After reading sugarisit's response to my AF disappearing for a month I have been reducing my sugar intake since last Monday and have had far, far fewer episodes of AF. That they have become "episodes" rather than chronic occurrence as they were before I went away travelling for a month, is reassuring and gives me hope. So, Sugarisit, thank you for your insights. Is it a longer term solution which might meajn I don't need an ablation? Only time will tell. I played golf yesterday and got palpitations half way through the round - golf is a source of stress for me, especially if I play a few duffs or tops - but when I stopped, they stopped. Previously, if I'd got them on the golf course, I'd have them for 4 or 5 days. Anyway, I am digressing. I haven't undertaken any scientific methods with reducing my sugar, i.e. I haven't been weighing intake or anything, but just making a conscious effort to reduce my eating and drinking of the sweet stuff, including:
reducing chocolate. No more full bags of Malteasers (I did buy a bag today at work, but shared most of them) or whole bars of milk chocolate, and just generally reducing amount I buy
Not filling glass with fruit juice but treating it more like cordial - i.e. around 1 part juice to 5 parts water in a half-pint or pint glass.
Have reduced my intake of bananas - I often would eat three a day.
Reduced intake of honey - often have it in copious amounts on bread, or with yogurt and fruit as a pudding
Avoid temptation of cake or biscuits at work
I've also been eating less meat since I came back from travelling - I often wonder if meat is harder to digest and so puts pressure on heart??
Reducing intake of alcohol, which of course, contains a lot of sugar.
I can't cut sugary things out altogether - you got to have some treats, but moderating is a bit easier - and I know there are many causes of AF. I'm not going to crack open any champagne yet, but if this can continue for a few more weeks, then I am definitely going to consider asking the cardiologist to postpone the ablation, and I would have to put it down to reducing sugar. Fingers crossed. Will keep you posted.
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JoshGains
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I rarely drink alcahol,eat very little meat.Very few 'puddings ' or cakes.No sweets but a little choc .of the dark variety . have perm. af but it gives me no trouble at all so you may be on the right track.
I went several months cutting sugar, gluten & dairy - apart from sources I was either unaware of or small daily fruit allowance- I had small handful of berries & a very little pressed apple juice most days. This regime was more for leaky gut to see if I could reduce symptoms of autoimmune & after 6 months I certainly feel much better.
What I now notice is that if I do take sugary food I get an immediate response - and not a good one! As gut & heart health can be so closely related I am convinced that cutting sugar out of eating plan would mean we are all a lot healthier. It may be a trigger for AF for some but having kept a symptom/food diary I can say with certainty - I still had AF throughout so in itself, it wasn’t THE trigger. But we all respond differently.
I think (but can't prove) that we all have a common thread that triggers afib. And I think it is the pancreas or thyroid glands, or both. And perhaps another gland also. Our glands are not working as well as they should in our old age (or because of chemicals or diet) and I think they are sending signals to the heart to beat fast and slow at the same time. Different things may cause them to misfire, but once we find out the common thread - and can fix the problem gland, we will have a cure for afib. If anyone knows of a researcher - spread the word!!
So many variables, so many different constitutions that I no longer believe that because I see AF more as a symptom than a condition. I don’t know the stats of people with ‘Lone AF’ but I think they are few and far between. The triggers come in various categories:-
Psychological - trauma, stress & emotion
Nutrition- or lack of good nutrition
Exercise - too much or too little
Sleep - not sleeping 6+ hours night
Genetic - AF can run in families
Ageing - natural process which you may be able to delay but never eliminate
The most interesting research I think is on the substrate of the heart and metabolic cardiology.
Until we can move to personalised medicine I don’t believe we will have answers. Until then I will work on what I can on all of above - which will include strict limitations on sugar.
Yes, all of those can trigger afib. But I still believe, no matter what triggers afib, that the trigger stimulates some gland(s), which probably are the same glands in all of us that are failing and cause a healthy heart to afib. Of course, chemicals (like meds) or just a plain weak or failing heart would have their own situations. Like you say . . . so many variables!
I too find sugar a trigger Josh and also love large bags of Malteasers. Keep in touch as every little idea on what starts episodes helps...good luck Linda
Congratulations. Most people and doctors just can't believe it's sugar so don't even try reducing it in their diets. (By the way, alcohol - and golfing - make you dehydrated and that triggers afib as well - make sure to stay hydrated.) It sounds like you have a very high sugar threshold right now, so should be easy to keep under it, but as you age your threshold will go down so keep that in mind. I don't measure my foods either. I pour a bowl of cereal and look at it, and say "that looks like about 2 cups" then check the package of how much sugar is in 2 cups. I keep a little cheat sheet of common foods I eat at the table to keep track of what I consume each day. Here is a little more info on that, and a URL where you can find out how much sugar is in anything you eat:
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How much sugar do you need to reduce to stop your afib? The answer is about 1/2 of what your daily sugar limit (threshold) is. My sugar threshold is about 80 grams a day right now. So if I go over that (and it's sooooo easy to do) my heart will start to afib. Then if I cut back to about 40-45 grams of sugar for one or two days, then the heart goes back to normal rhythm and stays there until I exceed my daily threshold of sugar again. (moderate exercise will shorten that time frame). I have gone 30 days under my sugar threshold with no afib once just to prove it is the sugar. And I have consumed my daily limit of sugar every day after going into afib and it stayed in afib for a week - just to prove that worked. So - as long as you know what your sugar threshold is you should be able to stay under it and not have afib any more, but that takes several weeks of experimenting to figure that out. I use the following WEB site to know how much sugar is in different foods:
You can make your own cereal using oats , sunflower and sesame seeds, almonds or other nuts. This binds together with honey ( use as little as possible warming it first so it spreads) . You then toast it in the oven turning so it does not stick to the oiled tray. It is delicious with plain yoghurt and a few raisins or a couple of chopped dried apricots. Yes I know these have sugar in them but they also have fibre , minerals and vitamins which a bag of Maltesers doesn't! As the only sugar in the granola is what you have added in the form of honey it is easier to keep track of than commercial cereals and tastes a hell of a lot better.
Hey - I make a home made granola cereal just like you describe. And found that it actually tastes better NOT cooked - very tasty raw. My recipe is 5 Cups oats, 1 cup of chopped peanuts, shredded coconut, sunflower seeds, plus a few peppita or pumpkin seeds (or your favorite seeds). All stuck together with 1/2 cup of olive oil and honey, plus a little vanilla. Yum - and like you say - I know what's in there.
I use walnut or hazelnut oil . They are available in all the supermarkets here . More expensive than olive but give a more delicate taste. I put a small handful of raw oats into my yoghurt then top with about half that quantity of the granola. Sweeten with a little stewed rhubarb . This grows like a weed so in summer I prepare and freeze the surplus so as to have it throghout the winter. I will try shredded coconut in the next lot - maybe it would be better to add it after toasting .
As far as Clinical Research goes - who would pay for a Study? Surely not the Sugar Industry!! But if a gland is someday shown to cause afib, just think of the money a Company would make if they had a cure for that gland. So . . . perhaps a small company - but it's a big investment on (in today's world) a whim.
The problem of cutting something like sugar completely from the diet is that you will get a reaction when you do happen to have it. I’ve seen friends/family do this and then their bodies react intolerantly. I believe in quantity reduction. The body gets quantity over load.
Yes, I can imagine then less you have, the more it will react when you do have sugar, and one could end up having a very low tolerance before any AF kicks in. But 8 days after I started cutting down, I have had one or two small flutters, which have disappeared within minutes, along with a few hours during golf, and that's it.
You can certainly have a withdrawal reaction but it rarely lasts more than a few weeks - but it like having mild flu!
I found not just cutting out sugary treats, but also cutting out rice, bread, pasta and potatoes was necessary to take me from an occasional episode to being in my 12th month now without any episodes. Carbs are carbs whether they come from sugar or things that were previously considered healthy, at least on the US food pyramid.
I think that is what got many of us into this mess as not only did it increase my A Fib attacks back then, even though I was on daily medications, and it increased my weight and put me into the pre-diabetes category. All of those issues have been resolved by the Keto diet.
12 servings of grains is ludicrous, but that is exactly what the US government recommended. Of course that change was bought and paid for by industrial farming companies, such as Kellogs, Archer Daniels Midland etc. with their campaign contributions, even though the medical experts from Harvard warned Congress and the USDA to stay out of it at the hearings.
Not all ‘grains’ are equal! I agree that large companies have far too much influence on government in the US and should have absolutely no impact on legislation. Bad enough in the UK - but we won’t get political.
" I played golf yesterday and got palpitations half way through the round - golf is a source of stress for me, especially if I play a few duffs or tops "
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