Private Palpitations Assessment in Hampstead

There is something your heart has been trying to tell you.

Not with pain. Not with collapse. With a flutter at 2am, a thud when you stand too quickly, a momentary pause that makes you hold your breath. You notice it. You wait. It passes. You carry on — but you do not forget.

That noticing is not weakness. It is information. The question is whether anyone has helped you understand what that information means.

What palpitations actually are

Your heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day. In a lifetime, that is over 3.5 billion beats — most of them unnoticed. Palpitations are not extra beats. They are moments when you become aware of beats that were always there.

The most common cause is an ectopic beat: a heartbeat that arrives a fraction of a second early. The heart compensates. The next beat lands with slightly more force than usual. What you feel — the thud, the skip, the flip — is that compensatory beat, not something broken.

But knowing this and feeling it are two different things. The awareness of your heartbeat triggers attention. Attention triggers mild anxiety. Anxiety raises your heart rate slightly. Which makes the next beat more noticeable. Which triggers more attention. This is the attention loop, and it is one of the central mechanisms that turns a harmless ectopic into something that disrupts sleep, exercise, and peace of mind.

Why most palpitations are not dangerous — but that does not make them less frightening

In studies of people attending cardiology clinics with palpitations, the majority have no structural heart disease and no life-threatening arrhythmia. The investigation is important, not because most people will find something serious, but because the small number who do need to be identified. And because the majority who find nothing serious deserve to be told that clearly, by someone who has actually looked.

A normal resting ECG is reassuring. It is not conclusive. A resting ECG captures ten seconds. Your symptoms may happen once a fortnight. The gap between when something occurs and when it is captured is where most diagnostic uncertainty lives.

“The heart is not like a blood test. You cannot measure it at rest and expect to understand what happens when it is under pressure, or in the middle of the night, or at the exact moment you feel something wrong.”

What the OpenPalp programme offers

OpenPalp is a structured pathway for people with low-risk palpitations who want a real answer, not just reassurance without data.

It has three parts:

• Assess (free). A focused cardiology consultation in Hampstead. History, examination, and risk stratification. Dr Mahmood Ahmad identifies whether an ECG or extended monitoring is appropriate for your pattern of symptoms.
• Capture (optional). An optional 12-lead ECG on the day (£49), and/or a KardiaMobile loaned for one week (£70) for symptom-triggered recording. The device captures your rhythm in your real life: at home, at work, during exercise, during sleep. Not in a clinic. Not in ten seconds.
• Improve. The OpenPalp self-guided booklet. Evidence-based, and built around what your monitoring actually found.

The self-guided booklet

The booklet has six themes you work through at your own pace. Together, they address the three pillars that most reliably reduce palpitation burden in low-risk patients: understanding, lifestyle, and nervous system regulation.

• Listen. Your rhythm diary. Learning to observe without catastrophising.
• Breathe. The 4-6 breathing technique. Evidence shows it can alter heart rhythm variability within a single session.
• Discover. Your personal triggers. Caffeine, sleep, alcohol, posture, hydration, hormones. What drives your rhythm.
• Change. One targeted modification. Not everything at once. The modification most likely to make a measurable difference, based on your diary and your monitoring data.
• Move. Graduated exercise. Counterintuitively, regular aerobic exercise is one of the most evidence-supported interventions for reducing ectopic burden.
• Understand. Review. What changed. What the data showed. What your heart was actually saying.

Who this is for

OpenPalp is designed for adults who experience palpitations — skipped beats, flutters, racing, or thumping sensations — without red-flag features. It is suitable if you are generally well between episodes, have no history of structural heart disease, and are looking for a thorough, structured answer rather than a brief reassurance.

It is not suitable if you have palpitations associated with chest pain, fainting or near-fainting, severe breathlessness, or exertion-triggered collapse. Those symptoms need urgent NHS or emergency assessment. If in doubt, call 999 or attend A&E.

What it costs

The clinic appointment is free. It includes the consultation, risk stratification, and a clear plan. Two optional add-ons are available: a 12-lead ECG on the day (£49), and a KardiaMobile home rhythm monitor loaned for one week, with the self-guided booklet (£70). Both are optional and there is no follow-up appointment.

For comparison, a standard private cardiology appointment in London typically costs £200–£350 for the consultation alone, before any monitoring or follow-up.

Appointments are on Tuesday mornings, 9:00–12:00, at SF Studios, Hampstead. A short walk from Hampstead. Book by emailing [email protected].

The turning point

Most people who come to OpenPalp have been worried about their palpitations for months, sometimes years. They have Googled. They have worried. They have waited for the next episode with a kind of low-level dread that sits just below consciousness.

The turning point is not a diagnosis. It is data.

You do not need to keep wondering. One week of data, and a self-guided booklet to make sense of it. That is what changes things — not reassurance without evidence, but knowledge with a foundation.

Your heart has been trying to tell you something. It is time to find out what it is saying.