Death by Tuna Sandwich?

[elleng]

My heart does some crazy things. It stops beating when I eat.

(HAD to share; having a party this weekend so actually serving, and maybe eating, is on my mind more than usual at the moment!)

'“Death by tuna sandwich? Not on my watch!” bellowed the emergency room physician as I sat hooked up to a 12-lead electrocardiogram. “Your heart does some crazy things.”

My heart does do some crazy things. It stops when I eat.

Literally.

It’s called swallow syncope, and it’s extremely rare. Only about 100 cases have been reported around the world.

Oh — and I diagnosed myself.

My swallow syncope had a very insidious start. So insidious that I can’t even recall exactly when it began, other than it was around 15 years ago.

I would swallow a big bite and start enthusiastically on the next, when sometimes — maybe once a month or so — it would feel as if the food simply stopped going down. Then came the lightheadedness, tunnel vision and muffled hearing.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/well/swallow-syncope-rare-disease-heart-sandwich.html?

[Clarity2]

1. The vagus nerve!

That was my first thought before reading. Ive had my heart skip a beat before upon swallowing something that got stuck going down, and I now get “ice cream chest” which I assume is the vagus nerve instead of “ice cream headache” , but that must be a scary ordeal to have your heart stop. My brother had some vagus nerve oddity, but I cant recall at the moment what it was.