Triggers

I have just read Mr Larsens book, and to me it was very informative. I am currently on 160 mg Sotacor (Sotalol) pr day, and I'm going to have a chat with my doctor about my medication. I will try to slowly reduce down to zero and take Tambocor when I have an episode.
I am constantly on the outlook for my personal triggers, but they are hard to find. I know that I'm sensitive to alcohol, coffe and lack of sleep, but after reducing these factors to almost zero, I still have my episodes. My problem is that they tend to be long, up to 5 weeks.
My brother works within aviation, - radio-communication, radars and that sort of thing, - that I know little about. He had noticed that my recent episodes fell together with periodes of extreme sun-spot activity, or solar-flares that are pointed towards Earth, and sends radiation towards us. (and creates problems with radio-communication). Last time was actually thursday Oct 23. when I had an episode (48h).
So I have checked my episodes for this year with information on spaceweather.com, and to my surprise I find an almost exact match.
Of course, this might be just a coincidence, but it makes me wonder.
Has anybody looked into this or experienced something similar?

Many years ago I built custom mechanical instruments for competition soaring pilots. I would sell about 50 units per year and all orders came in by telephone. The market was international and calls came in at all hours of the day and night. I knew most of the customers and we usually conversed about personal and philosophical matters when they called to talk or to order an instrument.

The distribution of calls was by no means even slightly random. I would typically receive no calls for weeks and then receive 10 calls during one day. The customers, on a given day, calling from all over the world, would all be in more or less the same mood, though it wouldn't be the same mood each time the calls were so grouped. This went on for 15 years and I concluded that whatever was triggering their decision to call, and whatever determined the mood they were in when they called, had to be international in scope.

The only likely candidates are associated with the ionosphere or magnetosphere or electromagnetic fields or gravitational fields or solar particles or whatever. While my experience isn't proof of anything in particular, the experience caused me to give tentative credence to the possibility that human decisions and moods can be affected by a physical phenomenon.

Admittedly, top competition soaring pilots are an unusual and small group of humans. They are usually far out on the tail of the curve. They therefore might be more likely to be uniformly affected by some such phenomenon. Still, the effect, if real, would likely affect everyone in some way and to some extent.

And yes, I am a dedicated logical objective scientist (in the extreme). And no, I am not one of the black helicopter crowd, nor do I believe in astrology, nor do I believe in aliens, nor do I believe in channeling, nor do I believe in ...

Interesting...Sun spot activity and solar flares are something that my husband, who is an ace pilot, instructor, former competitive soaring pilot and a retired engineer i.e., scientifically minded has mentioned to me in connection with my afib.

Carol

Could be something to do with the fact that I've 2 episodes in 3 weeks after 3 episodes in nearly 4 years......... Or maybe not.

Mike F.

wow - click - my afib has been coming off and on several times a day since last saturday, yesterday for example ; 11:30 am for 2 hours again at 3:00pm for 15 min again at 4:30 for 3 hours and 9pm for 2 hrs.
Normally I get an episode every 12-14 days lasting from 5-8 hours last month I went 21 days NSR while my husband was in hospital having major surgery (maybe I'm allergic to him ) he came through fine and healing up fast.

I know we have had major solar flares these days hmmmmmm

Ella