Maybe Cure for AF

[Pamuella]

Please try 1000 mg. vitamin C time release tablets one a day May stop af altogether

[Rainfern]

An instant cure for AF? I do hope not as I’d lose all my friends here on AF forum overnight!

Irony aside, the following from Healthline:

Arrhythmias and other heart conditions are associated with oxidant stress and inflammation. Antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E appear to be effective in reducing these.

You can use vitamin C to treat colds, the flu, and even cancer, and it can also help with arrhythmia. In heart surgery, atrial fibrillation, which involves having an irregular, rapid heartbeat, is a problem for 25 to 40 percent of people. In one study, vitamin C was shown to reduce the occurrence of postoperative atrial fibrillation by as much as 85 percent.

Read on!

[CDreamer]

I have taken it for years, not for AF though and it hasn’t made the slightest bit of difference.

I don’t know where you heard that one but there is no ‘cure’ for AF and certainly not by supplementing although some people find that taking a magnesium supplement helps lessen ectopics aamay help manage AF.

[solarjdo69 in reply to CDreamer]

How many MG / day do you take. May not be a big enough dose.

[CDreamer in reply to solarjdo69]

I don’t nor will I ever.

[solarjdo69 in reply to CDreamer]

Vitamin "C"? i thought you said you take "C". I was just asking how much/day you take.

[TracyAdmin Partner]

Hello Pamuella,

Thank you for your post. May I just highlight there is currently no permanent cure for AF - but there are various treatments to help manage and alleviate the painful symptoms.

It is recommended that any additional supplements /herbal remedies /over the counter medications are checked in advance with either your doctor or a pharmacist.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact our Patient Services Team; heartrhythmalliance.org/afa...

[bean_counter27]

For those on Flecainide and possibly other like medications. According to drugs.com (where I check my meds for interactions with other meds and supplements):

Minor Drug Interaction - Flecainide interacts with Vitamin C (ascorbic acid).

"Agents that acidify the urine enhance the renal elimination of flecainide. The result may be decreased plasma flecainide levels and decreased effectiveness. The antiarrhythmic effectiveness of flecainide should be monitored, and plasma flecainide levels should be checked as appropriate. Also, the risk of flecainide toxicity is increased when an agent that acidifies the urine is discontinued."

1,000mg Vitamin C daily is a fairly large dose for Vitamin C and certainly, IMO, something that should be checked with your doctor.

[Bagrat in reply to bean_counter27]

Thanks, that is important!

[jeanjeannie50]

I've been taking 1,000mg daily of slow release vitamin C for many years. Could that be what has helped reduce my heart rate. Who knows.

Jean

[Paulbounce]

Hi Pam.

Taking vitamin C supplements, including time-release tablets, is generally considered safe for most people when used as directed. However, the idea that vitamin C can "stop" afib altogether is not supported by scientific evidence.

Thanks for the post anyway and have a lovely day.

All best Paul

[Ppiman]

That's over ten times the recommended dosage and five times more than a good daily helping of fresh fruit and veg would provide. I'd go down the fruit route, myself, as the vitamin then arrives in your body with a whole host of other antioxidant goodies that are missing from a single factory made chemical.

But, well - who knows!

Steve

[solarjdo69 in reply to Ppiman]

Those recommended doses are absurdly low in my opinion after reading many many articles on health issues.

[Ppiman in reply to solarjdo69]

It's surely possible that any naturally occurring nutrient can be separated and purified to be used as a drug. That is what it becomes when taken differently from the way nature provides it: a drug.

That seems from what I can read, a real possibility with, among others, vitamin C and vitamin D. So far as I can discover, the evidence remains unproven for both so far, but, with vitamin D in particular, there seems to be interesting research continuing. I haven't kept up with vitamin C but the last time I looked its use at high doses remained controversial and unproven.

Steve

[Autumn_Leaves in reply to Ppiman]

I’m with you about the food first approach for the very reasons you have said. A synthetic ascorbic acid tablet does not have all synergistic properties of food — not just vitamin C, but fibre, polyphenols and other beneficial compounds, and the greater the variety of food sources, the greater the the benefits.

As a person with an iron overload disorder, I have been advised not to take vitamin C supplements (as well as iron supplements of course) because they increase the absorption of iron. I can also report that the last time that I took vitamin C for just one week I had a noticeable increase in ectopics. So, definitely not for me, It may have been coincidence of course, but I see no advantage in taking vitamin C supplements. I’d rather get it from food.

[Ppiman in reply to Autumn_Leaves]

I'm in agreement with you. Nutrients removed from their natural foods become drugs, much like any other pharmaceutical chemical, whether refined from natural sources or synthesised and made artificially.

My ectopic beats are much worse at present but I doubt it's related to anything I have eaten or done, or that I will ever be able to find out. I have "LBBB" and suspect it's related to whatever causes that. I think it's the same with AF. We rarely find out just what brings these "top level" problems about, by which I mean the myriad of possible lower level issues that eventually causes them to occur. For example, medical scientists can measure right down to the movement of anions and cations into and out of the cardiac myocytes around the pulmonary vein area but they don’t seem to know why or how this links to disease.

This means that looking for "triggers" or "cures" is always going to be finger in the air stuff for most of us, and even for those expert scientists is hard going. I read today that there are ventricular effects of anti-arrhythmic drugs that remain unknown. Similarly, a while back, the action of antidepressants called SSRI inhibitors since their launch decades ago is now in doubt as its been found that serotonin is not involved in depression in the ways previously thought. This leaves in doubt how these drugs work, why they do and - perhaps even - if they do at all beyond what placebo also does in some uses.

Steve

[Autumn_Leaves in reply to Ppiman]

The constant vigilance about food triggers is guaranteed to send people round the twist. Everyone is always going to be in the ‘fed state’ during their waking hours and everyone will have “just eaten” something. In fact when you break it all down to individual ingredients, just how do people identify the culprit, and that’s assuming that food was even a cause in the first place? It may have nothing to do with food at all. I find it interesting that people tend to blame the foods that are trending on the popular “no” lists. It’s never the carrots or the green beans, is it?

It’s a similar situation with migraines, which actually begin 24-36 hours before the onset of symptoms. There is often a dip in blood sugar shortly before symptoms appear which often prompts people to eat, and then when the symptoms appear they blame what they’ve just eaten. I have migraines with visual aura, but I’m not that badly affected. I have a friend who also has migraines but she’ll say “I won’t eat such and such because I have an appointment/somewhere to go tomorrow, and I don’t want to get a migraine.” That’s not how it works, but these ideas are so ingrained regardless of evidence to the contrary. I don’t modify my diet to prevent migraines.

[Ppiman in reply to Autumn_Leaves]

We do share a similar outlook and interest. I did like your sentence, “It’s never the carrots or the green beans, is it?”! Although I’ve read here that there’s no way near as much magnesium in those beans as there used to be. I’d think that if that were true, they wouldn’t be green myself.

A friend has an unusual liver condition, one that isn’t all that uncommon, I’ve read, and one he was born with. From what I can read, it causes few if any issues but not for him. He gets “rigors” as he calls them if he eats the wrong food or catches certain viruses. It brings him comfort to avoid them, though, I can see that and I suppose that’s worthwhile.

Steve

[Autumn_Leaves in reply to Ppiman]

I’ve heard similar from supplement fans, that vegetables and fruit is supposedly less nutritious now in comparison to some bygone era, that it’s the soil, and if it’s not that it’s how it’s stored, or that nobody knows how to prepare food properly, and on and on. Their point being that they need to justify why it’s necessary to chug down cheap synthetic vitamins on a 3 for 2 offer in H&B. However, there’s a lot of inconsistency in supplements between batches and between brands, they are rarely tested for quality , and when they are they may not even contain much active of the ingredient. Or more than the amount stated. If people think there’s less nutrition in their vegetables then the solution is to eat a bigger portion, or a bigger variety. Harking back to olden times is just nonsense. Knowing my own family history, I doubt very much that they were enjoying all this nutrient-dense fresh produce and grass-fed prime cattle. I doubt they ate as well as I can from what’s in my local branch of Lidl. In fact, there’s more variety in there than I ever saw as a kid. I don’t buy into these romantic notions of the past.

[Ppiman in reply to Autumn_Leaves]

Goodness me. We really do think alike. We are lucky to have occasional access to genuine food taht hasn't changed in generations as my daughter-in-law's family run a small farm in Romania. It's not a wealthy farm by any means and they grow both crops and livestock as it has always been, feeding properly and not on factory-made pellets from an animal food supplier. Does their for taste differently from what we grow or can buy here? To my disappointment the answer is, no. It absolutely doesn't. Yes, the chicken is tastier as it's killed when it's older; but it's tougher, too - and the pork is the same in that respect. I was surprised as I truly expected a taste sensation!

Steve

[secondtry]

Sorry long post summarising my experience.

Over many years of studying AF experiences here, elsewhere and my own, I currently hold a personal non-medical opinion that there can indeed be a 'cure' for AF, albeit it may have to be a 'hybrid cure' ie pills & lifestyle changes. This outcome won't be possible for all as it is not like fixing a broken leg.

The difficulty in finding any one individual's cure is usually (there are exceptions eg extreme athletes) because there is a need to change many (not just find one trigger) bad lifestyle habits that have been followed for decades. It takes time to identify these, find a better solution and once established give the body and mind time to recover back to normal eg the Vagus Nerve. I suspect most people find this too much effort and change.

In my case, I also needed a drug, Flecainide, to buy me time as the AF, my character and possibly genetic issues had built my circumstances to emergency levels - two longish episodes per week. I then threw the kitchen sink at the lifestyle changes encouraged by the fact I had Lone PAF.

I have been 'cured' for 11 years now (59-70yo), how successful this will be I will never know as it could restart tomorrow should I get complacent and drop my new habits....... or just have bad luck. It has impressed my cardiologist & Naturopath though!

PS During Covid I took a lot of Vit C 1000mg slow release, some days 2000mg, and was not aware of any adverse interaction with Flecainide. Blood tests last month showed no kidney or other irregularities.

[Blearyeyed]

Although Vitamin C intake , at the right number of hours after pills that could be effected by it ( 4hours after) , will help to improve how well you feel , if you don't have enough in the diet in general , and does help with the absorption of Folic Acid and Iron , it isn't scientifically proved as a "Cure" for anything , including Atrial Fibrillation.It's likely that Vitamin C's effectiveness for some people in helping to reducing heart rate or blood pressure in general would only be because of its function in improving the absorption and metabolism of things like Vitamin D , Iron , Folic Acid and Magnesium from a sensible daily diet in people whom find it hard to absorb these nutrients generally from food because of digestive problems , or are not getting enough of them in the daily diet. So having foods containing Vitamin C at the same time as foods rich in Folates , Vitamin D, Iron and Magnesium can help you make the most from your healthy meal options.

The average adult human only requires 40mg of Vitamin C a day for optimal body functioning which is why the suggested amount to consume is between 60-90mg depending on gender or digestive issues , and 120mg for pregnant women.

One important thing to note is the above dose.

According to medical Dietary advice , and general nutritional information, large doses of Vitamin C taken in one dose is not an efficient approach.

No matter how much you take in one single dose , the body will only absorb 70-90%of a dose of 180/ 200mg because of the way the body strictly controls how Vitamin C is digested and metabolised daily.

From a dose of 1000mg you would still only absorb the same amount and the percentage of the amount absorbed drops dramatically as the dose increases .

Even if you have poor absorption issues because of stomach or conversion problems ( which can mean you only absorb about 50% of a sublingual or liquid active form of vitamins and minerals) a dose over 200mg is superfluous.

As a lot of people can suffer from GERD or indigestion on AF and other medications , or because of ageing on the digestive system , you also need to be careful about the type of Vitamin C you choose , as citric juices and acidic supplements can cause indigestion and coughing symptoms that could bring on a bout of AF instead.

If you choose supplements because you find it difficult to get enough from foods it means a liposomal non acidic form added to 150ml water and drank with a meal is a better option.

[Peacockmumma]

Dr Sanjay Gupta the York cardiologist recommends vit c to help repair the heart..worked on rats lol. So I just take a chewable tablet and eat veggies/fruits etc .