I have been battling Lone Afib for 5 years. I was having Afib bouts every 14-21 days like clockwork. It came on only in my sleep and lasted about 12-18 hours of hell until I converted back to normal a heartbeat. I tried every medication and every diet without success. I have had every test possible. I have been to 3 different Electrophysiologists. I am otherwise in perfect health at age 65. I was ready to give up and schedule an Ablation when I read about Aspartame, MSG, and Afib links. I stopped all diet soda and anything with artificial sweeteners or MSG in it. I now use small amounts of real sugar each day instead.
RESULTS: 5 months and completely 100% AFIB FREE!! lets hope it holds.
Written by
MalJam
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Artificial sweeteners were my trigger for AF too! Now I don't eat anything at all that has artificial additives. I was having diet lemonade, sugar free chewing gum after lunch, what I thought were healthy fruit yogurts and sweeteners in my hot drinks.
Where I worked, in a nursing home, I noticed I had an attack of AF every time I ate fruit crumble. I asked our cook what was in it and she shook her head and said no sweeteners, but one day came rushing into my office saying she had just realised they were in the custard served with the crumble.
I’m not surprised! Even a small amount of artificial sweetener or MSG in a meal or drink will kick off my AF - I think we all have to work out what our triggers are by a process of trial
Brilliant for you and so important you share the news here as we need to even up the imbalance between 'medical action' & 'lifestyle action'. Also, IMHO don't pin all your hopes on one action but look to add to your success with more lifestyle actions to bury AF as deep as you can.
So glad your huge efforts to help yourself have proved successful,
One difficult area re. artificial sweetners is in medications; for example I have been taking AdCal and other brands of Calcium with D3 prescribed by doctor for sometime -off and on-
and like many other chewable tablets it is full of additives including artificial sweetners. Finally asked doc. for alternatives last week.
Very interested in this, I've taken sweetener in my tea and coffee for years and I've been on Ad-Cal for about 8 years. Diagnosed with permanent AFib in December so I'm going to cut them out and see if there is any improvement as at the moment it's affecting my QAL big time.
The term would be persistent. Permanent is the term used when you and the operator agree that nothing more can be done. Generally, rhythm control drugs are dropped for rate, or no meds at all except for the anti-coagulant. It is always good to help yourself with lifestyle changes like dropping your sweetener.
MSG was always a huge trigger for me, at least from the age of 31. My very first AFib episode (way back in 1987) came on (out of the blue) about an hour after eating a Chinese food meal. I eventually figured out that I needed to avoid all forms of MSG - and discovered in the process that MSG has many guises/names. By avoiding MSG I went for years without having any AFib episodes at all. Eventually (by 2015) my PAF condition morphed into my having an Afib episode about every 10 days, regardless of what food or drink I consumed.
In March 2016 I had a serious ischemic stroke, which was thankfully addressed within 2-3 hours by way of an emergency endovascular thrombectomy. Luckily I suffered no physical deficits following the stroke and the procedure carried out to remove the clot.
In August 2018 I had a PVI cryoablation and I've been completely AFib free since then.
Artificial sweeteners and MSG (also yeast extract) also a trigger for loads of ectopics and at least on 2 occasions, AF for me. Took a while to figure out that they were the culprits in my diet.
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