I am wondering about the instances of gastric related diseases or conditions which might coincide with AF.
I am a healthy 53yo male having been diagnosed with paroxysmal AF 18 months ago. I am normally in sinus rhythm however I experience high heart rate AF roughly every 20-25 days. My last two episodes have shown Atrial Flutter. I have noticed that when I have been ill I am more likely to experience AF.
I am also diagnosed as having diverticulosis. I also have mild Barrets Oesophagus. I do not experience regular bouts of heartburn. My water intake seems to affect both my bowel regularity and AF.
I drink one coffee each day. Each week I get together with a few mates at a pub and have a pint or four. Neither of these activities seem to correlate to my AF. I have recently noted that exertion and stress are more likely to bring about an episode of AF.
I wonder if there are any others suffering with AF who may also have similar experience? In the larger picture I am wondering if there may be an as yet unidentified causal relationship between gut health and AF. One of the first things that was suggested to me prior to being diagnosed were something called “vagal manoeuvres” as apparently the Vagus nerve meanders from the gut through the organs in the torso including the heart.
Digestive issues are closely related to heart Arrythmias - often through the Autonomic Nervous System - the vagus nerve runs very close to heart and through stomach. It’s a complex interrelationship between multiple systems such as endocrine, immune system etc. If I have any virus or infection my heart is always much more sensitive. Exercise and rest also affect so some people find exercise brings on arrythmia whilst others find if they go exercise it stops arrythmia. It’s very individual.
What I have noted personally is the significant number of people with conditions such as IBS and heart arrythmias.
but really all you need to do is go to the AA STARS site as they have a list of cardiologists who work with various vagal arrythmias and other related conditions such as POTS, low BP, RAS etc.
It’s really hard work getting any specialist to look at the whole picture and not just their little piece of the jigsaw!
By coincidence - I take a cholinergic drug - Pyridostigamine - for an autoimmune condition - suddenly I find out from Dr Gupta video that it is also a drug for PoTS with low BP - since taking my BP is stable - which means less arrythmia episodes. Everything is connected to everything else and every part of the field affects the whole field.
There is also currently running an app tracking triggers of AF for a US based research project - it’s something that came into my in tray and I posted about a few weeks ago.
I have found we are more or less on our own to join up the dots on this one as unless there is a Gold Standard Clinical Research Peer Reviewed Published Study - whatever they may or not think personally - you are not going to get a view.
What I do know from personal experience is improving vagal tone really helps - you may not like how to do it though as it requires discipline and being an active agent in your own health which means looking at sleep, stress management, nutrition, exercise. And the first things is to cut the beers and possibly the coffee. Look at your nutrition and how your diverticulitis and acid reflux is treated and keep that under control. Many of the meds used may not suit your heart’s response. The only way of doing this is to keep a meticulous diary of everything you consume and do and see if you can find a correlation.
Yes, there is a definite link between digestive disorders and the Vagus nerve which sits on the stomach wall, which tells the brain to slow the heart rate, then flip into AF. If you have Vagal AF then your heart rate may be chaotic within acceptable limits and possibly be preceded by a shortish AF flutter. Vagal AF is also associated with exercise although after a minimum resting period of 30 minutes. AF during exercise is associated with adrenergic(adrenaline induced) AF and emotion is also a prime candidate. The following link provides an excellent clinical study. If you are "lucky" enough to have solely vagal AF then it shouldn't be too difficult to identify and remove the trigger causing your episodes. Good Luck.
Five years ago I was in the best shape I’ve ever been in. For a variety of reasons (not health related) I slowly ceased my exercise routine. From multiple spin sessions per week and similar tennis play to nought. About three to four years after AF cropped up with a formal A&E diagnosis in 2017. My point is I’ve been healthy. And now I have very well intended people telling me that I need to have a catheter inserted into my groin and fed through my body to my heart where a specialist will zap some nerve endings leaving a pattern in my atrium. I’m having a very difficult time buying into this before other things are sussed our.
Agree,ablation is a course of action normally undertaken after meds,lifestyle etc haven't worked .
Try the excellent advice on here and see what response your heart gives. See my posts for more detail,I am now off ablation list and feel well generally. There is hope! ( I was diagnosed 2013)
Xx
Hiya,
Well in some people, like me, its not a case of digestive issues coinciding with AF, BUT, the absolute cause. I agree so much with what others have written, especially CDreamer. Not much need for me to add my experiences.
That said, all my triggers are food, and the most significant thing for me is to remove gluten, wheat and oats from my diet - and that includes beers !! especially English traditional pub beers, draught, bottled or canned. Read the ingredients. Tea, coffee, cold drinks, ice food (ice cream) are not an issue for me.
Back in the day I consulted a Nutritionist who guided me through the food maze and prescribed certain Nutritional medications to calm my gut.
I was diagnosed with paroxysmal AF in Jan 2010, by following the Nutritionist advice I had managed to cease my AF events by April 2015, then followed no AF events until Feb 2018 when, sleeping on my left side I woke up in AF in the early hours. This event lasted about 5 hours, although it took my BP another 21 hours to normalise. Nothing since .... except occasionally I have been careless with my food and have experienced a high heart rate.
If you are interested google a schematic diagram of the vagus nerve, you'll be amazed at where this nerve wanders to in the body.
Not sure too many get diagnosed as such - but my personal experiences were if you respond to vasovagal manœuvres it was more than likely. I had ANS dysfunction anyway with POTS & low BP & other associated conditions so Table Tilt Test will diagnose ANS dysfunction. You can have vagal, none vagal & mixed AF according to some. It was my dentist who alerted me when I fainted after she injected local anaesthetic (containing adrenaline) & she tilted the chair back.
The long answer, much more complex ............ I guess I first came across the term vagal or vagus nerve from an AF'er on the forerunner of this forum, say 9 to 10 years ago. Then I researched it more when I found that once my condition had been stabilised by medication food was tipping me into an AF event.
Thus much more research .... consequence of that was to a large extent to ignore the heart and work on the vagal/vagus nerve and I did this by modifying my diet/eating habits and food.
Rhea11. Thanks for forwarding the information regarding Roemheld Syndrome. It promises to be a sort of medical ‘string theory’ neatly tying together many things I’ve experienced in recent years. I would only raise a concern that for a ‘syndrome’ which was discovered so many years ago it doesn’t seem to be benefiting much from mainstream research. I will dig deeper and rise it with my cardiologist.
Well your Dr. would .............it'd be outside his/her remit !!
Thank you for that. I'd heard of it but never followed through with the reading/research .... long UK winter hours of darkness - the dead season now - plenty of time available.
you are 100% spot on .I have suffered from paroxsysmal AF over thr last few years. the main cause for me is indigestion , sleeping on my left or some sort of pressure on the stomach /mid area. this is linked to the vagus nerve I believe. basically I try and avoid indigestion , sleep on my right and make sure I have gaviscon around just in case
Sounds like me, except, that I consulted a Nutritionist way back in the day and have modified my food intake to exclude stuff that antagonises my VN ...... very successful, except when I go on a long car trip and weaken and eat some crap easily available in a motorway services.
John
Hi,
Just like you I have diverticula disease and barrettes. I was having lots of stomach issues and antibiotics and ended up in A&E luckily for me they did a CT scan and saw something in my heart after a echocardiogram was done they said I had a myxoma ( a heart tumour which is very rare) this was removed in March of this year and although I had problems with AF after the surgery six weeks later it had settled down. I’m not on any medication apart from Lansaprazole for the Barretts.
Unfortunately my stomach/bowel issues were still causing problems and I had a colonoscopy with CT a month ago and I was told again that the only thing they could see was evidence of diverticula disease. Over the last week I’ve noticed my heart fluttering again and noticed that I wasn’t breathing as deeply as I was before so I looked on the British Heart Foundation as read about the vegus nerve. Since then I’ve been concentrating on breathing deeply and I’ve started taking probiotics on a daily basis.
Apologies for such a long answer but basically I do think that there is a relationship between gut health and AF. I’m having another echocardiogram next week so I will be interested to know if I’m starting with AF again. From what I’ve read it appears that in some cases the vegus nerve can be controlled without surgery. BUT I AM NO EXPERT 😉
Wishing you well.
Elaine
• in reply to
Elaine, have you ever considered consulting a Nutritionist. A Nutritionist would be able to advise you better on not just probiotics but a range of other 'settling' medication available for healing the gut flora.
John
• in reply to
Hi Carneuny,
Thanks for your reply which I think seeing a nutritionist is probably a very good idea. Years ago I had allergy testing and I was told that I reacted to wheat, potatoes and various other things which when I cut them out of my diet I did feel better.
I’ve taken a probiotic for the last three days and I’ve had headache, stomachache and diarrhoea all day yesterday which maybe proves that they are working? I’m going to not take anymore until my stomach settles down again and definitely look at trying to find a nutritionist.
Thanks again
Elaine
• in reply to
Hi Elaine,
Sorry to read of your digestive upset. Yep could be probiotics at work, just make sure you keep hydrated though for the time being.
A couple of thoughts, if you are in Britain go to your search box and type in BANT, this is the professional body for Nutritionists (British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine). You should find a practitioner close to where you live. Do be a bit wary if you buy your probiotics over the counter. Do discuss this with your Nutritionist.
Make a note of your general health issues but especially any allergy and digestive issues over time then pass on this info during the consultation.
Good luck, hope it all works for you - it certainly has done for me.
John
You might be getting a little dehydrated with the exertion and/or drinks. This is what triggers my Afib, plus a lot of others. Give it a try - got nothin to lose (except, perhaps, a little weight):
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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 (this is why all doctors agree that afib gets worse as you get older). 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 (afternoon) 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??
I'm pretty sure that Afib is caused by a gland(s) - like the Pancreas - or an organ that, in our old age, is not working well anymore and excess sugar or dehydration is causing them to send mixed signals to the heart - for example telling the heart to beat fast and slow at the same time - which causes it to skip beats, etc. I can't prove that (and neither can my doctors), but I have a very strong suspicion that that is the root cause of our Afib problems. I am working on this with a Nutritionist and hope to get some definitive proof in a few months.
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:
This seems to tie in pretty neatly with the concept of the FODMAPS diet, increasingly recognised both in Australia and in UK as a contribution to healthy eating.
Personally, I have been added salt free now for at least 30 years. In the last year or so I've been added sugar free. However, no matter how strong willed I am I do weaken and have 'sugar treats' every now and then ......... but nowhere near the amount of sugar I used to have. Yep, I've lost a bit of weight too but that may also be due to increased exercise in recent years also. Eating crap processed foods is however an ongoing problem, particularly when driving long distance and stopping at motorway service centres.
John
• in reply to
Tell me about the crap foods! My wife is always bringing some home and I can let them sit on the counter for a few days, then give in to them. Plus travelling is impossible to eat right. Any restaurant is impossible to eat right. Hmmmm.... sounds like a niche restaurant business for someone to try.
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