Recognising the effect of anxiety within AF

I understand what you mean regarding the anxiety.

Regarding the raised heart rate staying raised after exercise I wonder if it might be Atrial Tachycardia not AF.

The reason I suggest this is that your experience on the bike sounds similar to what happened to me a few months ago after a fairly strenuous walk when my heart would not slow down when I stopped.

I was stuck that way until I had an ablation 10 days ago.

An ECG will prove it one way or another.

Pete

I think Pete may well be on the right track a with his reply. I get bouts of atrial tachycardia also.....had several weeks of it continuously in april/May...120/130 bpm Confirmed in A&E...then turned into AF and DCCV

Have had many bouts since of shorter duration. Latest one this weekend after hosting hectic family get together.

( am on list for ablation 4)

Sandra

Thanks, I shall look into it. That one hasn't been mentioned to me by any of my doctors, but I shall have a read about it.

I have had similar experiences on the bike, in fact my first AF experience (although I didn't know it at the time) was overdoing it up a hill. My tip for what it's worth is get more used to picking up the body's messages and don't cycle if you get that response. I stopped, took on a raft of new lifestyle measures including an hour in the evenings totally relaxing with exercise, mindfulness and prayer. After 2+ years of that I started cycling again and walking up steep hills and feel absolutely fine. Good Luck!

I think anxiety plays a massive role. I've had so many strange sensations since discovering I have AF. Many have come and gone, disappearing once I've reassured myself that they are all in my mind. It's hard to constantly be keeping your nerve with these things, but in my experience many of my symptoms are in my head, bar the palpitations, which I'm sure are also precipitated by anxiety and stress.

Hi everyone, been to the GP this morning. Had a really long and good discussion about options. The result was that I am now on a 3 day course of diazepam to test the notion that my symptoms are anxiety. Have had the first pill and already feel a world better. The fog has cleared and I feel normal again. Fingers crossed.

Before I knew I had AFib I would occasionally get bouts of nervousness/anxiety that seemed to have no relation to what was going on in my life. Then one day it occurred to me to check my HR, only to find it speeded up. My own theory is that the rapid HR gave the feeling of nervousness rather than the other way around.

Afib is very anxiety inducing until you read up on afib and learn everything you can about the condition. Once you've educated yourself about all things afib, you'll learn to let go of the anxiety and just rest and relax when you're "fibbing" until it passes.

I have the same issue. It seems that anything that causes my body to release adrenaline causes me to have skipped beats. So I automatically started to associate physical effort with discomfort. Thus I avoid anything that gets my heart rate up beyond a certain point.

Gentle bike riding is ok but if I needed to tackle a steep hill I would avoid it when possible. The fact that I was on beta blockers for a long time since years before my cyro-ablation made matter worse because I would often feel faint when over exerting myself. The beta blockers made my heart beat slower so it was not able to keep up with demand. This further caused me to avoid physical activity.

Now I fear that I have developped some anxiety towards physical activity which I am trying to overcome.

When I get ectopic beats I try to relax and help them pass. I try hard not to feed the anxiety more about it. Instead I try to focus on my breathing and try to do some breathing exercises to help me relax. I now understand that anxiety has a huge impact on how we feel.