc at the first place phoned it in is just ridiculous.
The data from the last study was clear enough that my doc was able to diagnose me with narcolepsy. That diagnosis allowed me to have Xyrem covered by my insurance. Between that and nuvigil, I'm still tired sometimes, but not the way I used to be. It took 8 years of being exhausted and miserable to finally find a doc that had the knowledge and the motivation to figure out what the hell was wrong with me. Even with a good doc, I still had to deal with the lack of effort some docs put into interpreting routine diagnostic tests.
This is why open source and open data is important
That’s a very effective but highly controlled substance.
My introduction to Xyrem was via a simple statement: “Sometimes people sleep but don’t get rested. Those people can take gamma hydroxybutyrate, which is found in passionfruit.” I haven’t found any confirmation of passionfruit having this substance. I got a friend some passionflower tea, and she found it remarkably effective for helping her drift off to sleep.
It’s a safe simple compound, easy to synthesize with lab chemicals. But it also has nefarious uses, so it got scheduled.
“Sodium oxybate is the sodium salt of γ-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB).”
The cardiologist had the entire two weeks of EKG trace, with the times I'd pressed the button (and a minute either side) highlighted, as well as other times it had detected something out of the ordinary.
Luckily in my case turns out I have fewer ectopic beats than the average person, I'm just more aware of them.
It's actually a very simple device, recording the electrical impulses between the hands and a third point like a knee contact to make six signals which are broadcasted as positive/negative numbers describing the curves/spikes over bluetooth.
It just makes simple small files on the mobile device with those list of numbers, which someone could write a program to intercept and interpret far beyond what they offer for free.
For legal reasons between most device makers and the FDA it appears they are not allowed to diagnose more than a few kinds of arrhythmias like afib but there is no reason why a bio-hacker collective couldn't figure out more automated interpretations.
adding: note you can not only analyze HRV info from EKG but also detect several different kinds of electrolyte disorders (too much or too little of potassium, calcium, magnesium etc)
https://en.ecgpedia.org/wiki/Electrolyte_Disorders
https://ecgwaves.com/topic/ecg-electrolyte-imbalance-electro...
Ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia and torsades are acutely deadly. You have seconds to minutes to get a normal rhythm back.
The charts colors made me feel like they were implying a-fib was the worst rhythm listed. (Though they list the severity in the descriptions in small text)
When it is not asymptomatic, it is difficult to ignore anyway.
Though I went through a phase in uni (probably due to finals stress + drugs) where I had heart palpitation and would feel palid out of nowhere, and just how scary/futile it feels when your heart is acting up.
Anyways, I like to think that my daily exercise does something to counteract my drug use. The waveforms in this infographic will surely pop into my head next time I'm passing around a baggy of coke and notice my chest a tad tighter than usual.
Don't mess with the ticker.
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