You may feel your pulse in the arteries of your neck or throat. Sometimes you can even see the pulse as it moves the skin in a more forceful way. It may also feel like your heart is beating irregularly or that it has missed a beat, or like there is an occasional extra, more forceful heartbeat.

A bounding pulse is a strong throbbing felt over one of the arteries in the body. It is due to a forceful heartbeat. The carotid arteries take oxygenated blood from the heart to the brain. The pulse from the carotids may be felt on either side of thefront of the neck just below the angle of the jaw.

Find the area on one side of your neck near your windpipe. Your carotid pulse can be taken on either side of your neck. Put the tip of your index and long finger in the groove of your neck along your windpipe to feel the pulse in your carotid artery.

The carotid pulse is the easiest and most accurate in the adult and child patient (Fig. 10.9). The carotid artery lies just under the sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck.

A normal resting heart rate for adults ranges from 60 to 100 beats per minute. Generally, a lower heart rate at rest implies more efficient heart function and better cardiovascular fitness. For example, a well-trained athlete might have a normal resting heart rate closer to 40 beats per minute.

Your body needs oxygen to work properly, so if your oxygen levels are too low, your body may not work the way it is supposed to. In addition to difficulty breathing, you can experience confusion, dizziness, chest pain, headache, rapid breathing and a racing heart.

Symptoms. The main symptom of bradycardia is a heart rate below 60 beats per minute. This abnormally low heart rate can cause the brain and other organs to become oxygen-deprived, which can lead to symptoms such as: Fainting.

If you have high blood pressure with a low pulse, it means your blood is putting increased pressure on your blood vessels, but your heart’s beating fewer than 60 times per minute. Read on to learn more about what this combination means for your health.

Taken together it’s referred to as bradycardia-tachycardia, or tachy-brady, syndrome. This is a type of sick sinus syndrome, and can be associated with the heart rhythm disorder atrial fibrillation and raise a person’s risk for complications that include stroke and sudden death, or cardiac arrest.

A normal heart beats between 60 and 100 times each minute but with bradycardia the heart rate is slower than 60 beats per minute. It is definitely possible to qualify for disability benefits with sinus bradycardia, but you must provide the proper medical evidence.

Although sinus bradycardia is a familiar physiologic finding in older patients, clinicians should remember that symptomatic bradyarrhythmia can be caused by cardiovascular disease. Generally, coronary artery disease (CAD) arising from myocardial ischemia causes chest discomfort, especially during exertion.

Bradycardia can be harmless, but in some cases it can be life-threatening. For certain people — mostly young adults and trained athletes—a slow heart rate is normal and doesn’t cause any symptoms or health problems.

As your heart beats faster, healthy blood vessels will expand in size to allow increased blood flow, which helps your blood pressure remain relatively stable. This is often true during exercise, when your heart rate can increase substantially but your blood pressure may only change slightly.