For years, a farmer in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, had his own routine for a racing heart. He climbed onto a barrel, jumped off and slammed his feet into the ground. If his heartbeat stayed fast, he climbed a ladder and jumped from higher up. If that failed, he fired a 12-bore shotgun.
As those tricks lost their power over the years, he found that jumping into a very cold bath also worked. His last resort was a 6-volt electric cattle fence, which he gripped while wearing hobnailed boots.
Doctors in Northern Ireland described him in a 1988 BMJ letter titled “Do it yourself cardioversion.” In January 2024, researchers and clinicians from the University of East Anglia, Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and NHS Tayside revisited the case in Oxford Medical Case Reports, suggesting he might hold the crown of unusual cardioversion. “Unusual as these methods were, they worked, for a bit at least,” they wrote.
A Heart Rhythm That Can Be Knocked Back Into Place
Cardioversion means converting an abnormal heart rhythm back to a normal one. The farmer had supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT, a group of rhythm problems that start above the heart’s lower chambers and cause sudden bursts of a very fast heartbeat. The 2024 editorial lists his specific rhythm as permanent junctional reciprocating tachycardia, an uncommon type.
Many SVTs depend on an electrical loop that runs through or near the atrioventricular node, the relay station between the upper and lower chambers. Vagal maneuvers, which stimulate the vagus nerve, can briefly slow conduction through the node and interrupt some of these loops.
Cold Water and Hard Landings May Have Medical Explanations
Some of his methods resemble techniques that doctors use. Cold water is the clearest example. The diving reflex, triggered by breath-holding and cold water on the face, is one of the common vagal maneuvers, according to a StatPearls review hosted by the National Library of Medicine. The review describes the reflex as weaker in humans than in marine mammals and suggests a basin of ice water between 0 and 10 degrees Celsius for adults.
The jumping may have worked differently. The 2024 authors also cited two patients whose abnormal rhythms stopped by accident: a man with atrial fibrillation whose hospital bed hit a doorframe on the way to a planned cardioversion, and a patient with ventricular tachycardia whose ambulance went over a speed bump at 5 mph. Doctors in those cases proposed that the energy of the collision acted like a precordial thump, a sharp blow to the chest. The editorial does not explain why the shotgun recoil or the cold bath worked.
The cattle fence is the most alarming part of the story, and he is not the only one to try it. In 2017, a Hamilton retiree who had lived with atrial fibrillation for 19 years told the New Zealand Herald that he used his neighbor’s 8,000-volt electric fence to shock his heart back into a normal rhythm. Waikato Hospital’s clinical director, Dr. John Bonning, called the method “dangerous and ill-advised.”
Thermometers, Drills and IV Lines Have Done It Too
The editorial was prompted by a 2023 report of a 54-year-old patient whose atrioventricular nodal reentrant tachycardia, the most common SVT, was stopped by a rectal thermometer. The method proved reproducible in the same patient, for whom conventional approaches were contraindicated. The authors of that report attributed the effect to stimulation of parasympathetic nerve fibers in the rectum.
The editorial’s table of oddities also includes a man whose atrial fibrillation ended after his drill struck a live electrical cable during a home project, and an 84-year-old whose atrial fibrillation temporarily stopped during severe hyperkalemia, a dangerously high potassium level. His irregular rhythm returned once his potassium level normalized.
In England, pediatricians at City General Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent reported two cases in the Emergency Medicine Journal in which SVT stopped as staff tried to place an IV line, after standard vagal maneuvers had failed. The authors suggested that drawing blood or placing a needle in a vein is probably the most common vagal maneuver performed in hospitals.
Taken together, the cases are a reminder of how strongly the nervous system and sudden physical jolts can influence heart rhythm.
Safer Options Exist for a Racing Heart
None of these stories is a treatment plan. Electric shocks can trigger dangerous rhythms, falls from height can break bones, and firing a gun carries obvious risks.
Modern SVT care is far more reliable. In the REVERT trial, published in The Lancet in 2015, a modified Valsalva maneuver, in which patients strain and then immediately lie flat with their legs raised, restored normal rhythm in 43% of patients, compared with 17% for the standard version. When maneuvers fail, emergency teams can use medication or electrical cardioversion with a defibrillator. Catheter ablation uses a thin tube to destroy the tiny area of heart tissue causing the problem, according to UVA Health.
Patient guides from U.S. health systems list options such as bearing down or putting an ice-cold, wet towel on the face, but advise talking with a doctor before trying them. Carotid sinus massage should be performed only by a doctor.
People diagnosed with SVT can ask their cardiologist which maneuvers are safe for them. A racing heart accompanied by chest pain, fainting, or shortness of breath needs emergency care.
Key Questions Answered
What did the farmer do to stop his racing heart?
He jumped off a barrel, then off a ladder, fired a shotgun, jumped into a cold bath and, as a last resort, gripped a 6-volt electric cattle fence.
What condition did he have?
Supraventricular tachycardia, a group of rhythm problems that cause sudden episodes of a very fast heartbeat.
Why might cold water work?
Cold water on the face can trigger the diving reflex, a recognized vagal maneuver that can slow electrical conduction through the heart.
Have other unusual events stopped abnormal heart rhythms?
Yes. Published reports include a rectal thermometer, IV line placement, an ambulance speed bump, and a hospital bed hitting a doorframe.
Is it safe to use an electric fence on yourself?
No. Doctors have called the practice dangerous, and electric shocks can trigger harmful heart rhythms.
What are the proven treatments for SVT?
Vagal maneuvers such as the modified Valsalva, medications, electrical cardioversion, and catheter ablation.
Published by Medicaldaily.com
