It's a common comment on here lately that we should cut down on sugar to lessen A/f episodes but I wondered if fruit was included.
I like to make healthy drinks of fruits and almond milk with my nutre bullit
machine but on.the fitness pal app it gives fruits a high sugar rating
An apple might as well be a bar of chocolate so will someone tell me that only refined sugar not fresh fruit sugar is included in the 45 grams allowed a day????
No idea to be honest but I was always under the impression that fructrose (natural sugar) was OK and that the devil incarnate was refined anything.
Unfortunately not true Bob. Refined sugar is worse but then every sugar not packaged in plant cell is refined!
Probably one of the least sugar number on the GI is Coconut Sugar - which is what I use when I need to but that is still ridiculously high and mostly ‘empty’ calories a mix of various sugars, including Fructose, glucose and a few others I can’t remember.
G'day fairgo,
Well, for me sugar is sugar. End of !
Can I suggest you research FODMAPS for better information than I can talk about. Should give you an answer.
For my money where does sugar come from - a plant, Sugar Cane. Most fruits are plant based too. Some plants are more sugary than others.
Can't answer your specific question I'm afraid, but I'm sure there are others on here better versed than I.
I solved the problem decades ago by giving up added salt in my food, and for the last few years I have given up added sugar ..... I eat very little fruit, never have done. Grapes and Bananas mostly. But Grapes not very often.
John
Unfortunately yes, sugar is sugar, but an apple comes with nutrients and fibre so beats the bar of chocolate. I have a friend who developed type 2 diabetes after gorging on fruit (plus other goodies it has to be said) and a plant based diet does not mean living on fruit either - life is hard 😢
No not all sugars are equal as there are many types of sugar and there are monosaccharides - glucose, fructose etc and compound saccharides but all sugars will have a similar affect but a different GI number.
All sugars are soluble carbohydrates and found in every plant cell so you cant avoid them completely - nor should you. Things to avoid are processed sugars with all fibre removed so for instance if you use a fruit juice you will end up consuming a LOT of sugar because you will end up consuming up to 6 oranges without the fibre content in one glass of juice. But if you put 1 orange in a smoothie, peel and all you will have mitigated the affect of the sugar with the fibre and consumed a lot less sugar.
Hope that makes sense.
PS - actually 2-3 square of chocolate (as long as more than 85% cocoa butter and doesn’t contain emulsifiers or added sugar) is probably more beneficial as it’s a great antioxidant.
I am reasonably sure the main reason for my last AF episode after several years free was freshly juiced apple, so take care!
This does not directly relate to AF but there was an article on the front page of The Times in the UK yesterday, 16.12.19, entitled “Two apples a day keep heart disease away”. It refers to a small study at the University of Reading which concluded that eating two whole apples a day, as opposed to drinking an apple juice drink, can reduce so-called bad cholesterol and improve blood vessel function. I found the article online to provide a link but there is some kind of problem with it so not able to do this unfortunately.
Thank you for posting the link, baba, it just kept coming up as a 500 error when I tried.
Thanks my daughter read the article and told mr about it this morning i live in a part of New Zealand that grows a lot of fruit and vegetables strawberries raspberries cherries and apricots and plums at the moment but soon the apples will be ready and I cant wait to eat them again
I'm not convinced that fruit sugar is as bad as refined sugar I may have to experiment with this theory .
Everything is grown locally in a spray free area and nothing grown here is generically modified
It cant be fruit thats the culprit
Given that we share an enormous amount of our DNA with other members of the ape family who include lots of fruit in their foraged diet I think it unlikely that fruit is bad for us. In moderation . Especially very high sugar tropical plants which will have been tinkered with to obtain maximum sweetness. I really think there is just too much agonising over what we eat these days. Diet trends come and go. When I was young low fat was all the rage and people were ditching butter for disgusting crap made in factories . Well that didn't turn out so well. Now it is plant based and obsessing about sugar and "clean"eating. The anxiety that lots of people have about what to eat is probably worse for their health than the occasional treat. When we were still living in Brum and brushing up our French in preparation for moving here our French teacher did a lesson on big numbers and to illustate it gave out stats on longevity in various regions here. The places with the most centenarians were mostly in the middle and south west . He told us his sister lived in the Limousin. "They cook their chips in duck fat and eat lots of fois gras". So not those in the south where you would think the much touted Mediterranean diet would be de rigeur. I have cooked my roast spuds in duck fat ever since! Here food is for enjoyment . But because the French really care about food the sort of ready meals that take up swathes of the supermarkets in other countries are a relatively recent introduction here. Things are going downhill but we are probably 50 years behind America and 20 years behnd the UK as far as the food industry is concerned.
I wish I could tell you that only refined sugar causes problems. But as far as afib is concerned, sugar is sugar - it doesn't matter where it comes from. Sugar from fruit, veggies, honey, agave - all are treated the same. An apple contains about 20 grams of sugar, a banana 17 grams, one grape - one gram. I use this URL to find out how much sugar is in foods:
fatsecret.com/calories-nutr.... If you can't get to that, I'm sure you can find others by searching google. Sorry for the bad news. I, too, love smoothies and fruit (I even grow 8 apple trees in the yard but cannot eat them any more), but now have to almost give them up to keep my sugar low enough to prevent afib from happening. This growing old crap really reeks!!
- Rick Hyer.
As part of my job (exercise prescription specialist) I recently went to a conference where the professor (Robert Thomas, if my memory serves me well, said fruit sugar packaged in nature's packaging (ie whole fruit) is no problem EVEN for diabetics. It's a myth apparently. Fruit juice is a no no. Obviously I suppose if you are something stupid like 50 pineapples a day if might though!!!
I'm leaning towards agreeing with you it seems common sense that nature wouldnt provide fruits that were not good for you if it were not for citrus for example we would all have died from scurvy.
I eat a lot of fruit ( diabetic 2 ) and with monitoring I dont see high spikes afterwards . Its best to use common sense and follow the known guidelines on which fruit to eat , I particularly favour blueberries and eat a lot of these daily .
It’s true that whole fruit contains sugar, but it is natural sugar. The sugar we would be wise to limit is added sugar, found in regular soda and many highly processed foods. When you eat an apple, a pear, a peach or some berries, their sugar comes wrapped in a fiber-rich, water-rich, nutrient-rich package. That fiber slows the release of fruit’s natural sugar into your bloodstream, preventing a sugar spike, especially if you eat your fruit as part of a meal or snack that contains protein and healthy fats.
Ditching fruit may mean missing out on some key nutrients. Many fruits are rich not just in vitamins and minerals, but also in phytochemicals, natural plant-based compounds that appear to have a variety of health benefits, including helping to prevent cancer and promote cardiovascular health. Pigment-rich berries and cherries are especially good sources of phytochemicals, but apples, oranges and other fruits contain phytochemicals, too.
my decision has been made i will continue with my fresh fruit and vegetable consumption it has never set off an Afib attack for me and infact before i had my gall bladder removed i could only eat sushie and noodles for 6 months, i lost 16lbs but went into surgery with raging a/fib
76 years old with A F
apixaban and hematuria 
shortness of breath
3% Afib burden and proposed medication
