It's possible that your Afib rears it's ugly head when you go over your sugar threshold. I will also skip a few beats now and then if I eat a little too much sugar. Check this out - perhaps you could give it a try:
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After 9 years of trying different foods and logging EVERYTHING I ate, I found sugar (and to a lesser degree, salt – i.e. dehydration) was triggering my Afib. Doctors don't want to hear this - there is no money in telling patients to eat less sugar. Each person has a different sugar threshold - and it changes as you get older, so you need to count every gram of sugar you eat every day (including natural sugars in fruits, etc.). My tolerance level was 190 grams of sugar per day 8 years ago, 85 grams a year and a half ago, and 60 grams today, so AFIB episodes are more frequent and last longer. If you keep your intake of sugar below your threshold level your AFIB will not happen again (easier said than done of course). It's not the food - it's the sugar (or salt - see below) IN the food that's causing your problems. Try it and you will see - should only take you 1 or 2 months of trial-and-error to find your threshold level. And for the record - ALL sugars are treated the same (honey, refined, agave, natural sugars in fruits, etc.). I successfully triggered AFIB by eating a bunch of plums and peaches one day just to test it out. In addition, I have noticed that moderate exercise (7-mile bike ride or 5-mile hike in the park) often puts my Afib heart back in to normal rhythm a couple hours later. Don’t know why – perhaps you burn off the excess sugars in your blood/muscles or sweat out excess salt??
Also, in addition to sugar, if you are dehydrated - this will trigger AFIB as well. It seems (but I have no proof of this) that a little uptick of salt in your blood is being treated the same as an uptick of sugar - both cause AFIB episodes. (I’m not a doctor – it may be the sugar in your muscles/organs and not in your blood, don’t know). In any case you have to keep hydrated, and not eat too much salt. The root problem is that our bodies are not processing sugar/salt properly and no doctor knows why, but the AFIB seems to be a symptom of this and not the primary problem, but medicine is not advanced enough to know the core reason that causes AFIB at this time. You can have a healthy heart and still have Afib – something inside us is triggering it when we eat too much sugar or get (even a little) dehydrated. Find out the core reason for this and you will be a millionaire and make the cover of Time Magazine! Good luck! - Rick Hyer
PS – there is a study backing up this data you can view at:
Hi Higgy. Great you are doing so well as, if I remember correctly, you were in persistent for quite a while before your ablations due to the waiting time. I also remember that the time period taking amiodarone affected your thyroid. My one question is how long were you persistent before your first ablation because that length of time may affect succeeding ablations?
I had my third ablation May 27, about 4 months ago, and luckily am in sinus, but unlike you , I am on propafenone 300mg x 2. I was 6 months persistent before my first ablation.
I don't think you were 10 years persistent. I have heard of ablation attempts at 5 year persistent. I would venture to say paroxysmal which developed into persistent. Your heart , like mine must be "diseased" which means remodeling of the substrate which for me vastly occurred in the 6 months that I was allowed to be in persistent due to our inadequate atrial fibrillation attitude in B.C. Canada. I had to go to Bordeaux to fix the problem because my excellent EP in Bordeaux said had I not had an ablation at 6 months persistent I would not have been able to go back to sinus rhythm.
If your heart is like mine, you had to have 3 due to the remodeling, the edema from first ablation not allowing to ablate all rogue signals, to reconnection of tissues, and to new signals which were there but didn't surface until after the first and second ablations. Yes an enlarged left atrium contributes.
I have a week to hit the 4 month target. Thank you for your good wishes.
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3 month post ablation-update 
8 months post ablation 
