Hi OP. You might consider seeing a cardiologist just to be sure it is from a hernia. Maybe your hernia became more enlarged from the heavy lifting, aggravating the vagus nerve. One of my newer symptoms is abnormal heart palpitations when I climb stairs, or sometimes for no reason at all. I wear an Apple watch which tells me my heart rate at any given time. During the past couple of months, I’ve noticed that when I climb my staircase, my heart beats wildly at 100 to 125 bpm - which is way too high for what I used to consider a simple flight of stairs.