Struggling with side effects from AF medication

[Jonno45]

Hi, I live in Wells Somerset and diagnosed with AF recently. Would like to chat with any members in my area please. Jonno45

[Hidden]

Hi Jonno45, replies to your post will be a bit limited if you ask for responses from a specific area only. Probably be better if you just ask questions as you then hear from a wider range of folk who have been through the situations you are now experiencing. As you are new to AF, you will also find it helpful to check out the AF Association webpages, link below. They will cover everything you will need to know and if they prompt further questions, the folk here will be happy to help further.....

heartrhythmalliance.org/afa...

Hope this helps....

[Jonno45 in reply to Hidden]

Thanks for your reply.

[Magson]

Hi Jonno45, you may wish to contact Helen Hodgson 01225 821530 based at RUH Bath .She is a Specialist Cardiac Physiologist specialising in AF. She also runs AF meetings in Frome . I have attended some and they are very useful.

[Jonno45 in reply to Magson]

Hi Magson, yes I have been to a meeting with Helen & the Group at Frome. It was very informative. However, the meetings are bi-monthly and I was hoping to be able to chat with a fellow sufferer or two in between those meetings. Thanks for your reply.

[Buffafly]

There is a facility to find 'members near me' on the Members page, but what many members do is find they feel sympatico (don't know the English for that) with someone who is posting and chat through private messaging. If you write about your symptoms and problems then maybe someone suitable will respond - as you can see threads sometimes get very long and one of our main topics is side effects of medication 😖

[Buffafly in reply to Buffafly]

PS I know four people near me who have AF and none of them are the slightest bit interested in chatting about any aspect of AF - 'just keep taking the pills' was one response - British stiff upper lip in full action 🤐

[Hidden]

This has controlled my afib, perhaps it will control yours as well. Let me know if it works for you . . .

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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, Thyroid (sends signals to the heart to increase speed or strength of beat), Adrenal Gland (sends signals to increase heart rate), Sympathetic Nerve (increases heart rate) or Vagus Nerve (decreases heart rate), Hypothalamus Gland or others - 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:

https//cardiab.biomedcentral.com/a...

How much sugar do you need 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 can control it, but that takes several weeks of experimenting to figure out. I use the following WEB site to know how much sugar is in different foods:

fatsecret.com/calories-nutr....