I have a heart murmur. What does and doesn't cause heart murmurs is often a filled with misconceptions. In addition, when people are told they have a heart murmur, they often automatically think the worst. The fact is most heart murmurs in children are innocent. In other words, the heart murmurs are most often not a sign of a defect in the heart.
Heart murmurs are fickle.
It takes a skilled listener to decide whether a heart murmur is of no concern or serious, but there are a few basic principles doctors use to help figure out what type of murmur they are listening to. To contrast the murmurs, it is good to hear what the heart sounds like without one. Murmurs Murmurs are caused by turbulence in the flow of blood. To better understand this, think of a common garden hose with the water turned on. If you kink the hose enough to impede the flow of the water but not so much to completely stop the water from coming out the end, you will notice a change in the sound of the water flowing at the point of the kink.