Never boast that all is well with AF as it has a nasty habit of returning when you least expect it.
After almost 7 months AF free, off my heart went like an old car firing on 3 cylinders, when I was just driving off for a haircut.
I turned round, came home and took to my bed, did all the relaxing and deep breathing. In addition I took 200mg Flecainide (not necessarily recommended for everyone - we are all different) and 3 hours later I returned to NSR.
I did my best to not panic and told myself once again that every time this has previously happened in to past 30 years it has always returned to NSR either by PIP or as a last resort a Cardioversion
As always the Flecainide gave me severe nausea and I know I won’t feel right until tomorrow.
Must remember to not take my evening dose of Flecainide as it is not good to exceed 300mg in any 24 hours.
Now to relax and hope I now get at least another 7 months AF free.
Pete
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pottypete1
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You are a trouper, Pete. By my calculation, it has been two years and a few months since your last ablation. You would have had an attack in March, 2019 and now in October, the arrhythmia lasted only a few hours. For those of us who have had multiple ablations, only a few hours is inspiring after a long lapse of sinus rhythm. Thank you for posting.
I too get horrible nausea from Flec. See if your doc will prescribe zofran. It made me able to tolerate the med. now if they could just fix the severe anxiety for like three days post episode. Sorry to hear you had one. At least you got 7 months. That’s a good run. My last one was 6 weeks apart. Ugh. Sounds like you have a great coping plan. That’s a great way to approach an episode. I may steal some of your techniques. Be well.
Poor you. I guess you missed your haircut 😥. Just a thought...Do you think that things are better in summer? I look back at my AF diary and see that my AF has a tendency to rear its head in autumn and get a bit snappy through the winter. Vitamin D levels down in winter months I wonder? But there is often an element of stress. Who knows? But, as with you, my last ablation has helped. Best foot forward and keep breathing !
Throughout the years I had the episodes every few weeks and it is only in very recent times that I have had so few. For this reason I cannot link the seasons with my episodes of AF.
No I have become very bullish about not having any episodes and it was therefore a complete shock, there is nothing I can identify that could have been a trigger.
The only thing is that it has often happened in the morning after I get up and my best guess is increased blood pressure. However, I have got up every morning since March without AF so there is really no rhyme nor reason as far as I can tell.
Yes...mine always hits during the night or in the morning and it has to do with the amount of food I eat...full stomach triggers vagus nerve to set heart off..better off having main meal at lunch time and small meal at night..like a bowl of soup or something easy to digest and don't eat after 5pm
No kidding....raising its ugly little head. I m being treated for a weird kidney disease where my immune system is attacking my kidneys. Nephrologist is treating with heavy steroids. My afib, which has been silent since the ablation in May of 2018 has suddenly popped up. . Three trips To Emergency Room to no avail. Last two times I just rode out the storm. I’m now expecting more until the steroids get cut back. Clear correlation between them and afib.
Interesting that. My last two bouts of AF were a few weeks after my appendix burst last year and a few months after that had a second AF, both cardioverted. I spent over a week in hospital hooked up to liquid antibiotics, lucky to have survived. It's taken me the best part of a year to feel normal again. My body was under so much stress with a massive infection, and I guess my heart started to get very irritated too.
AF = Awfully Frustrating! Hope you are on the mend soon.
So sorry the a fib monster found your address. Hoping for smooth sailing for you now. I too hesitate to claim no a fib as one never knows when it is lurking around the corner.
⭐️
The next time this happens, take note of how much sugar you ate the day before and this day. It might be the reason AF rears it's ugly head now and then. Here is the data I have accumulated:
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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?? I also found that strenuous exercise does no good – perhaps you make yourself dehydrated??
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:
I have a very constant diet that varies little from one week to the next. I avoid sugar with the exception of some fruit as dessert after my dinner in the evening.
Excess sugar, if as I said eaten rarely, makes me feel awful with the sugar rush rather like caffeine which I also avoid. I have not changed my fruit intake in the past 2 or 3 years.
Aw Pete sorry your have had a recurrence of the dreaded AF, I hope you are feeling better. I guess you are very disappointed.
I thought I had settled into one episode of P-AF every 6 weeks but the worse cold I have had in years seemed to trigger an episode only two weeks after the last one.
Oh well, best not dwell on it and let AF get the better of us
What a disappointment, hopefully this is a one-off and this episode will fade into the distance too.
Whenever I think I've sorted my triggers and have been AF free for a week or so, it always makes me regret boasting! I just take 100mg flecainide and then 1.25 mg of bisoprolol if heart rate is over 140 twenty minutes later and that works brilliantly for me as all back to normal within an hour when it happened yesterday and I don't get any nausea (just a bit of tiredness) but we are all different as we all know (though the doctors haven't realised yet!) I tried taking it regularly but it failed to stop episodes and I felt tired all time!! So am now back to using it as a PIP. Have appointment with the cardiologist tomorrow after over four months wait and hope to get referred to an EP as over two years since diagnosis I am still with the plumbers!! Well done for staying calm and dealing with it all over 30 years!!!
Sorry to hear this Pete and Flapjack, I know how you feel. We just have to accept the beast is always there and hope it stays asleep for long periods but the trouble is that the longer it stays asleep the more conned we are that it has actually gone away.
Hi. I was just wondering when you go into A fib has your doctor ever recommended Metroprolol Tartratae? My doctor has me take it whenever I have an episode and it
gets me out of it. Along with drinking cold water and breathing exercises.
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sorry your have had a recurrence of the dreaded AF, I hope you are feeling better. I guess you are very disappointed.
Little scare
Methods to convert AF to NSR
Flecanaide 
Ablation update 
