Walking home one night, a 29-year-old man from Queens in New York started experiencing heart palpitations at 140 beats per minute (bpm), far higher than the average resting heart rate of 60-100 bpm. When he was admitted to the hospital, the solution was performed a bit farther south than his heart. Rarely dangerous or life-threatening, heart palpitations can be brought on by a lack of sleep, caffeine, alcohol or stress. The rapid fluttering, flip-flopping or pounding sensations in the chest often go away on their own. In this case, to restore regular heart rhythm, a finger up the posterior was all it took to slow down the patient’s heartbeat to an acceptable 80 bpm. Having no history of heart problems or signs of a heart attack, the man had undergone an electrocardiogram earlier that detected signs of atrial fibrillation (AFIB), a common type of arrhythmia. AFIB signals that the heart’s upper and lower chambers are out of sync, resulting in less blood filling the lower chambers and reaching the lungs and the rest of the body. While the usual treatment of medication slows and regulates heart rhythm within hours, the rectal exam provided the same solution in a matter of minutes. The theory was that the exam affected the man’s nervous system by stimulating the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body, which connects the brain to major organs like the lungs, gut and heart. While the rectal procedure could be another method of treating heart arrhythmia, more research is needed before it replaces traditional methods like medications or medical procedures. For the man from Queens and every other human being on the planet, that’s something for which we can all be thankful.
