Tea, coffee, alcohol and Afib.

I havent, so far as I know, found these to be triggers for Afib, but I have had ectopics some time after drinking tea and coffee. Would Afib and ectopics be triggered more or less immediately on drinking them, or could they come about, say, 30-60 minutes later? I’m getting some rather dodgy ectopics as I type this, which I am worried might lead into afib as has happened in the past.

[RiderontheStorm]

Two answers. Build up of stress from the chemicals and sometimes immediately as I have borne both ways with alcohol and caffeine, and now Paint chemicals. YMMV...

[sleeksheep]

Not so much AFIB or ectopics but I do get palpitations after msg (man made not natural ) sulphides in food or alcoholic drinks and too much coffee ,but never with tea .

If the palpitations are too strong it puts me out of sinus rhythm

Its quite weird that msg. in Filipino food does not worry me but I have to be extra careful with Chinese. My guess is the Filipino is made from seaweed.

[TerriMo in reply to sleeksheep]

That is weird because what I have read is that the body does not differentiate because natural and man made MSG. So, for me anything with naturally occurring MSG affects me as well. However, I suspect man made MSG may be in higher quantities in food.

[MarkS]

You can spend your whole life looking for triggers. I spend years meticulously filling in my diary and trying to work out triggers. I stopped all caffeine, alcohol, msg, etc, and tried loads of supplements. The human brain is built to do that. Eventually I realised I would get AF regardless of any triggers. The actual trigger is in the body, it's due to inflammation.

When I realised this I relaxed and my AF became much easier to handle!

Mark

[Thomas45]

Caffeine was never a problem with me. It was something else in coffee which set my AF off. I could drink tea, cola and wine without getting even a hint of AF but have coffee, both normal and decaff and I would soon be in AF.

Although I am now in asymptomatic permanent AF I still will not drink coffee. I haven't had any coffee for 11 years.

[TerriMo in reply to Thomas45]

I have a friend that can not drink coffee because she is allergic to the oil from the coffee bean, but has no problems with caffeine.

[Hidden in reply to Thomas45]

Why did you decide not to have coffee again when you developed permanent AF? I also have permanent AF and I’m wondering what is triggering runs of regular tachycardia. I would definitely miss coffee and I had thought it would be a plus point with permanent AF.

[Thomas45 in reply to Hidden]

I thought it might increase my heart rate, which is at a steady 90 beats per minute. I love the smell of coffee, but I'd rather not chance it by drinking any. You do get used to not drinking it, or eating coffee flavoured cake or chocolates (I never did like them).

[Fighter_mj]

Its definitely a trigger for me. I do believe one of the main reason why most of the study did not show a link of caffeine and Afib is because Afib is a very heterogeneous diseases. For people with “substrate” like hypertensive heart or genetic predisposition for instances would go into Afib anyway. And the people with good tolerance of caffeine for decades definitely won’t go into afib with three cups of coffee a day.

But I believe some people like me are very sensitive to caffeine somehow , as it’s know to be able to bind to the Ryanodine receptor in myocytes affecting the calcium concentration inside the cells thus can shorten the refractory period making the heart more vulnerable to re-entry circuit .

[Roobydooby]

I now drink only decaf tea & coffee on the advice of my cardiologist, never drank much alcohol anyway, but had two episodes of Afib after having just one glass of wine (could have been coincidence of course) so no longer drink that either just in case!

[Leeson]

Hi Sam,

I switched to decaf tea and coffee years ago when I first had afib, use liptons tea, you can't tell the difference, and only have a decaf coffee occasionally..