Interesting article about gene for A FIB

Have any of you seen this article from the Jerusalem Post?

jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Is...

[BobD Volunteer]

Jean posted on this earlier today. Interesting like many such findings but knowing and curing are different.

[Hidden in reply to BobD]

Yes. I was deleting old emails and I found this in my saved email from June.

What, No Definitive AFib Ablation Study?

My “new best-friend” Dr. John Mandrola wrote the following Medscape commentary “We Still Need a Sham-Controlled Trial for AF Ablation.” Mandrola has been beating this drum for several years. In 2016 he said that AF ablation has a strong placebo effect. I even wrote a blog about it called “Could Ablation for AFib be an Elaborate Placebo?”

Most patients think that since cardiac ablation for AFib is a surgical procedure that it “should work.” There is a very strong placebo effect in any type of surgery. Mandrola’s point is that the only way to answer this question is to pretend to do an ablation on one group and compare that to another group where you do the ablation. But AFib has never ever been tested against a placebo.

The big question is why this study has never been done before. Isn’t medicine supposed to be based on science?

Not!

The government Office of Technology Assessment clearly stated, in 1978, that only 10-20% of medical and surgical procedures have been scientifically proven in controlled trials, which means that 80-90% have not. I could not find a more recent report – and I wonder why! Even worse, drug industry advertisements that prompt doctors to prescribe drugs are based on scientific fact only 6% of the time! I these facts in my Death by Modern Medicine book.

Mandrola said that results from a study called CABANA, found that catheter ablation was comparable to medical management. In other words, why are people undergoing a more dangerous procedure when drugs may work just as well. Of course, this is where I jump in and ask why magnesium is not offered in case the true cause of AFib, for at least some patients, is magnesium deficiency.

He also said that “In 2019, we do AF ablation to improve quality of life. QOL is a reasonable endpoint, but it is more susceptible to the placebo effect.” Another study found that having had an ablation was the strongest predictor of having asymptomatic AF. That’s the strong placebo effect that I’m talking about. “To date, of the hundreds of studies on AF ablation, none have tested it against a placebo.”

It’s quite a good article, Mandrola has put a lot of thought into it. He describes just how powerful the placebo effect can be when someone is prepared for ablation. He says “We have close relationships with our patients. We've seen them multiple times, discussed their fears, explained AF, and tried medicines. Then, when the day comes for ablation, the electrophysiology lab presents an elaborate theater: Patients get general anesthesia; they have postop discomfort; and, for full effect, we discharge our patients with healthy doses of optimism.”

Then of course there is the monetization of AFib ablation, which is worth billions of dollars. It would be difficult for some heart centers to give there up. In fact, I’m sure that even if sham surgery showed that medical management had the same results, doctors would still do AFib ablation. But then I put ReMag and the rest of or Completement Formulas into the mix and realize how much more effective it would be to heal the heart with nutrients. Unfortunately this hopeful approach will never come to light in the halls of modern medicine.

There is also the risk factor in any type of surgery. Mandrola reminds us that “No procedure is totally safe, but putting people in harm's way should come with a high bar of benefit.” He confesses that he suffered a year of AFib and “The scariest part of having AF was thinking about having my left atrium froze or burned.”

I repeat, put ReMag and the rest of or Completement Formulas into the mix and see how much more effective it would be to heal the heart with nutrients. We also tell people that if they go through with an ablation, also take the Completement Formulas before and after to continue to heal your heart and to heal the damage done by the ablation.

Learn about magnesium, and much more, by subscribing to my health tips by email. You can subscribe here: drcarolyndean.com/subscribe

Carolyn Dean MD ND

The Doctor of the Future®

[CDreamer in reply to Hidden]

Whilst I agree with all you have said re- Magnesium - I would just add the proviso for Magnesium to check contraindications before taking - they are - Myasthenia, if you kidney problems or take Calcium Channel Blockers.

I have Myasthenia & even 6mg in a food supplement used as a filler exacerbated my condition.

[Bagrat in reply to Hidden]

I doubt a double blind trial of ablation v "pretend" would ever get past the ethics committee concerned.

GAs have risks as does sedation and other parts of the procedure. How realistic would pseudo ablation have to be etc etc. I take your point.

Without looking it up I remember reading a study on I think facet injections for back pain and it was the volume of fluid whether saline or medication that achieved pain relief.

[Shcldavies]

I believe their onto something with a great deal of potential in looking at how the gene effects the movement of potassium ions ( Also believe the movement of sodium and calcium ions within the heart cells are at least as significant as the contract the heart muscles whilst potassium relaxes it). My brother and daughter suffer a milder form of arrhythmia and my niece had an ablation at the young age of 17 (she is fine now at 24), I am fine after my ablation but my brother and daughter still have episodes.

[Hidden]

Could be a factor. The following I know is a contributor:

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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 50 grams today, so AFIB episodes are more frequent and last longer (which confirms the fact that Afib gets progressively worse as you age) . 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, and have done it a hundred times since. 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. I suspect the Pancreas is involved, but not sure yet. I also suspect there is a gland(s) that are sending mixed signals to the heart, perhaps one telling the heart to beat fast, another one telling it to beat slow, so the heart doesn't know what to do - and you get skipped heart beats, Afib, etc. 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:

Cardiab.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1475-2840-7-28