Article from Saturdays Daily Mail. I know it’s the Mail but It may provoke debate.
Can diet cure afib? This Dr thinks so. - Atrial Fibrillati...
Can diet cure afib? This Dr thinks so.
Written by
jonjub
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26 Replies
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I believe food is medicine, as is exercise, adequate sleep, etc. Basically our body's want to " right" themselves. Good nutrition is good for everything. I also believe a fib has various causes, some structural issues in the heart, high blood pressure, stress, many things can contribute to creating the storm of a fib. Personally, I have have paf diagnosis over 3 yr now. My a fib has become less frequent. My last episode was almost a year ago. I have not had an ablation. I have lost 40 lb , exercise more and retired from a stressful nursing job 1 1/2 yr ago. Only daily heart med I take is a low dose beta blocker. Did improving my diet fix my a fib? Who knows. Only thing I do know is a fib is unpredictible. I hope it continues to stay away but also know it could knock on my door tonight, lol.
secondtry in reply to
Totally agree Hoski with your beliefs and actions. It may not guarantee you stay AF free but I am positive it reduces your risk level and that's all we can all do. So enjoy your new life!
Hi jonjub,
Cure is an unwise word to use in the context of AF, but, as a concept a big, almighty YES ! 
but so long as the AF has its origins with the vagal nerve.
Its like this - we have two brains, the primary brain is in the skull cavity. The secondary brain in the digestive system and the various nerves that are associated with the digestive process. Yet the two brains work together directing the rest of the organs. They chat to each other all the time in their own little way.
I have followed a food plan since the early days of my AF, say late 2010 early 2011 after consulting a nutritionist. By April 2015 after continuous experimenting with food, I had become AF free. I have only had one AF event since April 2015 and that was as a result of sleeping on my left side in Feb 2018. Nothing since.
My idea is to calm the vagal nerve and calm the heart. But a sensible food plan is the key to a healthy life anyway, AF or no AF.
John
wilsond in reply to
Hear hear John
BobDVolunteer
Cure is not a word to associate with AF in my view. It is not a disease but a condition. Yes that condition can be improved and yes diet helps. A change to a more plant based diet, dump processed foods and artificial sweeteners. good hydration and biggest of all, weight loss (BMI less than 25 ) have all be proven to improve AF burden.
Hi jonjub my understanding is if you adopt lifestyle changes which include among other things eating a healthy diet free of additives (similar to the Mediterranean diet) you may be able to slow down the progression of P-AF and reduce the number of episodes. I have been doing this for 2 years.
Has it helped, who knows only a large trial could say for sure but at the very least it helps your body to cope better with P-AF.
I am convinced attention to my diet has had a big impact on my health generally and on AFib and flutter symptoms. Also massive reduction in stress triggers,and how I deal with stress. Food is medicine!
Cure? Who knows? But management of a condition to the extent it is rarely experienced is good enough for me!
My first ever diagnosis of AF was when I was hospitalised with norovirus,and several bit events since have been alongside some kind of gastric distress.......
over the last 18 months I have tackled stress,nutrition and exercise,to great effect . So much so that,although was put on waiting list for ablation,drugs not holding me in r hthym , my EP ,GP and I have been able to wean me off bisoprolol and flecanaide except as a pil in pocket and depending on successful echocardiogram this week,put the double ablation on hold.
with a very strong family history of stroke I remain anticoagulated for life but never thought I'd be in the position of slowing down or holding off AFib and Flutter like this. How long for I don't know but am very happy,and feel in a weird way that all this since 2013( my annu s horribilis) has resulted in me achieving better overall health,leaving a stressful job,and an interest in nutritional medicine that I am hoping to make into a new part time career.
So that s my take on the Daily Wail item!
have a good weekend folks!
Thanks for sharing the link jonjub, it's interesting and re-affirms all we are constantly told that eating healthy natural foods will help us feel better. My slight problem is how to serve those healthy foods in different ways, so I may well go and buy the Daily Mail today and look at the recipes mentioned in the supplement magazine.
Jean
in reply to jeanjeannie50
You know Jean you have touched on a topic close to my heart. I am fed up with all these celebrity chef/ bakers TV programs. They are like a mutual admiration society !
I would like to challenge all these show ponies to produce a range of menus to meet the needs of many of us who have medical conditions which benefit from food plans and/ or diets.
High failure rate I suspect.
😂😂
Could be a new career path for you though. 🤣🤣🤣
Cdreamer have me the link to his excellent book,which is very good indeec.
Interesting subject which has general consensus, that is a better considered diet, leaning toward plant food can have a positive impact on the afib condition. The biggest change i made 4 years ago was to exclude caffeine and alcohol (strangely for me the caffeine bit is the hardest to abstain from) and in the interim my incidents of afib have been much reduced. However, from my first afib awareness, some 19 years ago, (eight days in hospital) i did not make any changes to lifestyle or diet mainly because at the time i was not made aware of what the condition was. My gp even suggested that it was probably ‘a one off’! I still drank too much, had a very expensive, rich diet, drank at least 8 cups of proper coffee and was crossing long-haul time zones on a monthly basis. I didn’t get another attack for nearly nine years. But at this point i realised that it was a life threatening, have it till you die condition that required serious attention and adjustments. I now realise that the very obvious changes have had a beneficial effect with me and along with a beta blocker my ‘attacks’ are fewer. I don’t think a diet will ever cure afib but will go a long way toward averting incidents and help provide a better quality if life. Like BobD i am a devout cynic and acknowledge that the ‘Cure’ in the title relates more to sensationalism and the sound of 15 quids each time a book is sold. With the credibility of a Doctor having penned the book it should certainly sell well and if gets the message out there and helps a few more of us consider our diet and make beneficial changes then that must be a positive thing.
Thank you all for your comments, they are well received. Jon.
Thank you for this. Am going to have a good look. It may be the boost I need to get some more healthy interesting meals going.
I too have ordered this book as I've always been convinced that digestive problems play a big part in afib and changes I've made since my first episode back in 2015 have really helped keep the wretched thing at bay. I'm already vegetarian and thinking about going vegan, I love veggies of any kind but especially green ones which as we all know plays havoc with Warfarin and I read in the article that we should be eating more greens for better brain function so my questions for the Doc would be - was he on warfarin after his diagnosis if so, how did eating a lot of green stuff work re his INR and did he come off the drug completely? Every onwards!
Thanks Jonjub. I am going to be a bit controversial and say I do believe there is a way to cure Lone AF.
I don't see the logic in saying it is incurable, whereas it make much more sense to me to say your heart is under too much pressure and can't cope, you need to check for.................and I hope in the not too distant future there will be a standard list everyone has to work through e.g. stress, food, alcohol, caffeine, toxicities (the latest I read was mercury levels from fish), supplements, sleep apnea, etc etc
The problem is as with all these Lifestyle interventions nobody will finance sufficient research. Also rather than swallowing some pills and hoping for the best, Lifestyle intervention takes longer and is initially more difficult but of course the outcome can be much better for AF and other chronic disease. It's a choice we all have to make.
At one time you were a diabetic for life, now all of a sudden evidence is emerging that you can reverse Type 2.
I agree with you 100% and will never give up looking for triggers, or a natural cure.
Jean
I agree with all that has been stated here as I had problems too as mentioned and was told that I would never improve or get any better. I was determined in body and soul to try just the same as I was terrified, to say the leas,t with the constant 'extra beat' causing me distress. So I dieted, and on losing a stone and a bit all righted itself and it certainly wasn't the heart tablets as I had stopped them weeks previously.
In my mind the losing of weight was definitely the remedy even though no medical person agreed!!......but I did............................Ron.
I think there is a lot to be said for being the ‘right weight’, surely the more overweight we are puts unnecessary stress and complications on the system. Having said that weight gain is attributable to older age and especially with Beta Blockers as they tend to slow us and our system down.
The book 'The Doctor’s Kitchen' has been recommended on here before and I intended buying it, glad I waited it is half the price now (£5 + delivery on Amazon) . Dr Aujla's recommendations are mainly based on a Mediterranean style diet which our friend Dr Gupta also recommends for AFers..
I have always eaten healthy (making everything from scratch including bread) but have been even more careful and cut down portions size since being diagnosed with AF. I love cooking and enjoy making different recipes. There are some interesting ones on the British Heart Foundation website here...
bhf.org.uk/informationsuppo...
I am lucky I guess in that my favourite foods happen to be nuts vegetables and fruit, on the Mediterranean based diet I do struggle a bit with oily 'fishy tasting ' fish but do I eat salmon preferring wild pacific to the horrible farmed salmon (with streaks of white fat and contain pesticides against sea lice) that we see everywhere these days.
I manage to eat sardines by mashing them up with a teaspoon of yogurt,chopped capers,chopped parsley and black pepper and spreading it on hot toast.
A word of caution about the Mediterranean diet, the UK is not the Mediterranean we lack their sun and I have been diagnosed as severely vitamin D deficient so maybe think about taking a supplement if you follow this kind of diet.
I have quit meds and focused on diet and all good , please dont do as I did
It took me sometime to reach this goal and yes all based on healthy food , food is medicine thats why I went with natural healthy diet
The foods he recommends are indeed healthy, but there is no evidence that eating them will reverse disease or AF. For that claim to be supported he would need to present peer-reviewed studies (hypothesis tests) with a
control group.
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