Been confirmed as having angina (been telling the doc for years) after having a drug induced stress test thing and have been put on beta blockers which have dropped my resting heart rate from 70 to 50 ish – been told to stay off bike for a little while so went for a walk today and warmed up slowly then yomped up a bloody big hill and got quite breathless at the top so checked heart rate which wasn’t much above 80? (No angina pain) walked a mile or so home and felt s**t anyone got any xperience?

Yep, sounds about right – like a massive rev limiter on your heart. Completely kills any ability to push yourself in terms of exercise.

Rev limiter that’s better than a consultant cardiologist could explain it – so why did the cardio go to bits so quickly (normally my cardio is pretty good for an old bloke) is it lack of oxygen to the muscles? Don’t have a clue at the moment

i was on them for 4 years. amiodarone (evil) and tildiam.
simple terms my cardiologist used were, imagine having a pressure cooker lid put on, then trying to exercise, the lid stopping your heart rate from rising.
i blacked out a couple of times. i could only cycle at about 8mph. if i pushed it i was left a breathless panting wreck, i then needed to lay down and rest for a hour or more.

good luck with your treatment tho. heart trouble is a bastard if you are/want to be active.

Proven to be a bit challenging – on Bisphoral, Amlodapine, Losartin, cardine, asprin, pravastatin, spirolacatone and frankly feel s**t I ache all the time get leg cramps and can’t cope with mundane stuff – least it kills your appetite –

just keep plodding on mate..slowly.
i had a bit of a silver lining to my big black cloud. my wife started riding with me, and we now go cycle touring, something which i had always done alone. she loves it, and i love her cycling with me.

Watch out for the (completely reversible) impotence too. Awkward subject so almost never mentioned in consultations.

so why did the cardio go to bits so quickly (normally my cardio is pretty good for an old bloke) is it lack of oxygen to the muscles? Don’t have a clue at the moment

Something like they desensitise nerve receptors in your sympathetic nervous system, which stops the heart being driven too hard.

Don’t think my missus wants to go shagging or cycling with me at the moment….

I ache all the time get leg cramps

You may find that’s the statins, or you may not. Different ones might help.
But Beta Blockers are even more evil in my experience.
I was on Bisoprolol for a few years having had Angina. My resting heart rate dropped to about 30 and never got above 80. My balance was extremely dodgy. Even getting up from a chair I’d feel faint and have to sit down again. Occasionally when cycling along I’d just fall over for no reason.
Worse still, my kidneys went to pot. Twice I suffered from Kidney stones and also started to suffer from gout. I managed to control this to some extent by changing my diet (ditching nuts and lentils).
However, since telling my Cardiologist to stick his pills up his arse I’ve felt absolutely fine!

OP; Are they planning on actually treating your Angina, or just sticking a plaster on it?

Went to see consultant the other day and he more or less said an angiogram was a waste of time as even if the arteries are narrowed they are not sure a stent would be of benefit, he side stepped questions better than a Tory MP – think I have been fobbed off to be honest

Sounds like a fob off. I have a few stents, fitted in three separate procedures, which each worked for 1-12 months. The last angiogram I had the cardiologist said they couldn’t help; I’d be needing a bypass, which I had 6 months later, at age 47. Six years later, and having kicked all the drugs, I feel better than ever.
I did only get the last angiogram by threatening to punch the registrars lights out. Not big, not clever, but when you’ve only been able to work for 9 months of the last 3 years, your business is about to go tits up as a result, and he accuses you of malingering, I kinda lost it. He consulted his consultant who, fortunately, read the graphs differently.
Keep pushing. Taking a handfull of pills to control angina doesn’t sound like the answer to me.

I have had to chuck tantrums to get this far, they prescribed me heartburn drugs! I know what heartburn is and angina is **** all like heartburn, almost had to fake chest pains to get the chemical stress test and finally got an “obvious” angina diagnosis so will keep whinging

I’ve found cold hands and feet to be a serious problem with the beta blockers, and muscle aches and night-time cramp with statins. I’ve had several changes of both to try to avoid this.

i was on bisoprolol for a year or so, along with furosemide (a diuretic), ramipril (ACE inhibitor) and amlodipine (which is a calcium channel blocker, not a beta blocker) after my heart failed. this was 12 years ago now. the beta blocker was a nightmare; definitely restricted my physical ability. these days, just the amlodipine and ramipril and to be honest i don’t think they’re holding me back much, if at all, but not a massive surprise since they’re not beta blockers anyway!

I tried beta blockers for migraine. Hated them.
Started with the smallest possible dose of propranolol- it made me breathless and gave me nightmares. Lasted 4 weeks with that! Subsequently I tried metoprolol and lasted 2 days- I felt hideous, depressed and hardly had the energy to even walk upstairs.

Got cold hands and feet, I would say I am depressed for the first time in my 52 years – any sort of physical work is almost painful

OMM – been there, head back to your GP. My own, entirely unprofessional and undocumented opinion is that they start you on the generic stuff. It’s cheaper, well-understood and widely used. However there may be problems that later versions were developed to avoid.

In my case three minutes’ work with a pick and shovel left me with such aching arms that I couldn’t continue. Being unable to feel my hands made braking a problem on my bike. And this contributed to depression, which is an ongoing risk.

They’d like you to be active and do exercise, and for me it’s a social thing, working on a steam railway. So, back to your GP.

Oh, and my nice GP told me that cramps are known to start after a year or two on whatever statin, possibly Prava, that was changed to my current one.

Which is something to bear in mind.

Thanks for the response folks, seems we all have a similar response from docs and consultants. I have worked out that most of the NHS is basically a break fix business and they are very good at saving your life when something snaps but not great at preventative maintenance

OldMan,
get a 2nd opinion.
It sounds like they’re protecting their budget!
I was lucky in that when I had my problems there was a national campaign about chest pain and they took it VERY seriously.
If your local authority aren’t going to play, have chest pains when visiting friends. There are some excellent Indian restaurants near St Georges hospital in Tooting (an excellent cardio centre), where you can get some stonking heartburn…

I had almost the opposite experience to xherbivorex. I was on ramipril (ACE inhibitor) for a while, which completely wiped me out, fell asleep as soon as I got home from work, etc.

After I stopped that I was put on bisoprolol (a beta blocker) which was nowhere near as bad as the ramipril. It lowered my blood pressure and made me feel a bit feint when I stood up, but otherwise it was OK. The occaisional bag of salty crisps or nuts helped with the feeling feint.

Now fitted with a mechanical heart valve 😀

worked out that most of the NHS is basically a break fix business and they are very good at saving your life when something snaps but not great at preventative maintenance

I found it the total opposite when I was ill with my heart problem. after 5 procedures at the heart unit at LGI, they were unable to fix me. my consultant then went out of his way to find me a specialist (one of only 2 in the country) who was prepared to have a look at me to see what was wrong.

I cant praise the heart units at LGI or Sheffield enough.

Got new beta blockers this week nebivolol? Feel worse than Bisphoral can’t walk a mile on the flat this is awful anyone used this drug does it get better?

So here’s the thing. Angina is pain in your heart because it’s working hard and it’s not able to get enough oxygen, because one of the arteries that feeds oxygen to the heart (usually the left anterior descending artery) is blocked. Same as when your legs ache when you are pushing up a steep hill. So they give you beta blockers to stop your heart working hard, so it won’t need as much oxygen. BUT: when you are exercising, you need your heart to work harder to deliver the oxygen from your lungs to all the muscles that you are using. The beta blockers stop this from happening, so this is why you feel like shit. So what can you do now?

A: surgery to stent one the artery that is blocked (stent means to put in a little wire mesh that forces the artery open a bit wider). This can be done with keyhole surgery.

B: bypass: this also a surgical procedure, and smite risky one, when then take a bit of vein, usually from your leg, and use it to make a new artery that feeds oxygen to your heart instead of the old artery that has become blocked.

C: come off the beta blockers and learn to manage it yourself. If (if!) your know how much effort it takes to bring on your angina pain, and I’d imagine you probably do, then you can make sure you only exert yourself within the parameters that you know are safe.

I am sure that if you made enough noise and pushed hard enough that you could get the surgical options performed on you if that is what you want. But, be warned, surgery has it own level of risk, and once done it cannot be undone. It is always very tempting to push for the surgical option, but it often not the answer you hope it is and if you get it wrong you’ll have a long time ahead of you to regret it! 🙂

Sorry, I’ve just spent the full fifteen minutes trying to edit my post but it kept crashing because of the adverts. What I wanted to say was that the bypass surgery is much more risky, as it involves open heart surgery, which is when they circular saw through the entire length of your sternum and then crack your ribs wide open (and I mean WIDE!) and use a couple of machines to do the work of your heart and lungs for you while they operate .

Thanks, Mat

Yikes; all of this is familiar. We have my 83 y.o. MIL staying at the moment while she receives chemo. When she arrived she was taking a cocktail of pwerful drugs, one of which was a beta-blocker. She was suffering giddy spells and she had three falls so we got them stopped. The other drugs were all things she’d been taking for years “just in case” so with the GP’s approval we have slowly taken her off them and she’s none the worse for it. Omeprazole was one and at the moment she’s on Furosamide, which has worsened her incontinence so the house stinks of wee and the washing machine is on the go all morning.

Cheers shemer75

Shemer75 are you a cardio consultant?

Heart bypass is a serious op and carries risks greater than just getting a stent. Something like 2% risk of death. Doesn’t sound like much, but that’s 2 in every 100. Though may be more down to other underlying health issues in a typical bypass patient.

A stent though can carry risks also. My dad had the angiogram stuff and they skipped stents and went straight for bypass because the procedure for the stent was deemed a risk of stroke in his case due to the nature of the blockages.

Just controlling angina with just beta blockers I’m not sure is a long term solution, though reading on BHF’s site they do say “Many patients with narrowed or blocked arteries do not necessarily need an operation or stents, and tablets can be as effective in relieving symptoms of angina”. This is talking about nitrates though which are usually prescribed along with beta blockers. The nitrates deal with the immediate angina pain and potential for a heart attack at that point by dilating the arteries. Beta blockers are simply just lowering your heart rate.

Beta blockers are used for all kinds of things and normally safe. I had them for unrelated issue with a rapid pounding heart that wouldn’t slow down (Doc said it was down to coffee. I was drinking a lot but I’m not convinved). Couple of beta blockers and instantly sorted. They’re also good for anxiety, stress. Doctor who prescribed them to me said they even give them to students for exam stress.

I’m on Nebivolol after trying several others. It’s not really helped* me. YMMV. Next step is to see if I can come off it, the original reason for taking it having faded away.

*Though some of the cold hands etc stuff could be a result of the Ramipril. I hope to find out.

(edit) This is a result of AF and a TIA, not Angina, may not be strictly relevant.

I was on beta blockers for a while, and they do affect your ability to exercise as others have said.
Got caught out once on a bike ride, had to get picked up as I had no energy to get home.
I also occasionally had a reaction in my lip, which would blow up.
The main thing I noticed is I never got a faster heart beat when smoking.

This is talking about nitrates though which are usually prescribed along with beta blockers. The nitrates deal with the immediate angina pain and potential for a heart attack at that point by dilating the arteries

OOf! I’d forgotten about the Nitrates. Side effects are similar to having long pointy skewers inserted at the base of your skull and poked around trying to find a clean exit through your eyeballs…

when they circular saw through the entire length of your sternum and then crack your ribs wide open (and I mean WIDE!)

yeah, but the scar is frikkinn awesome man…………. 😀