A DNA test, a book and a diet - my AFib Eureka moment !

[Dyldog]

First I wanted to say what a fantastic group this is and just how much it has supported, reassured and lifted me on my Afib journey, it’s been invaluable

I’m a 61 year old woman with paroxysmal lone Afib, possibly SVT too. My story in brief is that I was diagnosed 3 years ago after my Fitbit showed up a worryingly high heart rate resulting in a visit to A&E. I was given beta blockers, apixaban and an appointment with a cardiologist

I started with a conservative approach (meds), monitoring and not to rushing into an ablation, but over the next year had quite a few long episodes lasting between 1 and 6 days, not too debilitating but none the less worrying

I tried anti-arrhythmic drugs – Sotalol, Propafenone, Fleicanide (as a PiP) – in retrospect (since I stopped taking them and have been no worse) I don’t think they were effective, in my own individual case at least

A year after diagnosis I had a PVI ablation. It was unsuccessful and my EP thinks the origin may be somewhere in the right chamber, not the usual Pulmonary veins but he didn’t want to ‘experiment’ with more ablation without evidence, fair enough. However after another A&E episode he reviewed my ECG and diagnosed more of a tachy ‘flutter’ than afib but I think I have both – so I’m currently awaiting a touch up PVI plus an EP mapping / ablation in the right chamber

So getting to the main point of my post. We all know what a minefield it is trying to identify our own unique triggers. It can seem random but obviously there is always an underlying cause which can be very subtle indeed, or a combination of things. This can of course take a long time to find but it’s encouraging that if we can find it, that’s the route to curing the condition, or at least being able to control it out of existence ! Recently I feel I have come close to understanding what my own triggers might be and wanted to share it in case it helps someone else. I’m not medically trained but have spent years reading and researching and have a deep interest

I recently did 3 important things, unrelated at first but turned out to sync up and give me almost a ‘Eureka’ moment !

1) I embarked on a low carb diet, strict Keto at < 20g carbs a day. This was mainly to lose a little weight as I weigh about a stone more than I should. I did this for about 6 weeks and noticed that my Afib improved dramatically. I had a couple of short episodes lasting only hours but they converted back to NSR very quickly compared to previous episodes

2) I had a DNA test – one of those where you send off a sample, it’s analysed in a lab and the results made available online. I think there are a few companies doing it, not sure if I’m allowed to advertise the one I used but it was excellent and gave 40 DNA profiled reports across diet, sleep, exercise, fitness, stress etc. But importantly for me, one of the results was a personalised analysis of my sensitivity to food groups and lo and behold – high sensitivity to carbohydrates. I was knocking everything out of balance by eating way more carbs than I should and not knowing my body wasn’t good at coping with it - Afib material ?

3) I read a great little book. I’ve read many but this was simple, short and hit the nail on the head for me. It was ‘How I cured my Afib’ by Jay Clarke - now my bible

It just all made sense

So in summary, I’m going belt and braces on this – I’m a believer in medical procedures if they stand a good chance of helping and I will be having one soon, but in addition I’ve started taking a more holistic approach to health as in keeping the whole body in balance with a diet tailored to YOU and generally taking care of yourself. It seems at least in my case that our triggers are determined by our DNA (actually that sounds fairly obvious when you say it out loud !) and this can be analysed and acted upon. It gives me optimism which can only be good

Anyone else have similar stories to share ?

Sue