Hi,
I aught to know after all this time but I need to ask for your experience...
When your heart is banging away in AF when you exercise, how does that fit with the max safe levels?
For example, if your AF rate is say 120bpm (or even more) when the safe maximum level is supposed to be between 94 and 111, does that mean you mustn't exercise? Or walk? Or something?
Any real-world experience would be welcomed!
Thanks
Mike
.....wouldn't have a bloody clue .... I prefer to do no exercise, stay o/weight, rely on meds and diet, and carry on boozin' like I've spent a lifetime doin and enjoy life without AF.
😂😂
Hi Jalia,
It was meant as a funny aside ...... BUT ......... what I've said is quite true, I have never changed the habits of a lifetime to accommodate this mongrel AF. Even today, with all this Warfarin rattling around inside me I have made no concessions ..... BUT all the bad stuff I do, I do it consistently - no binging one way or another. Even when I was younger, in my 50's I was never ever convinced that keeping fit by all the means that are available today, walking, jogging, cycling, swimming do anything to preserve the integrity of the body structure and mechanisms which keep us going. When I am driving around in my bus and I see joggers or cyclists and I look for expressions of joy on their faces, there just isn't any .... if anything its an expression of total abject pain. I wonder sometimes how their joints will be performing in 30 or more years time. Be an orthopaedic surgeons delight.😂😂😂
John
I get you John!
Jalia ............. Yatsura .......... yes I remember now. Gosh you've been on here longer than me. The earliest memory I have is of your input to the Forum hosted by AFA using Yahoo ........ back in the old days ......... for me that's about 13 years now.
John
I think I came on the forum in 2009, the year of my first ablation..... Heart Hospital London.
Jalia, that sounds about right. I was diagnosed in January 2010 and you were already on the Yahoo based forum. Your previous user name stuck in my memory because for some reason I associated it with Japan ..... a country, what little I've seen of it ... I loved, and its people.
John
Japanese cartoon character I believe!
Latest research shows exercise, even running, is good for your joints!
Hi John, yes I agree with you and the runners. My partner used to do this when he was younger, 7 miles every night and 2 marathons, he is now paying the price at the age of 70, got bone/back problems, in constant pain and 2 hip replacements
When I look back over my life, I am amazed at how I sometimes rationalized and chose an alternate reality in order to justify my avoidance of doing something I thought would be difficult or unpleasant for the benefit of my own health and well-being. I remember actively applying that rationalization at times in the past to my relationship with exercising. While we each have our definite limits and justifiable personal views, I want respectfully to comment on your critical views about exercising here, John. I think that there is a strong intuitive and scientifically-based argument that these bodies of ours are designed to be lean and move actively throughout our lives—it is difficult to imagine sedentary and chubby couch potatoes when thinking of our hunter-gatherer human ancestors whose bodies—just like ours—evolved to require physical activity and minimal body fat to stay healthy and survive.
I am on this blog because I had a couple of AFib episodes a little over a year ago. It was no doubt brought on by a few years prior to that when, even though I had been quite active all my life, I rationalized that I could plop down more and fatten up a little in my old age, and drink plenty of beer, too. So when I was suddenly greeted with the existential shock of having atrial fibrillation, I learned that, for me, the best action was to improve my eating and drinking habits and especially get out there every day and move. If we listen to doctors and science, we’ll notice now they are saying that sitting all day is as harmful as smoking and that we need to get up and move our bodies with some real deliberation for at least five minutes during every hour of sitting during the day. If we read, for example, The AFIB Cure by Dr Day (recommended often in this blog), we’ll learn about how daily exercise, including some vigorous “breathless” exercise, along with diet, are critical elements in mitigating the awful consequences of AFib.
I will be 77 this year. I have been diagnosed with AFib but have no other problems, so I am fortunate, for sure. I eat a sensible diet, and, most importantly, I exercise, do something active for at least a couple of hours every single day. Some days I walk briskly for several miles, some days I ride my bicycle for 15 or 20 miles, some days, I lap swim 1200 yards, some days I do a couple of those activities, some hours, I get up off the couch and rock and roll dance with my wife in the living room for ten minutes. Of course, I have my share of the aches and pains of older age, but I mostly feel great, and I believe that my daily exercising is the best thing I can do for my AFib and for my overall health. While exercising can easily be considered an unpleasant chore, it is not that for me, and I honestly very much enjoy getting out there most of the time. And if you pass me while I am doing those exercises, my facial expressions might be neutral, might even be misinterpreted as displaying total abject pain, but inside, I am wholeheartedly enjoying myself with the widest of smiles. …John in Sacramento
Hi,
Thanks for your comments. At 78, I now have the luxury of being able to reflect on my health over those years. It has been a varied and at times a challenging life and with the ability to look back, diet has figured frequently in a medical context.
Today at 78 I have a highly controlled paroxysmal AF due to diet and medication. My AF I feel is partly due to genetics, partly due to a dysfunctional vagal nerve which goes ( or used to ) on a bender as a result of eating certain foods with a range of ingredients.
In my High School years I was into athletics, high jump and long jump and cycling, at times cycling 60 miles a day. I also come from a family ( in the modern era) who had life spans of 84 to 102 years. I enjoyed those activities ... at that time of my life. As I moved more into the commercial world in my early 20's I found Financial Accounting, Cost Accounting and Business Statistics much more stimulating than any of those athletic activities as a result I followed my new interests rather than my old.
In my early 30's I encountered my first experience of how diet control could impact on ones general health, i.e. a defective Gall Bladder. Consultants advice at the time was not to go surgically tampering with my gall bladder but to more tamper with my diet to bring the gall bladder to heel ! It proved to be the correct advice. After that I led a totally healthy life until 65 when AF mugged me.
Long story short, the trigger for my paroxysmal AF turned out to be food and food ingredients. My GP had blood tests done for coealiac disease and IBS but I came out all clear. I then consulted a Nutritionist who prescribed probiotics and a change of diet and over time my AF has been subdued and is pretty much non existent. At the time of diagnosis my Consultant did discuss some ways forward, one of which was ablation which I rejected outta hand on the basis I wasn't gonna have anyone barbeque my heart ( I might need it in later years 😂).
Now at the age of 78 I have a medical every year to enable me to retain my bus drivers licence and continue working ( part time 30 hours a week), and I might add I drive the largest manufactured double decker buses in Britain carrying up to 109 people. All my ailments are fully declared to the licencing authority. This I regard as my "play time", it enables me to socialise, to be mentally and physically active but not in any damn way needing to go walking, cycling etc. In any event where I live in Britain (Cornwall) the weather is several steps beyond appalling why would I want to go out an get involved in outdoor activities. Thanks to computers I am able to satisfy many mental energies to a level that was not possible in my 30's. So you see, it was a change in my mindset from the finish of High School to my early to mid 20's that sent me on the course I have travelled.
So, all discussions I have read on this forum in recent times and going back the last 13 years have tended to focus on the impact of physical activities and AF. I am saying that I don't think they play as an important role with AF as mental activities do. Here in Britain there is a saying ............ "use it or lose it" ! a reference to the need to using mental energies as a tool in fighting illness.
I should add that I have tried being a gym bunny .......... hell ..... can't think of anything more boring ... apart from watching a mob of golfers hitting a silly little ball around. Physical exercise doesn't crack it for me nor do I see that it makes that much of a positive contribution to an aging persons health in later life. Loose the mental wherewithall and .............................. ! But ..... one mans meat is another mans poison. No doubt my comments will bring a multitude of howls and shrieks from the forum. Off to bed now for beauty sleep ( if my painful shoulder joints will allow me) I have to drive "Bigbird" in the morning.
Thanks again for commenting.
John ( in the pointy end of Cornwall, next stop the Isles of Scilly then New York )
Thank you very much, John, for your informative, fascinating, thoughtful reply to my comments. I truly appreciate your taking the time and energy to do so. I completely understand and respect you’re point of view regarding exercising and agree with you that “one man‘s meat is another man’s poison.” I think it is great that this forum allows us each to express our points of view, and I hope our small exchange here will invite others to think about and comment here about their views of the subject.
While in my thirties, after 8 years in the US Air Force and before I attended college to become an English teacher at age 41, I drove 80,000 pound tractor-trailer rigs (lorries, I think they are called in England), and yet I cannot imagine driving the kind of long, double decker bus you do at any time in life, never mind at our ages now. Hats off and kudos to you—I am really impressed. Thanks again for your reply, take care, and I hope you have a fine day driving “Bigbird” tomorrow.
John
The facts make you wrong but I’m aware that modern society makes it increasingly acceptable to make up your own “reality” so I encourage you to be happy in your delusions.
Spot on and that's coming from a guy who was very fit now just walk my dogs and have a moderate amount of booze And was once said to me 'you never see a jogger with a smile on their face'🤣🤣🤣
I like your style! Our paths are the same!
When you say your heart is banging away when you exercise, do you mean when you're walking up a hill or something like that? My heart used to bang hard in my chest when I walked up hills, but I had no idea that other people's didn't do that. It wasn't until I had my first ablation that the strong beating stopped and I realised what was normal.
Jean
Just my Terminology.
I guess my q is when you have an AF rate faster than the normal 60-100 bpm and you exercise, then you could easily go passed the normally accepted max HR of say 111bpm just by moving.
Who, I wondered experienced actually being in that position?
I assumed that those are the limits at rest. My walking heart rate goes over that when I am walking in AF. I reckon it’s best to get the exercise. Perhaps just make sure that you can still walk and talk, and feel ok? Must admit that I currently can’t go uphill or upstairs too fast, and wouldn’t run - because my HR would go a bit high. So nothing strenuous if you know that your HR will shoot up.
I do hate this thing - my normal walking HR was 70s or 80s. Now it’s over 110. According to my watch I have gone between 47 and 122 today. Some of the high rates just getting up in the morning - and I really need to do that!
It's a pig, isn't it...
My Resting HR has suddenly lifted from 65 to 84bpm. The doc is looking at it with the Cardiologist but of course, when I exercise, being 74yo, my HR can exceed the max healthy level.
I can't find out if I should just not blummin move or if it's safe to carry on in the interim!
I expected my resting HR to go up after my ablation (5 weeks ago). I think it did for the two days that I was in NSR. Now it’s down in low 50s again, but shoots up when I move around. I don’t get particularly breathless - but I do feel like my legs aren’t getting enough energy when going upstairs. Using lifts more than I used to 😂
Hey,
111bpm is borderline normal to be honest. To work out what is considered your max heart rate you should take your age from 220. So for me at 53 my max HR is around 170bpm. I normally look to exercise around 75% of that for the majority of the time. I am in constant AFib but my rate is low - average daily HR of 70-80bpm.
Get yourself a good chest strap HR monitor and as long as your Doc is happy get out there and enjoy yourself. This isn't a rehearsal - life is for living!
I can’t unfortunately remember where I got the info but that formula for max levels changes as you age. According to that my max rate is 142 but that’s not the desirable exercise level. My watch records my heart rate 24/7 and the difference in rates is huge 55-110 today but actually I’ve been a real couch potato. It says I’ve done 11minutes of aerobic exercise 😂 I wouldn’t try to do cardio exercise if my heart was already running at ‘exercise rate’ but lifting, stretching etc is also valuable exercise. One of the best ways to exercise is Tai Chi which gym bunnies don’t rate because it is s l o w but tests have shown it does have good cardiovascular effects.
I remember seeing a program about exercise and the person who beat the gym bunnies hands down was a waitress! Constantly walking back and forth ( not very fast) she was deemed to better off than those who went to the gym 2/3 times a week but were otherwise sedentary . Our bodies are meant to move but not necessarily move fast on a regular basis. As we age the liklihood of skeletal damage has to be weighed against the cardiovascular benefits . Also it's the obsessive exercisers who tend to get afib!
so, for context I am 49, in persistent afib which is related to congenital heart disease (mitral and aortic stenosis) - not lifestyle (other than my heart I am healthy and enjoy exercising).
I enjoyed scanning the comments here and seeing that other people don't know - just like me.
My cardiologist encourages me to exercise and doesn't really get bothered about how high my heart rate goes ... so if its banging (and like many here i know what a BANGING HEART feels like) up to as high as 160 I think its ok ...
..and like others here, I hate that feeling and so always stop when I get to banging feeling, usually at a heart rate of around 130. (I prefer other banging feelings 
)
My challenge seems to be that my heart rate doesn't accelerate as fast as I need to. For instance often when I walk fast and/or up a hill (or exert myself with weights) my heart rate hangs around 90, but I know from before afib it should be around 130. There is only so long my body can handle that "heart rate deficit" before i have to stop.
Since being in afib i have focused more on resistance training (weights, press ups etc) because its more enjoyable than cardio, but this year I am making an effort to do more cardio and I think its paying off ... but the difference i am noticing is being able to improve my walking speed to do 3km in 30 minutes, down from 35 minutes....baby steps.
Whenever you see a young man jogging in the street or in the park, be sure that he is running straight to this forum! Not kidding! We have a prejudice that running is so good for the health, and it is, actually, slowly killing you. There is so little MDs know about the influence of exercise on human body, that you would be surprised.
I always laugh when I see the limitations, like BP should be 135/85 or HR should not go above 220 minus age etc. Because of "We are all different!", the only thing that matters is how you feel. The body will always tell you where it is and how much you can do.
As for AF and exercise, if you knew that in the close vicinity of AF there is sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) lurking, which, thank God for it, does not snap so often, you would not push yourself when in AF. AF is an absolutely unusual way of functioning of the heart and we should be grateful that it works at all! Use the remaining capacity of the heart with care and try to last as long as you can.
Hi, I agree with your comments "Because of "We are all different!", the only thing that matters is how you feel. The body will always tell you where it is and how much you can do".
That's exactly how I judge myself, simples ......... if my chest feels light, unrestricted ( nobody leaning heavily on it and putting pressure on it), if my abdomen feels light, and unrestricted then I know my gut is ticking over just like it should, if my breathing is light and not hampered or hard going or strained ....... then I know in my heart of hearts - I'm in a bloody good place and that I've succeeded in kicking AF right into touch .......... at least for a while. 2022 has been my best year yet when I've only had two days of AF which ( because i'm a bus driver) I stayed home.
John
Hi, John!
I could never describe it better than you did (since English is your first language, lol)! I am joking a little, but it really is so - I also have days where i simply feel that I am functioning perfectly well! Breathing is showing us where we are - if the breath is shallow, it is not good, but if we feel breathless, it is still worse. Unfortunately, we rarely stay trimmed as it should be - the oscillations are broad and fast, so people stay puzzled where they are.
Regards!
Peter
Hi John, I too had gallstone issues some years ago and chose to subdue it with diet rather than the suggested surgery. Turned out that eggs were a real problem for me. Forward to 2022 and an unexpected diagnosis of af 😳 I know attack are food related, gut boats, and burping when coming in to an attack. Also if tired/stressed or not eating carefully. Would be interested to know how you have modified your diet on this one?
Hi Ddob,
My apologies for the delay in replying to your post of a few days ago ... just been flat out. Now how interesting is that, never seen that comment before on gallbladder, thought I was afreak ... we live and learn.
I was living in Sydney at the time all this gall bladder issue arose. Am short on Doctors notes now so will have to rely on memory, goes back to around 1978/79. The local hospital dietician identified many salad items as the problems, my system just wasn't able to process stuff like lettuce and tomato and onion ... particularly lettuce. It seemed to inflame or in some way upset the gallbladder. I have rarely eaten lettuce since. If I have a salad these days the green stuff is usually small amounts of Rocket. Never have anything with onion but can handle shallots (Spring Onion). Radish is perfect. Tomato I have in small slices, cold and sliced but only a few slices of tomato.
As I write this it jogs the old memory even more. Probably some 6 years prior to the gall bladder stuff I had mysterious kidney issues where the left uretha became congested with inexplicable mini crystals. I was sent to Sydney Hospital for tests and the results of these tests saw me ending up under the care of the Sydney Hospital dietician. Basically, I was told to follow a diet as calcium free as possible but it also included weird stuff like, no strawberries, cut out as much dairy produce as possible cut out cheese, no citrus ( I loved Grapefruit ... sliced in juice in a can yummmmmm !), no porridge ... probably a shedload of other stuff which I now can't remember.
So now we fast forward to mid 2010 through to mid 2011 when this rotten AF mugged me over. In this time frame I found the onset of AF was associated with food I'd eaten. My symptoms many hours after my evening meal were - diahorrea, burping, loud intestinal gurgling and massive, massive and painful bloating. Like you wouldn't bloody believe. Then whiz bang wallop into AF after the bloating. GP had some blood tests done for IBS and Coealiac Disease but all clear. I declined the invitation of more tests but consulted a Nutritionist again.
This time the diet was more extensive and kicked off by my going gluten Free, Wheat and oats free. As the years unfolded the diet became more inclusive of crap .... I had maintained my earlier prescribed diet from my Sydney days but now it became wider to include more fatty stuff, pork with crackling, roast duck, Hard cheeses are OK, soft cheese in moderation. Strawberries not good, Raspberries fine. However, now I am on Warfarin for life the whole business of diet kicks in again. Mind you I do ignore the forbidden fruit and veggies if I feel so inclined but whatever I do I do consistently. Even as a kid I was fussy over my green veggies, even so I still have little forays into cabbage, broccoli and brussels. Ditto with junk food ..... Mcdonalds products tends to stir up my gut, KFC not so. Anything with pastry I need to avoid (I live in Cornwall so a Cornish Pasty is out , mind you my little foray here suggests they are rubbish anyway). I find brown bread or brown wholemeal grain bread upsetting on my gut. So if I eat bread it is bog standard white sliced.
So my life now is built around an amalgam of diets (which I have evolved over the last 30 to 40 years) to minimise the impact of food and its ingredients on three organs, kidneys, gallbladder and heart ! Hope this has been of some interest to you. I might add that stress doesn't bother me or impact in any way on whether I get an AF event. That said of course one could argue that if food/ingredients causes stress on the vagal nerve in some whacko way then there is a stressor there.
Again, apologies for the delay.
John
Thanks for taking the time to reply! I try not to check in to the forum too often, as I get lost reading post after post 😳😏 very interesting info. I eat porridge often and use oat milk instead of dairy as I prefer it. So heaven help me if that is a trigger. I have almost cut out bread now and that has helped massively, a shame as I love toast, sandwiches and garlic bread 😂 Also notice if I drop my exercise, say I miss a couple of days due to life getting in the way, I start to suffer in the gut region. Mac Donald's i don't think is good for anybody 😁. Dee
This is largely nonsense.
The benefits of exercise are well studied and well understood.
What you have written is nonsense, sorry to say so. If there was enough knowledge, MDs would not have to admit, not to know the cause of more than 30 "chronic disease and syndromes". There is essential lack of knowledge!
I try to do the same exercise in afib as when in sinus rhythm ( running) but it's not always possible and I notice the maximum pulse rate is much higher in afib and it's much harder.
when I was last in persistent AF and asked my EP about exercise whilst my heart was flipping from 50 to 170 beats and more he said that I could continue exercise but ‘it wouldn’t feel very nice ‘ , but wouldn’t do me any harm !
He said that he would encourage exercise in AF . In reality though , not so easy with feeling like crap !
My EP was also quite clear that I should keep up the excercise.
I showed him some of my heart monitor trace s that were going up well over 180 ( owing to a weird post ablation issue at age 58) and he was not concerned at the issue, and did not comment on the rate.
However he was aware of my running previously at HR up to 160 when running with a NHS recorder a few months after being diagnosed with AFib ( not in Afib whilst running).
I don't think you can trust any heart rate monitor in AF, it will be all over the place.
My consultant said to keep exercising, don't overdo it and leave the HR monitor at home.
There are HR monitors and HR monitors. 2 main ones, chest strap and wrist watch. The former measured electrical impulses in heart, the later the pulse seen at the wrist. The chest one will more accurately measure Ventricular HR. The wrist one can give false resdings. When I exercise I wear the chest strap and have HR showing on my Garmin watch. Recently, whenever I have gone into AF during exercise (the only time I do / sole trigger), I am generally asymptotic and only know from seeing it on the HR monitor. If it happens I generally abort as AF begets AF and I want to try to avoid increasing symptoms. I then take PIP flecainide to get back to NSR.
Currently if I keep my HR below 130 bpm (NSR) whilst running, I generally avoid popping into AF. For reference, my resting HR NSR is 60. When in AF, running it hits 210+, on stopping / first few hours of rest, it settles down to 110 and then drops to 80 before going back into NSR at 60.
It’s important to keep your heart healthy to help avoid heart failure and other issues later in life so subject to individual circumstances, moderate exercise along standard guidelines is recommended.
Agreed AF begets AF, but strenuous exercise can also cause attacks.
I find my HR monitor (chest strap) is all over the place when in AF, the watch and the additional monitor on the exercise m/c are completely different, from the same chest strap signal!
Are you on a beta blocker? After my HA, I started getting tachycardia attacks when exercising, HR suddenly increasing to 180+ for no reason, but 1.25mg of bisoprolol stopped it, but also dropped my resting HR and BP significantly....from such a tiny pill...
I was always super fit, my resting HR was 50, it is now 45 and has been for the last 10 years, but the biggest change was to my HR when exercising, it used to go up to 160 very quickly, but now working out, sweat pouring off me, I can't get it much above 130, that's the beta blocker working.
Fortunately my AF is under control with daily 150mg Flecainide, I just exercise moderately, cross trainer, rower, bike, weights etc, the difference now being the level I go to acknowledges my advancing years (75) and the fact I have already had one warning.
Good luck.
Well Tunybgur, I just hope I am as active when I hit your age - I’m a “mere” 57!
I find my chest strap is steady and quite responsive and quite accurate - I always do a quick pulse (carotid artery) check whenever my HR monitor shows me spiking to double check. I may now also do a parallel run with my Kardia 1 lead to see how well they correlate.
I was on beta blockers to complement the flecainide but as it hammered my exercising HR, I agreed with my EP that due to impact on QOL to drop it. I believe that Flecainide does still drop my exercise HR by about 10% but I can live with that as I no longer do HIIT sessions.
I’m trying to find my compromise, the level and intensity of exercise I can undertake without bringing on episodes. My EP is keeping open the option of another ablation (2 already that have resolved earlier flutter) should the AF impact too much on QOL. He is pretty certain that it is the 4 pulmonary veins in the R Atrium that are the issue and so a relatively straight forward / well tested procedure with a relatively high success rate.
Time will tell!
You're right about inaccuracy of HRMs when it comes to AF, particulalrly with LEDs reading blood flow. I use a Polar Vantage V HRM with a (alledgedly professional athlete standard) Polar H10 chest band and transmitter. That combination should read up to 220bpm. Bluetooth LE pairing between the transmitter and HRM works well, but simultaneously linking to a Concept2 PM5 monitor works better with ANT+.
I totally agree with Speed.Being asymptomic at high rate, i was only diagnosed with AFib as i was 165bpm sat down one night an i put my garmin 305 on with chest belt.I left it on all night and was still high rate in the morning , and was going to go to work, but my misses rang 111 for advice and they sent an ambulance! I apologized to the paramedics when they arrived for wasting their time when they arrived, and said i had put the Garmin in the bin as I felt fine. But they put me on an ECG and confirmed the high rate, told me to get the Garmin out of the bin, and took me to hospital! From that time until my ablation 2.5 years later I depended on the Garmin to know when to go to hospital if I could not get out of high rate Afib
On two occasions at A&E the finger pulse monitor showed 80 ish when looked at in A&E, but when I insisted on an ECG it confirmed the Garmin reported rate.
So I am very sure the Garmin was reporting a fairly accurate rate.
Furthermore with AFib and running: ,I spent 20 months where if I went into AFib, I went for a run. My HR would rise from 165 to over 200 some times, but after 7 or 10 mins my HR dropped, back to 145 -150 ish, and after I finished the run back down to a normal 70ish in NSR.
Sadly that trick stopped working in July 2017, which is why I had an ablation in 2018 as I had increased medication after that which had too many side effects.
If you want to know about the benefits of cardio for AFIB see the video below from York Cardiology.
when last in hospital for my Afib tachycardia I needed to go to the toilet and got out of bed to go, the doctor saw me and hustled me back to bed saying there was no way I should walk there with a heart rate of nearly 130!!!!
Whether he was being over cautious or not I don’t know, but each time I have been In hospital (both St George’s tooting snd St Peter’s chertsey) they have insisted on a commode if my heart rate was over 110
I would add that at times it has been 240 with that horrible banging, but then I felt too poorly to want to walk anywhere
Good luck to you
The only time I was hospitalised for afib I was told by the nurses to stay in bed and ask for a bedpan! As soon as the cardiologist arrived I told him that having to use a bedpan was going to stress me out so much it would be worse for my heart than using the en suite toilet. He let me get up!
yes I did feel the same with bedpans that’s why they brought a commode to me
Pat x
Exactly the same for me! 😀
How is your new hip doing Jalia? After my first hip op I had to wait till the next day for the physio visit to get me up as I was last on the list and it was after 8pm when I returned to my room. The entire night was torture due to being unable to pee with the bedpan! So for the other hip I asked to have it done in the morning. No problem said the surgeon. I'll put you first on the list. This resulted in being got up ( I went in the clinic the day before) at 5am to have the apple juice drink and Betadine shower ! I was back in my room by 11 but the physio did not show till 6pm. So no avoiding the bedpan!
Hip is fine thank you ! Its just the rest of me...I have to say the only time I used a bedpan was in the later stages of child birth when I couldn't have cared if I'd given birth in the car park.... just wanted it out 😱😱
It’s possible that they were concerned about you passing out/lightheadedness rather than your heart per se. *I’m not a medic!
yes possibly. I know they wouldn’t let me walk anywhere
I have paf and it’s tolerable when I get it but it can last 30 hours sometimes. I’ve never been a person who exercises but recently I have tried an exercise bike. I’ve noticed that when I am in An attack a gentle walk with my footsteps in rhythm can get me out of an attack which is some form of exercise at least for me
Jane
Hi, I've looked at lots of these replies and no one seems to address your question. All the stuff about how to work out max heart rate, how does that apply when you are in AF. I have not been able to find an answer from medics, except one consultant told me vigorous exercise didn't help AF. But he didn't define vigorous. My heart rate can go up to 190 when in AF, too high for that max heart rate calculation, so does that mean don't do anything because of risk of ? So the answer to your question is I don't know and seems from responses no one else does including medics. Sorry not more help.
Hi 2learn , my exercise question to my EP was when I was actually in unstable persistent AF and he did say it would do no harm to keep on exercising when in AF , even with very high heart rates ( mine was over 170 beats per minute when pottering in house ) but it wouldn’t feel ‘ very nice ‘ . So he did advocate cardiovascular exercise when in AF . The reality of it was I felt too unwell to push past 170 beats as I felt I was going to die !!! Now I’m stable but on dronedarone and low dose beta blockers , try as I might I can’t get my heart rate past 100 to 110 to get to my sub maximal heart rate which is 120 for my age / sex etc . As so many have said on this excellent forum , AF . Although won’t kill us , really is a mongrel !!
It depends whether you had fibrillation and flutter when you did your max heart rate check. Back in the day when I was a cyclist, I did the fast warm up, sprint, fast recovery, then a sprint to failure on a hill climb to establish max hr. That gave me a max hr of 195 bpm. A really hard Spin class with "Killer Cath" (a brillant instructor) when I was on the class front row, would see 192 (dance on those pedals) during a red line sprint. Sometimes at cadence well over 100, the blood would pool in my legs and it was just like riding into a hedge! Then I got into heart rate reserve; maximum heart rate minus resting heart rate, then applying the percentage to that figure. Then it was HIT on a Spin bike, combined with strength. After my stroke, my GP said a maximum heart rate on the rowing machine should be 180 (I was around 72 years old then). At 75, if I didn't watch the rowing machine monitor, I've hit the high 180s and on occasion 192. I'm still here. I will be starting slowly back on the rowing machine after a break since the summer. If I'm not in this forum at some point in the future, you'll know it wasn't a good idea! Seriously, we are all different.
I asked my GP, if I was out walking the coastal footpath and suddenly went in to AF, at what heart rate should I call for help and he said 130bpm.
Jean
Apparently my maximum heart rate for my age (74) is 148 and that is what my heart rate often is when in P-AF but I hadn't given it a thought till you mentioned it .
I have to walk no matter how bad I feel because if I don't I will lose my mobility due to severe arthritis in my spine and hips and I got a puppy recently who needs excercise so I take my trusty walking pole and stagger a mile ignoring the breathlessness and AF.
I usually feel better for the walk
Hi , I still try to powerlift and I will never stop as I am an athlete abd 43 . I have done it all my life and I am dependent on it or my mental health would be worse than afib could ever make me . I have afib , narrowing pulmonary veins and a dilated aortic root. Also told I have complex atrial arrhythmias. I am on Sotalol 2 x a day. My heart rate is all over the place 100 to 180ish and it isn't comfortable but I get it done as my doc tells me it won't kill me lol 😆. Each to there own . Not everyone likes to push themselves so each to their own . All the best to you ...
Hi,
1/ Tai chi is connected with breathing.When you breath correctly, you feel better. Eg:I was in hospital 2 months ago.
On presentation my AF rate was 130pm.I don’t like heart tests, so in the evening I left ward room to do tai chi.A nurse told me to go to bed after 30minutes and gave me:bisoprolol and edoxaban 60mg.
I had HR77 in a very short time.I could go home.
2/ Everybody is different.I have Syncope and Pots.I never check blood pressure at home. I don’t like medicines butI know my body.
Eg I know when I shouldn’t drink strong coffee.
3/ My mum, grandma and auntie had similar heart problems.My mum didn’t like exercises although she was very active.If I was my mum and didn’t do tai chi,I should die 11 years ago.
Regards
Ewa
I would like to add:I am not Chinese- I am white European andI am not involved in tai chi marketing🤷♀️
I would say ignore heart rate and use the Borg scale of perceived exertion. You may have to, say, walk for one minute then rest for one or mins to get your breath back. Exercise will strengthen the cardiac muscle and enable it to deal with the afib better according to my EP. And, of course, check with your Ep or GP first. Good luck
HI
sounds like my cardiac specialist.
Some eertion is grear for the heart.
cheri JOY
Me again. BBC had an excellent article about tai chi. Might be useful when HR prohibits other exercisebbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hf9h
With flutter my heart rate was 150 when I stepped on the treadmill. After 30 minutes I was sweating but my heart rate was still 150. No ill effects. Not recommending, just my experience.
my husband’s doctor said that he can get his heart rate up to 150, I believe the formulas is weight less age. But I would check on that. he wears a polar H10 strap around his chest so he can watch his heart rate on his phone. That way he’s not maxing out above 150.
THANK YOU EVERYONE!
Hi
My national heart specialist wants me to do exertion spurts - anyway I have to stop.
The problem is "the time it tsakes for your heart to drop under 100.
CONTROL is what is needed for every AF patient.
Mot good to keep on exerting yourself against when the body (heart) needs a rest.
cheers JOY
Accuracy of heart monitors during exercise 
Heart Rate after exercise
Low Heart Rate During Running!
