My ectopic beats definitely increase when I eat and drink. I have also noticed a remarkable increase in them when my blood sugar spikes after eating short-chain carbs such as potatoes, cakes, white rice and bread. These make my heart race and improve when I eat whole grains, bean, pulses etc. I have the Kardia ECG which proves a useful tool in observing this.
Has anyone else felt this happen to them?
Hi, after 5 years of Afib interlaced with ectopic beats, I have given up trying to really understand my hearts behaviour.
I am very fit and well, my Afib has been very stable with no episodes for years but ectopics are periodically problematic. My Afib has been described as having a “vagal tone” = ‘rest and digest’. Episodes happened late night/early morning and I do sometimes notice more ectopics after eating. I have not figured out really if it is due to what I have consumed or it’s just the fact my stomach is full. Generally try to eat less and more frequently now to avoid being too full.
I coming to the conclusion my heart behaves like the sun, it has a cycle and currently I have entered a “cardiac minimum” 😀 All quiet, not too many ectopics despite what I eat.
Thank you. I can see why you have given up trying to totally understand! I'm so near the start of my journey and am already finding it frustrating.
Rest/digest sounds sensible! And I'm pleased to hear you have found what sounds like a peaceful place currently.
I'm not a doctor or have any medical training but I have my own theories about this. I think that ectopics/pvcs that you feel after eating are not caused by the food itself but something else in the stomach that is irritating or stimulating nerves connected with the heart. I think that because we know it takes some foods many hours to be digested before entering the blood stream but ectopics may be felt very shortly after eating them. Therefore it cant be the food per se that's causing the ectopics but something else in the stomach that interacts with the food or maybe evening hormones or other chemicals the body produces in response to food intake. Also, remember that many of us have been happily eating the same food all our lives then suddenly we start experiencing ectopics. What changed? It wasn't the food so it must be something else.
Another theory I have is that there is a connection between non food related ectopics/pvcs and myoclonus. Myoclonus originates in the brain and may cause involuntary jerks and twitches in muscles. The heart is also a muscle which makes me think that maybe the signals that trigger ectopic beats may have the same or similar generating mechanisms. These are just some of the crazy ideas I have. Best wishes.
I find this really interesting! You are a shining example showing how the “better” carbs affect one’s body. Thank you for posting.
Btw I thought potatoes were OK?
Potatoes are starchy carbs, so have the same effect as any other starchy carb! 😉
This is why I always put tonnes of fat (cook homemade chips in beef dripping and use butter, full cream Jersey milk, for mash) with my potatoes, as this helps slow down the insulin release! 😃
Yes it’s starchy but so is brown rice. But brown rice preferred to white rice etc etc. So I’ve always put “potatoes” in the same category as “whole meal bread “.
Vagal effects are common in relation to heart rhythms. Have a look on Youtube for Dr Sanjay Gupta of York Cardiology (not the one in the US), and look for gastro-cardiac syndrome and various similar videos on his channel.
Thank you, I am familiar with his work and his posts are straightforward and make sense.
The other thing you can try is reheating white rice, pasta and potatoes as if they are allowed to chill and then reheated it changes the starch and alters the way you digest them.
not in all people. Also, if a person has high histamines then it’s best to eat food immediately after cooking and Not reheating it or eating leftovers.
Oh! I have a histamine reaction to a lot of things...will observe. Thank you
Smaller meals taken more frequently is often the advice given as well as eating food more slowly..
As was said above these things seem to go in cycles.
Do you keep a detailed health diary where you can can pinpoint symptoms and relate them to possible causes which might range from exercise to eating cheese, eating too late in the evening or drinking something specific.
Also worth recording if the effect is immediate or so long after the event that the ectopics might be related to something else.
Lots to consider there. Thank you. The small meal thing is wise and does indeed help and I really could be better at keeping a record.
Hi I have been looking at Dr Gupta on line he is very helpful and helpful is now working with a gut doctor as they both agree stomach, digestion, food ,eating habits and heart problems are linked my local hosp is where Dr Gupta practises but sadly I've never had appointment with him !!
Yes, he's great I agree.
I think you might have hit on a much broader topic than you realise. I'm suffering ectopics very infrequently, but I do suffer angina every day and I have noticed that if I do something that wouldn't normally cause angina right after a meal, then I am likely to get angina. For example, walk 100 yards before a meal and no angina, walk 100 yards after a meal and I have angina. I haven't really looked into how the contents of the meal affect me, but I will take more notice of it in future, particularly in relation to carbs. I think alcohol has the same effect as a meal by the way.
Might not be contents of the meal so much, as the body is digesting the meal and the walk is one more effort the heart has to make. Years ago my mother used to tell me to rest after a meal and don't do anything heavy for an hour. I am now wondering if she might have been right!
That's most interesting. I have withdrawn drinks with caffeine and alcohol, but when I have chocolate my heart goes berserk! Caffeine I am super sensitive to.
I have organic unsweetened cacao powder everyday. My heart is perfectly happy with that, but absolutely not with a high sugar load from eating milk chocolates.
The blood sugar-heart connection does not surprise me. I normally eat a whole food plant based diet, but occasionally, chocolate, as in chocolate brownies or milk chocolates, makes me crack. I had an ablation just this last month and was watching my "recovery" through the body battery function of my Garmin watch. One day during my early recovery, I indulged (that should really be in all caps to reflect the magnitude of the indulgence) in some Belgian milk chocolates -- more specifically caramel filled milk chocolates -- and my Garmin body battery bottomed out and took days to return to where it had been before. To me, this reinforced my understanding that simple carbs are highly inflammatory and my indulgence in refined sugars was fundamentally an assault on my own body.
Wow, that's incredible! Chocolate is the hardest food for me to give up completely and I react very badly to a binge - just as you do. I do try to keep it in my mouth to melt for as long as possible and slow it down with something long-chain (like an oat biscuit with choc chips in). It works for my children's sugar spikes too. An 'assault' does sound like a good description.
Hi. I've been diagnosed with AF, five months ago. Very new to all of it. I've suffered from very bad palpatations after eating the larger evening meal. Especially when I was dieting (before I knew) and ate minimally through the day and a large evening meal.I've been looking up causes of this for years prior to diagnosis.
Thankyou all for sharing your information about this connection. Helps to explain alot and all good advice.
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