Hey, Aloha. I may be able to help a tad with this. I'm married to a cardiologist, and I have a heart rhythm disturbance of my own and have for about five years. I used to work as a paramedic and am now in medical school myself. I smoked some weed this past summer with my sister, who's a cancer patient, but am no longer doing so because of school and because it gave me asthma and occasional arrhythmia trouble, too. (But that may have been the asthma that affected my heart rhythm.)

Sounds like your husband's being asked to wear a Holter monitor, which does the 24-hour heart rhythm monitoring, and record any strange occurrences that happen while he's wearing that monitor. When I have to wear Holter monitors, what they want me to record is any strange cardiac feelings I have--like weird flutterings, the feeling of missed beats, etc., and not so much what I'm doing externally, like exercising, sleeping, etc. Sometimes docs do want to know when, say, you're putting different stresses on the heart by exercising or sleeping or, like in your husband's case, smoking. I, for instance, am always asked to note in the Holter diary if I'm having breathing trouble or an asthma attack. What the Holter diary notes tell the nurse who "dumps" and prints out the Holter report and then the doctor who'll review it is to pay special attention to those particular times the patient noted and see if anything unique was happening to the heart rhythm.

Ideally, yes, your husband ought to be up front with the doc about his weed smoking because it does indeed affect heart rhythm in some people. It's been associated with atrial fibrillation, and it's also a plausible explanation for sinus bradycardia (slow normal heart rhythm) because cannabis has vaso-dilatory effect. People sometimes forget that doctors aren't cops and try and avoid telling them the truth about what they're taking, whether it's natural supplements or street drugs or whatever. Just tell your husband to keep in mind that he (or his insurance company) is paying that cardiologist to give him an accurate assessment of what's going on with his heart, so he might as well give the doctor the straight story. There are plenty of very cool doctors in the world. My husband, for instance, would be very unlikely to take issue with someone smoking weed, but he'd definitely get stern about cigarettes.

Tell your husband to go ahead and tell the doc he smokes weed and, especially if he notices heart-related changes while he's smoking, to note that in his Holter diary. It can't do him any harm, and it may help explain what's happening with his heart. I have a real slow heart rhythm myself, especially for someone with atrial fibrillation, which is the rhythm ailment I have trouble with, but they've concluded that the slow rhythm is simply because I'm in good condition because of exercise. In cases where a bradycardic (slow) rhythm is caused by something else, they can usually easily fix that with medication. (FYI in heart talk, the "brady-" prefix means slow, and "tachy-" means fast. Fibrillation is usually a fast, asynchronous fluttering.) Good luck! Let us know what he finds out!
birdgirl73 Reviewed by birdgirl73 on . EKG and Pot My husband (46 yrs old), has a very low pulse rate (38-45) (His normal is around 55-65) and is going through a battery of tests. Yesterday he had a sonogram of his heart, and was then fitted with a testing device simular to EKG to wear for 24 hours. He is supposed to keep a diary of goings on for the Drs to compare to the EKG. We have argued this because he thinks it won't matter. But if they are looking at the test results and see weird things going on for every time he smokes, and he Rating: 5