Hi. So glad for this site. Newly diagnosed with a-fib, along with heart failure (diastolic). Walked into the emergency room here at local hospital Nov. 5th., thinking that I had a possible DVT because of on-going left leg swelling, after blood test and x-rays told I had a-fib which was the reason for swelling. Discharged from hospital on Nov. 10th. I can't feel it . Prescribed 3 medications. Xarelto, Metoprolol, and Furosemide. Also compression stockings to wear. Really scared about the "heart failure" part of this. I am on restricted liquid intake (50 to 64 ounces of liquids daily), along with low sodium. Future appointments with cardiologist. If anybody has any tips or stratagies dealing with this, any info at all, please let me know.
Hello: Hi. So glad for this site... - Atrial Fibrillati...
Hello
Hi and welcome.
My No 1 tip at managing living with AF would be look at your Lifestyle - if overweight - lose it, exercise - moderate as both over exercising and no exercise are extremes. Even 2 x15 mins of fairly brisk walking will help. Ensure you avoid alcohol, sugary foods, processed foods and eat plenty of vegetables, berries and some fruit. Avoid sweeteners, they are worse than sugar. Good sleep quality rather than amount is important.
More than anything - manage your stress and anxiety - stress is literally corrosive to the body as it releases toxic chemical hormones. The antidote is doing things you enjoy - which releases endorphins - pleasure hormones.
Tips for happiness = health
Exercise
Exposure to sunlight (walking outdoors achieves both but try do more in the morning if you don’t sleep well)
Socialise
Do activities which leave you feeling fulfilled
Eat well - eat the rainbow as this will give you every type of food your body needs. I am to eat 30 different types of foods daily.
Sleep well
I would normally say hydrate but you have obviously water retention so maybe find out what is the cause of that?
It may not cure your AF but you will be fitter and therefore much more able to deal with it and if you take treatment then more likely to stop the AF.
You are have been given anticoagulants to lessen your stroke risk, which is first line treatment and have beta blockers to control your heart rate and diuretics to help you lose the water you have retained so hopefully you will soon begin to feel better, then it’s over to you.
Best wishes
Hi CDreamer. Thank you so much for the great info!! The water retension is probably due to the heart "fluttering"with not pumping all the blood out of the affected chamber which might be what the heart failure is all about(I have the diastolic type and not the systolic type which is very different from my understanding). But, I must say that the frustrating part is I've always been a health nut. Always watched what I ate, not over weight and I exercised daily. The only thing there is that when Covid hit about 2 and a half years ago, I stopped "cold turkey" from going to the gym, I just stopped going, and it was probably not the best thing to do as it really de-conditioned my body from what it used to be.
I think you have it - going from a lot of exercise to none is not good. See if you can start slow and steadily increase - you don’t need to do a lot and my personal opinion is stay away from lifting weights. We have just had an e-gym installed in our village - haven’t tried it yet as I have yet to get ‘on boarded’ but I believe it stops you over exerting yourself and muscle strains. I’ll let you know!
Hi again CDreamer. Would you just happen to have a list of the 30 foods you currently eat? I have always been interested in nutrition and well-being as I'm sure you must be too. But, I'm always willing to learn more.
I eat a lot more than 30 foods but I am for 30/day. When you include herbs and spices which count - it’s quite easy eg:- Breakfast bowl of following - apple, pear, banana, grapes, raspberries, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, blueberries topped with organic yogurt and drizzle of honey, coffee with milk and cinnamon, whole toast with butter & marmalade.
I make that 17 foods for breakfast alone. Lunch - salad - yesterday - home grown leaves, spring onions, cucumber, avacado sliced, left over cooked veg - happened to be sweet potato cut could have been green beans, carrots etc with flaked smoked salmon with sour dough bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Another 10
Supper - lentil soup with vegetables with small amount of cheese on oat biscuits.
well over 30 different foods. Simple is “eat the rainbow and as many different types of foods as you can”. Mainly plant based. it doesn’t need to be complicated.
The first thing I must tell you is that the words 'heart failure' do not exactly mean as they sound. There really needs to be a better way to describe what you have which is a heart that is not beating quite as it should. You're heart is not going to stop beating and you die. People can live to a great age with this condition and at times, with medication, it has been reversed.
I hope someone on this forum who has managed to lose their heart failure diagnosis will answer this post. We all have AF here and most manage to live a normal life and I think quite a few have 'heart failure'.
Here are my tips re AF:
Having had AF for 18 years, three ablations (where they go up through your groin to burn or freeze the inside of the heart where the rogue pulses often come from) and numerous cardioversions (electric shock to put the heart back into it's correct rhythm) my advice to everyone diagnosed with AF is the following:
1. Be Aware you are most unlikely to die from Atrial Fibrillation (AF). I used to think that the way my heart bounced around I would surely be found dead next day. Still here though!
2. Changing your diet to a more plant based one, avoiding any foods containing artificial additives, not allowing yourself to become dehydrated, cutting back on sugar, alcohol and caffeine, also losing weight (if it's needed) will all have a beneficial effect on your AF. Artificial sweeteners were a sure trigger for my attacks. How I wish I'd known all of this before having any of my ablations. Would I have listened if anyone had told me? Probably not, because I believed ablations would cure me - three didn't! They have helped some people though and my AF now is not so severe.
3. This is a hard one, but looking at gadgets that show your pulse and AF will make you anxious and anxiety feeds AF. I was obsessed with what my heart was doing for about the first ten+ years of my AF journey and my attacks were so debilitating I'd end up in a hospital ward, it has taken me a long time to take my mind off this subject and get on with living. The less I think about it, the better I feel. Now I used to feel cross with people who suggested I stop looking at my pulse rate machines, I thought that their AF couldn't be as bad as mine and they didn't understand how poorly attacks made some of us feel. I would get cross with anyone who said they could still go on holiday and carry on life as normal. They made me feel evil, by not understanding how ill I felt! In our minds AF is only as bad as we have experienced, for some attacks are mild for others they're more severe.
4. Make sure you don't slouch, or unwittingly do shallow breathing while watching tv or if you're online. If you do your heart will protest. Also avoid tight clothing around your waist or chest.
5. Try supplementing with magnesium, any type except oxide (I use glycinate and also take taurine, zinc, vitamin B complex, D3, K2 & C). I feel fine and there's little I can't do now, despite being in constant low rate AF. Or at least I think I am, I don't check these days.
6. If over 60 I would make sure that you’re taking an anticoagulant to prevent blood clots forming and causing a stroke. Note that they do not thin the blood in any way, just stop it from clotting so quickly. You should not notice any major difference in the way you bleed.
Hope this info will help you.
Jean
Hi jeanjeannie50. Superb info here!! Thank you so much. Your words are very re-assuring! I am 69 years old and had a major heart attack back in 2009. Not over weight and a health nut. I don't eat meat except for fish and plenty of veggies, along with whole grains and all the rest with eating smart. It's very frustrating because I thought I was doing everything right. I like your supplementation with the vitamins. How much Taurine do you currently take? It's good for the heart. Are you currently on any medications? If so, do your supps interfere with any of them? I can't feel my a-fib, didn't know I had it. I must admit I'm doing the "constant checking" that you have described, but with your words, I'll stop. Currently supplementing with Mag. Glycinate also, along with a multi vitamin, fish oils and cq10. I was taking Taurine but stopped when prescribed meds were given, afraid of possible interference. Please, share any other info!!
I take 500mg of Taurine daily, alongside magnesium glycinate, vitamin B-Complex. C, D3, K2 and CoQ10. When I remember I take zinc too. Sometimes I wonder why I'm taking all these pills, am just getting over having a really heavy cold which started almost 2 weeks ago. Now why didn't those pills prevent that! My dad, who was in to healthy eating long before it was fashionable, would say a cold was nature's way of getting rid of the 'muck' in the body.
I'm on good old Warfarin, have my own machine to see what my blood INR level is. I also take 25mg of Metoprolol twice daily.
Eating healthily is so important, I never eat anything that contains artificial additives and my meals are all prepared by me, right down to making my own breakfast muesli. Saying that I have friends who are in their mid 80's and still capable of doing anything they want. A year of so ago they put up a garden shed. She mixed the cement for the shed to stand on and he laid it. I couldn't believe it when he told me they were going out to find some lino to put on the floor in there, he also made ornamental shutters to put on it. That shed is spotless to this day with all his garden tools neatly hung up. What I'm building up to say is they eat what they want! I think the secret to staying well and living a long life is being active physically and mentally.
Jean
Hi again Jeanjeannie50. More great info from you, much thanks! My Metoprolol is currently one and a half tabs twice daily (75 mgs. twice a day). I was also taking Hawthorn before but was told by Doc to stop, was also taking nitrates from red beets but stopped myself with concerns over blood pressure possibly dipping too low with the Metoprolol.
And my husband did as he liked all his life, though he wasn't a smoker and he was not overweight, he had a shocking diet that I wouldn't even tell you about!
All bread and carbs and the cheapest of everything that he could find! Nothing to do with me! Even his butter wasn't real!
He wasn't interested in food, he ate to stop hunger and that was all.
If he was out and felt hungry he would have a Mars bar to kill the hunger pangs and then have a pint of beer before coming home! Go figure!
Hello Jean, I am very new to the site, I only joined this morning! I was also diagnosed a few months the ago with low level AF.
I liked your description of a heart bouncing around in your chest, that made me smile! LoL
Have you ever had that feeling? It's a bit like a fish flip flopping wildly in your chest? To me it's one the most terrifying beats. I honestly used to think that my heart would give up and I might die. Still here after 18 years of AF.
Jean
Yes, of course I have, I thought I had said that earlier, though we didn't use the same actual words.
Hi, I see you live in the USA, nevertheless the British Heart Foundation website has great information on heart failure and a forum on HU as well. I had a run of AF in summer combined with other problems and ended up with what I now know is diastolic HF though very mild and I am now recovering and thinking about getting a bit fitter. As Jean says, HF is not a death sentence but does need managing carefully.
Best wishes ❤️🩹
Hi Buffafly. Thanks so much, greatly appreciated. I plan on going back to the gym soon, but no where even near to the routine that I once had. I have to re-learn to just take it easy. More cardio and much, much less weights. Good heart information is universal, I am glad for this site.
The Cleveland Clinic has excellent info on Diastolic HF - just click on the link.
Hi gbn and welcome to the forum. It sounds like you’re doing everything great and you’ve had lots of good suggestions here.
I just thought I should mention- you may want to go easy on the fish oil. My EP cardiologist mentioned research suggesting it’s a potential trigger for AF. See webmd.com/heart-disease/atr...
Re “heart failure “ - the name should be changed as Jean implies. In my book the heart is a success not a failure so long as it beats bravely on - whether in rhythm or arrhythmia.
I can relate to this because my husband was diagnosed with heart failure about ooh, 10/15 years ago and he is still alive though and I recognise what you are going through.
The advice I would give is to do as your doctors tell you, that's what he did.
Have they advised you about diet yet? If they do, it might be a good idea to add it on here??? See what they advise and what, if any, differences we have in UK than over in the States. One thing he was told was to reduce salt too.
My husband is a big carb eater, so I took over bread making for him because I wanted to reduce salt that way. I baked a ton of bread every two weeks and froze it for him.
I also took over his diet for some time to give him the best diet that I could, but he wanted to do his own thing after a while and bought himself the cheapest ready meals he could find to exist on!
Hence we are no longer together, since November 28th, 2018, but he is still alive today let me assure you!
(I hope I am not treading on toes this morning, because I am new to this site and I only have AF personally, apologies if I am)
He also had reduced fluids to contend with. Apparently it is to reduce the load on the heart, fluids are heavy. When we have been encouraged to drink more water, drink more water, it is a shock to be told the opposite, isn't it?
He was also told to get out of bed in the morning, go to the bathroom, then naked onto the scales immediately.
Any increase in daily weight could be a fluid increase that is happening outside of any fluids that you drank which could be increasing the load on the heart also. So you need to be aware of it. So it might be good to get scales and a notebook ready in your bathroom.
So I understand your shock, we went through the same feelings and disbelief. Things happen.
But he battled through. We had dogs and he loved taking them for walks. We had to set up a system of seats around our fields/pasture, with a seat every 10 steps or so, for him to rest on.
That worked well and as he is still alive, it must have done some good. Apart from that I can only wish you good luck and the very best of best wishes.
Hello BrynGlas. Did your husband have any procedures done or just medications and lifestyle changes? Seems "heart failure" and AF information is universal across the sea, here and there. Same things being done here. Sodium is one of the main culprits. As with excess water being held, it depends on what type medication, with me I make sure of taking in enough potassium and magnesium, but sometimes I question the dehydrating effect. As to the type of heart failure I'm classified as "diastolic" as opposed to the typical systolic type.
He had a sort of pacemaker fitted that was something to get his heart back to correct rhythm if it went haywire.
I have no idea if he has had anything else done since we separated.
He was on a ton of meds, he had diuretics, all sorts of things.
Of course, yes, he was told to beware of salt. That's why I took over his diet and cooked all his bread every month. But he didn't take salt on his meals as a rule and if I had cooked it, he had very little salt.
Then he decided to stop me cooking for him one day and he started buying 99p ready meals from Asda!
What could I do about it? I was with him for 33 years and I never knew him to deviate from a salad for his main meal, until when he started to buy ready meals.
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