Dehydration, Stress and Palpitations: The Everyday Triggers

It happens on the most ordinary afternoons. You’ve been running on coffee since breakfast, the inbox has been merciless, and somewhere around three o’clock your heart does a strange little somersault: a flutter, a skipped beat, then a few thumps you can feel in your throat. You freeze. Is this something?

Most of the time, it isn’t. Palpitations are among the most common reasons people mention their heart to a clinician, and the usual suspects are startlingly mundane: not enough fluid, too much stress hormone, a caffeine habit that crept up quietly. The heart is simply doing its job under awkward conditions, like an engine revving harder because the coolant is low.

That said, “usually harmless” is not the same as “always ignorable.” This piece walks through how fluid loss and stress actually change your heartbeat, what the sensation tends to feel like, what genuinely helps, and the specific warning signs that mean it’s time to stop guessing and get checked.

Can dehydration really cause heart palpitations?

It can, and the mechanism is refreshingly logical. A large share of your body is water, roughly 50 to 70 percent, depending on age and body composition, according to Harvard Health, and your blood depends on that fluid to maintain its volume. When you sweat, breathe hard, run a fever, or simply forget to drink all day, plasma volume shrinks. Less volume returning to the heart means less blood pushed out with each beat.

Your body doesn’t accept that quietly. Pressure sensors in the arteries notice the dip and signal the nervous system to compensate: the heart speeds up and squeezes harder to keep blood pressure stable and organs perfused. That compensation is exactly what many people feel as palpitations: a racing, pounding, or unusually noticeable heartbeat. The Cleveland Clinic lists dehydration among the everyday triggers of palpitations, alongside stress, caffeine, and fever.

There’s a second pathway, too. Fluid loss rarely happens in isolation; you lose electrolytes along with water, especially through sweat and gastrointestinal illness. Sodium, potassium, and magnesium help generate the electrical impulses that keep the heartbeat orderly. When their concentrations drift, individual heart cells can fire slightly out of turn, producing the skipped-beat or flip-flop sensation of premature beats.

So the honest answer to “can dehydration cause palpitations” is yes, through blood volume, through electrolytes, and often through both at once. The reassuring corollary: when dehydration is the cause, the fix is usually straightforward, and the sensation fades as fluid balance is restored.

What do dehydration palpitations feel like?

People reach for surprisingly consistent images: a fish flopping in the chest, a drumroll, a hiccup in the heartbeat, a pounding you can hear on the pillow. Clinically, dehydration-related palpitations tend to show up in a few recognizable patterns.

• A fast, steady pounding. This is the compensatory speed-up described above: the heart working harder against low volume. It’s often most obvious when you stand up quickly, climb stairs, or step out into heat.
• Skipped or extra beats. A pause, then a forceful thump. These are usually premature beats, single early contractions, which electrolyte shifts can make more frequent.
• A fluttering awareness of the heartbeat at rest, particularly in the evening after a day of sweating, caffeine, and little water.

Context is the giveaway. Dehydration palpitations rarely arrive alone; they tend to travel with thirst, a dry mouth, darker urine, lightheadedness on standing, fatigue, or a mild headache: the classic dehydration picture the NHS describes. If your heart is fluttering after a long hot afternoon of coffee and no water, the story writes itself. If palpitations strike out of nowhere while you’re well hydrated and calm, or if they come with chest pain or faintness, that’s a different story and deserves a clinician’s attention.

One more useful clue: dehydration palpitations typically ease over minutes to a couple of hours once you rest, cool down, and drink. Episodes that persist, recur daily, or feel chaotic and irregular for long stretches shouldn’t be filed under “probably just dehydration.”

What are two warning signs of dehydration?

If you only remember two, make them these: thirst and dark yellow, strong-smelling urine. The NHS lists both at the top of its dehydration signs, and together they cover the body’s two most reliable fluid gauges. Thirst is the brain’s direct request for water, though it’s worth knowing the signal dulls with age, so older adults can be meaningfully dehydrated before they feel thirsty. Urine color is the kidneys’ report card: pale straw means you’re keeping up; the color of apple juice means you’re behind.

The fuller picture, per the NHS, includes:

• Feeling dizzy or lightheaded, especially on standing
• Tiredness that seems out of proportion to your day
• A dry mouth, lips, and tongue
• Peeing less often than usual, fewer than four times a day is a flag
• Sunken eyes

Notice how naturally palpitations fit into this cluster. Lightheadedness on standing and a racing heart are two sides of the same coin: low blood volume forcing the cardiovascular system to compensate. If you’re experiencing flutters plus two or three items from this list, dehydration moves to the top of the suspect list.

Severe dehydration is a different animal, confusion, drowsiness, very little or no urine, a rapid weak pulse, or fainting. That combination isn’t a drink-more-water situation; it’s an urgent medical one, particularly in infants, older adults, and anyone with vomiting or diarrhea that won’t stop.

What am I lacking if I have heart palpitations?

Often nothing at all, stress and stimulants cause plenty of palpitations in people with perfectly normal blood chemistry. But when a deficiency is involved, the usual suspects are the electrolytes that run the heart’s electrical system.

• Potassium sets the electrical stability of heart muscle cells. Levels can dip with heavy sweating, vomiting, diarrhea, or certain prescribed medicines, and low potassium is a well-recognized trigger for extra beats.
• Magnesium acts as a kind of electrical stabilizer; low levels are associated with premature beats and, in some people, more troublesome rhythm disturbances.
• Sodium governs fluid balance itself. Both too little and too much disturb the volume the heart has to work with.
• Calcium participates in each contraction, though significant imbalances are less common from diet alone.

Beyond electrolytes, two other deficiencies deserve mention. Iron-deficiency anemia reduces the blood’s oxygen-carrying capacity, so the heart pumps faster to deliver the same oxygen: a pounding heartbeat and fatigue are classic features. And an overactive or underactive thyroid, while not a deficiency in the dietary sense, is one of the most common hormonal causes of palpitations that Mayo Clinic flags.

Here’s the part worth underlining: none of this should be self-diagnosed or self-treated with supplements. A basic blood panel can check electrolytes, iron, and thyroid function quickly and cheaply. If a level is genuinely low, the useful question is whyand answering that belongs to your clinician, not the supplement aisle.

How stress sets off the same flutter

Stress doesn’t need dehydration’s help to make your heart misbehave: it has a direct line. When your brain registers threat, whether a deadline or a near-miss in traffic, it releases adrenaline and related hormones. Adrenaline binds to receptors on heart cells and does three things at once: it raises the heart rate, strengthens each contraction, and makes the heart’s electrical tissue more excitable. The result can be a racing heartbeat, a pounding you feel in your chest and neck, or a scatter of premature beats. Mayo Clinic ranks strong emotional responses, stress, anxiety, panic, among the most common palpitation triggers of all.

Panic attacks deserve special mention because they imitate heart trouble so convincingly: sudden racing heart, chest tightness, breathlessness, a wave of dread, sometimes tingling hands. The episode typically peaks within minutes and then recedes. Plenty of emergency-department visits for a “heart attack” turn out to be panic, which is not a failure of judgment, by the way. Getting sudden chest symptoms checked is exactly the right instinct, and no clinician worth their stethoscope will fault you for it.

Chronic, simmering stress works more slowly but just as surely. Poor sleep amplifies next-day adrenaline sensitivity. Stress nudges people toward more coffee, more alcohol, skipped meals, and, circling back to our theme, forgetting to drink water. Each of those independently raises the odds of palpitations. The flutter you notice at 4 p.m. is often the sum of six small choices made since 7 a.m., not a single dramatic cause.

When dehydration and stress team up

Here’s the pattern a cardiologist could sketch from memory. A stressful morning starts with coffee: a mild stimulant and, for some people, a gentle diuretic. Lunch is rushed or skipped. The afternoon brings more caffeine and no water. By evening, the body is short on fluid, long on adrenaline, and light on sleep from the night before. The heart, asked to compensate for low volume while marinating in stress hormones, starts throwing in extra beats.

Then comes the feedback loop that makes everything worse: you notice the palpitations, feel a spike of alarm, and that alarm releases more adrenaline, which produces more palpitations. Anyone who has lain awake at 2 a.m. monitoring their own heartbeat knows this spiral personally. Attention amplifies the sensation; the quiet and stillness of night make every beat louder.

Breaking the loop means working both ends at once:

• Rehydrate early, not heroically. Steady sips through the day beat a liter gulped at 9 p.m., which mostly guarantees a nighttime bathroom trip and worse sleep.
• Cap the stimulants. Notice whether afternoon caffeine reliably precedes evening flutters. Many people find a personal threshold.
• Give the alarm system an off-ramp. Slow exhale-focused breathing for a few minutes activates the parasympathetic “brake” on heart rate: a physiological effect, not a platitude.
• Protect sleep. Short nights raise both stress reactivity and palpitation frequency; the NHS lists poor sleep among common triggers.

None of this is glamorous. It works anyway, which is the kind of medicine worth having.

Can drinking water cure heart palpitations?

Let’s be precise, because the internet often isn’t. Water is not a cure for palpitations: it’s a fix for one specific cause of them. If your palpitations are driven by fluid loss, restoring fluid removes the trigger, and the sensation typically fades as blood volume recovers. That’s cause-and-effect, not a cure-all.

If your palpitations come from anxiety, thyroid hormone, anemia, a heart rhythm disorder, or your fourth espresso, water will do little beyond keeping you well hydrated, worthwhile, but not the answer. This distinction matters because “just drink more water” can delay someone from investigating palpitations that actually need a workup.

A few honest specifics:

• Timeline. With mild dehydration, drinking fluids and resting in a cool place usually eases symptoms over the following minutes to hours as the fluid is absorbed. There’s no instant off-switch; absorption takes time.
• What to drink. For everyday deficits, plain water is fine. After prolonged sweating or a vomiting-and-diarrhea illness, fluids that replace electrolytes make physiological sense, since you lost salts along with water: the NHS specifically advises extra fluids during illness, heat, and exercise.
• The interesting exception. Some people notice that drinking a glass of cold water seems to interrupt an episode of racing heartbeat. There’s a plausible mechanism, cold and swallowing can stimulate the vagus nerve, which slows the heart, but this is an observed effect for certain rhythm types, not a reliable treatment, and anything requiring a “maneuver” to stop deserves a proper diagnosis first.

Bottom line: hydrate consistently, but don’t ask water to do a cardiologist’s job.

How much fluid do you actually need each day?

Less mythology, more numbers. The oft-quoted “eight glasses” isn’t wrong so much as oversimplified. According to Mayo Clinic, the U.S. National Academies’ adequate-intake figures work out to about 15.5 cups (3.7 liters) of total fluids a day for men and about 11.5 cups (2.7 liters) for women, and crucially, that total includes fluid from food, which typically supplies around 20 percent of daily intake. Fruit, vegetables, soup, and yogurt all count.

Harvard Health frames it more modestly for drinking specifically: for generally healthy people, roughly four to six cups of plain water daily is a reasonable baseline, adjusted upward for heat, exercise, illness, pregnancy, and breastfeeding. The NHS suggests six to eight cups or glasses of fluid a day, noting that water, lower-fat milk, and sugar-free drinks including tea and coffee all count toward the total.

Yes, coffee counts. Moderate caffeine intake does not meaningfully dehydrate regular drinkers; the fluid in the cup outweighs the mild diuretic effect. The palpitation risk from coffee comes from the caffeine’s stimulant action on the heart, not from drying you out.

Rather than tallying cups, use the two built-in gauges: drink when thirsty, and aim for pale-straw urine. Ramp intake up on hot days, during workouts, at altitude, with fever or gastrointestinal illness, and in later pregnancy. One caveat: people with heart failure or kidney disease may be given specific fluid limits by their care team: those individualized instructions override every general guideline in this article.

The everyday triggers, side by side

Palpitations rarely have one cause; they have a shortlist. Seeing the common culprits together makes patterns easier to spot in your own week.

Trigger	How it nudges the heart	Typical pattern people notice
Dehydration	Low blood volume forces a faster, harder heartbeat; lost electrolytes destabilize electrical signals	Pounding or flutters after heat, exercise, or a low-fluid day; worse on standing
Stress and anxiety	Adrenaline speeds the heart and makes electrical tissue more excitable	Racing or thumping during or after tense moments; panic episodes peak within minutes
Caffeine	Stimulates the heart and nervous system directly	Flutters within a few hours of coffee, energy drinks, or strong tea
Alcohol	Disrupts rhythm and sleep; large sessions can provoke irregular heartbeats	Palpitations the evening of, or morning after, heavier drinking
Poor sleep	Raises stress-hormone sensitivity the next day	More noticeable beats after short nights
Fever and illness	Each degree of fever raises heart rate; vomiting and diarrhea drain fluid and electrolytes	Fast heartbeat alongside feeling unwell
Nicotine	Stimulant effect on heart rate and blood pressure	Flutters around smoking or vaping sessions
Hormonal shifts	Pregnancy, menstruation, and menopause alter volume and heart-rate control	Episodic palpitations tracking the hormonal calendar

Both Mayo Clinic and the NHS list these among the leading everyday causes. A week of simple notes, what you drank, slept, and felt, and when the flutters came, often reveals your personal trigger faster than any single test.

Heat, exercise, and illness: when fluid loss accelerates

Some days your fluid budget quietly doubles, and those are precisely the days palpitations tend to appear.

Heat is the obvious one. Sweating is your radiator, and it spends both water and sodium. On a hot day, the cardiovascular system faces a double demand: pumping blood to the skin for cooling while maintaining pressure everywhere else. Add a fluid deficit and the heart’s only lever is rate, so it climbs, and you feel it. Older adults deserve particular care here: the thirst signal weakens with age, and the NHS specifically flags older people as higher-risk for dehydration.

Exercise compounds heat’s effect. A hard hour of training can cost a liter or more of sweat depending on conditions and physiology. Palpitations that appear during or immediately after exertion sit in a special category, exercise-associated palpitations warrant a medical review even in young, fit people, because exertion is when meaningful rhythm problems tend to reveal themselves.

Illness is the trigger people underestimate. Fever raises heart rate on its own, while vomiting and diarrhea drain fluid and electrolytes simultaneously: the fastest route to the dehydration-palpitation combination outside of endurance sport. The NHS advises deliberately increasing fluids during any febrile or gastrointestinal illness, and seeking care if you can’t keep fluids down.

A practical habit for high-loss days: pre-hydrate before heat or exercise, sip during, and replace afterward, checking urine color that evening as your audit. If a hot-weather workout reliably ends in an hour of heart flutters despite good hydration, that’s a pattern to mention at your next appointment rather than a badge of effort.

When palpitations point to something more than a trigger

Most palpitations are innocent. Some are the heart’s way of reporting a genuine electrical problem, and knowing the difference in broad strokes is worth two minutes of your attention.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is the most common sustained rhythm disorder. It typically feels chaotic: an irregularly irregular heartbeat with no steady pattern, sometimes with breathlessness or fatigue. It matters because untreated AFib raises stroke risk, and because it’s very treatable once identified. Interestingly, dehydration, alcohol, and illness can act as sparks for AFib episodes in susceptible people, so a “dehydration flutter” that feels chaotic rather than fast-and-steady deserves a recording, not reassurance.

Supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) announces itself differently: a sudden switch-flip to a very fast but regular heartbeat, often well over 150 beats per minute, that starts and stops abruptly. Episodes are usually not dangerous but are diagnosable and fixable.

Frequent premature beatsthe everyday “skipped beat”, are typically benign, though very frequent ones sometimes merit monitoring.

Features that shift the odds away from “everyday trigger,” per Mayo Clinic and the NHS:

• Episodes lasting many minutes to hours rather than seconds
• A chaotic, patternless rhythm
• Palpitations with chest pain, breathlessness, or lightheadedness
• Onset during exertion
• A personal history of heart disease, or a family history of sudden cardiac death or fainting at a young age

None of these is a verdict: they’re reasons to capture the rhythm on an ECG or wearable recording and let a clinician read the actual electrical story rather than the sensation.

When to see a doctor about palpitations

This is the section to remember even if you skim everything else. Call emergency services immediately if palpitations arrive with chest pain or pressure, severe shortness of breath, fainting or near-fainting, or confusion: the NHS and Mayo Clinic both treat this combination as an emergency, because it can signal a rhythm compromising blood flow. Severe dehydration signs, drowsiness, no urination, a rapid weak pulse, also belong in the urgent category, especially in infants and older adults.

Book a routine appointment (no ambulance required, but don’t shelve it) if any of these apply:

• Palpitations occur frequently, are increasing, or last more than a few minutes at a time
• They keep coming back despite good hydration, less caffeine, and better sleep
• They feel irregular and chaotic rather than fast and steady
• They appear during exercise
• You have known heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, or thyroid problems
• You’re pregnant and the episodes are new or worsening, usually benign, always worth confirming
• They come with unexplained weight loss, heat intolerance, or tremor, which can point to thyroid overactivity

One practical tip that genuinely helps clinicians: during an episode, check your pulse or use a wearable that records rhythm, and note whether the beat feels regular or erratic, roughly how fast, how long it lasted, and what preceded it. A palpitation diary of even one week often narrows the diagnosis more than the physical exam does. Uncertainty, by itself, is a valid reason to be seen, reassurance backed by an ECG beats reassurance backed by a search engine.

What to expect at the appointment

Knowing the process removes half the dread, so here’s the typical path, drawn from how Mayo Clinic and the NHS describe palpitation workups.

The visit usually begins with the story: when episodes happen, what they feel like, what you’d eaten or drunk, your sleep, stress, caffeine and alcohol habits, and your family’s heart history. Then comes an electrocardiogram (ECG)electrodes on the chest recording the heart’s electrical activity for a few seconds. Painless, quick, and often normal, because palpitations have an inconvenient habit of hiding during appointments.

That’s why the next step is often ambulatory monitoring: a small wearable recorder worn for 24 to 48 hours, or an event recorder used over days to weeks that you activate when symptoms strike. For elusive episodes, longer-term options exist. Increasingly, clinicians will also review a rhythm strip from a consumer smartwatch if you captured one mid-episode, imperfect, but sometimes exactly the clue needed.

Blood tests commonly check electrolytes (our familiar potassium, magnesium, sodium), thyroid function, and a blood count for anemia, quietly ruling in or out most of the non-cardiac causes discussed in this article. If structure is in question, an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart) may follow.

Most workups end with good news: a structurally normal heart and a benign trigger to manage. When a rhythm disorder is found, treatments range from trigger management to medicines that steady the heart’s electrical behavior to procedures that fix the faulty circuit, decisions your clinician will tailor to your specific rhythm and situation. Either way, you exit with an answer instead of a 2 a.m. worry loop.

Small habits that keep the rhythm steady

Prevention here is unfashionably simple, which may be why it gets skipped. These habits target the actual mechanisms, volume, electrolytes, and adrenaline, rather than vague wellness.

• Front-load your fluids. A glass of water with each meal plus sips between them gets most people to the NHS’s six-to-eight-cup range without counting anything. Keep a filled bottle where you actually sit.
• Use urine color as your dashboard. Pale straw, carry on; apple juice, catch up. It’s free, continuous feedback.
• Eat your electrolytes. Potassium lives in bananas, potatoes, beans, and leafy greens; magnesium in nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Food sources are self-limiting in a way supplements aren’t, and supplement decisions belong with your clinician, especially if you take any regular medicines.
• Find your caffeine ceiling. If afternoon coffee reliably precedes evening flutters, move your last cup earlier. Your threshold is discoverable in about a week of paying attention.
• Treat sleep as rhythm care. Short nights raise next-day adrenaline sensitivity; palpitations are often yesterday’s sleep debt collecting interest.
• Practice the slow exhale. A few minutes of breathing with a longer out-breath engages the vagal brake on heart rate, useful mid-episode and as a daily stress valve.
• Plan for high-loss days. Heat, hard workouts, and fever roughly double fluid needs; pre-hydrate, sip during, replace after.

None of these will make headlines. Together they remove the three most common reasons a healthy heart flutters, and they cost nothing but attention. If you do all of this and the palpitations persist, that’s not failure; it’s information, and it’s exactly what your doctor needs to hear.

Frequently asked questions

What do dehydration palpitations feel like?

Most people describe a fast, steady pounding, a fluttering awareness of the heartbeat, or occasional skipped beats followed by a strong thump. The giveaway is context: they usually arrive alongside thirst, dark urine, dry mouth, fatigue, or lightheadedness on standing, often after heat, exercise, or a low-fluid day. Episodes typically ease over minutes to a couple of hours once you rest, cool down, and rehydrate. Chaotic, prolonged, or painful episodes point elsewhere and deserve medical review.

What are two warning signs of dehydration?

Thirst and dark yellow, strong-smelling urine are the two classic warning signs, according to the NHS. Other clues include dizziness on standing, unusual tiredness, dry mouth and lips, and urinating fewer than four times a day. Keep in mind that thirst weakens with age, so older adults can be significantly dehydrated before feeling thirsty, urine color is the more reliable gauge. Confusion, drowsiness, or producing almost no urine signals severe dehydration and needs urgent care.

What am I lacking if I have heart palpitations?

Possibly nothing, stress and caffeine cause many palpitations in people with normal blood chemistry. When a deficiency is involved, low potassium or magnesium are the usual electrolyte culprits, since both stabilize the heart’s electrical activity. Iron-deficiency anemia can also cause a pounding heartbeat because the heart pumps faster to compensate for reduced oxygen delivery, and thyroid imbalance is a common hormonal cause. A simple blood panel can check all of these, so ask your clinician rather than guessing with supplements.

Can drinking water cure heart palpitations?

No, water resolves palpitations only when dehydration is the cause. If fluid loss triggered the flutters, rehydrating restores blood volume and the sensation usually fades over the following minutes to hours. Palpitations from anxiety, thyroid problems, anemia, caffeine, or a heart rhythm disorder won’t respond to water alone. Staying well hydrated is a sensible baseline habit, but recurring palpitations despite good hydration deserve a proper evaluation instead of more water.

How long do dehydration palpitations last?

Typically minutes to a couple of hours after you rest, cool down, and start replacing fluids, since absorbed water needs time to restore blood volume. There is no instant off-switch. If palpitations continue well after you’ve rehydrated, recur daily, last for hours at a stretch, or feel chaotic and irregular, dehydration is unlikely to be the whole story: those patterns warrant an ECG and a conversation with your doctor.

Can anxiety alone cause palpitations?

Yes, and it’s one of the most common causes of all. Anxiety and panic release adrenaline, which speeds the heart, strengthens each beat, and makes the heart’s electrical tissue more excitable, producing racing, pounding, or skipped-beat sensations. Panic attacks can mimic heart trouble convincingly, with chest tightness and breathlessness peaking within minutes. Getting new chest symptoms checked is always reasonable; once heart disease is ruled out, treating the anxiety itself usually reduces the palpitations.

Does caffeine make palpitations worse?

For many people, yes. Caffeine is a stimulant that acts directly on the heart and nervous system, and Mayo Clinic lists it among the most common palpitation triggers. Sensitivity varies widely, some people tolerate several cups without symptoms while others flutter after one. Contrary to popular belief, moderate caffeine doesn’t meaningfully dehydrate regular drinkers; the risk is the stimulant effect itself. If afternoon coffee reliably precedes evening palpitations, moving your last cup earlier is a simple experiment worth running.

Can dehydration trigger atrial fibrillation?

In susceptible people, yes, dehydration, alcohol, illness, and electrolyte shifts can all act as sparks for atrial fibrillation episodes. AFib feels different from a simple dehydration flutter: the rhythm is chaotic and patternless rather than fast and steady, and episodes often last longer. Because untreated AFib raises stroke risk, any palpitation that feels irregularly irregular should be captured on an ECG or a rhythm-recording wearable and reviewed by a clinician, even if drinking fluids seems to help.

Why do I get palpitations at night?

Often because nighttime removes distractions, lying quietly in a still room makes normal and premature beats far more noticeable, especially lying on your left side. A day of caffeine, alcohol, stress, and too little water also tends to collect its bill in the evening, when accumulated fluid deficit and adrenaline peak together. Most nighttime palpitations are benign, but episodes that wake you from sleep, come with breathlessness or chest pain, or feel chaotic deserve medical evaluation.

When should I go to the emergency department for palpitations?

Go immediately, or call emergency services, if palpitations come with chest pain or pressure, severe shortness of breath, fainting or near-fainting, or confusion. Both the NHS and Mayo Clinic treat that combination as a medical emergency because it can signal a rhythm that’s compromising blood flow. Severe dehydration signs such as drowsiness, a rapid weak pulse, or almost no urination also need urgent care. For frequent but symptom-free flutters, a routine appointment with an ECG is the right pace.

References

• NHS: Dehydration
• NHS: Heart palpitations
• Cleveland Clinic: Heart palpitations

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.