Magnesium Potassium Taurine

Hi, I wonder if someone could help me find the recommended daily amounts of these supplements for afibbers. I think there used to be something on this site called "the protocol" or something, but I just can't seem to find it.

I currently take 400mg of magnesium bisglycinate, and about 1 gram of potassium gluconate. I also take 1 gram of Taurine.

I think I noticed in a post by Jackie that she takes something like 2-3 grams of Taurine a day, so wondering if I'm a bit light there.

I have been having a lot of extra beats in the last few months, getting progressively worse, so thought I'd better review my supplements.

Thanks

Hi Doug,

I am a newbie afibber having been diagnosed in the last couple of months. I am currently at 800 mg of magnesium supplements per day, working up to 1000 mg (I use Doctor's Best High Absorption).

I have ordered taurine but am not sure of the daily dosage to take.

I would also like some input on potassium - not only the daily dosage, but what kind - I am confused by the different types, eg citrate, gluconate, chelate, that i am seeing on the vitamin websites.

I also have read that low sodium V8 juice is a good source of potassium - any thoughts on that?

Thanks everyone for your input - still working all this stuff out. This forum has been a Godsend, but so much information!

Kind regards

Anne C

I would say it varies by person. In my case I tended to push magnesium to bowel tolerance, I have no kidney issues (important) <[www.afibbers.org] , so have pushed potassium as high as 8 g/day, but have ranged from 1 to 5g/day and taurine is 2-4 g/day.

I'd start low, work up and see how you feel and if you notice any difference with your afib. Doesn't work for everyone and we are all different. My non-afibber wife hits bowel tolerance with magnesium at anything over 200 mg/day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2018 10:21PM by GeorgeN.

Taurine is commonly advised at 1g for Afibbers, sometimes 2g.

LSV8 is fine for potassium. Potassium is easy to get from diet. You should assess that before supplementing, IMO.

Taurine is fine at 1-2g/day. It's also really cheap.

Your fine on the mag. Don't be in a rush to push it so high that you're making a beeline for the restroom. If 800mg works, give that a couple of months to make a difference.

Patience is key with supplements. They aren't pharmaceuticals. Be consistent, give it time, and don't constantly switch things up or else you'll never know what's working and what isn't. If the scientific method ever applied to anything, this is it.

Hi Doug - This recent Taurine Update post provides links and details to uses and dosing for taurine and includes an observation by Russell Blaylock MD... on taurine dosing for arrhythmias and PACs, etc.
[www.afibbers.org]

As always - best to start with low doses and increase gradually.

Nutritional supplementation is highly individual - depending on many factors - including how well the individual absorbs the nutrients (this relates to gut health) and also what influences deplete the core nutrients and how rapidly. I.e., a person with high stress and/or physical demands will require much more magnesium than one with no stress and lower physical exertion.

It's important to remember that with both magnesium and potassium supplementation, one should have healthy kidney function.

Jackie

1-2 G of Taurine only temp. helps me....i need 10 grams a day (2.5G x4) to stay pretty much perfect.....one can take as much as 20G a day or more as i have read but i would increase no more than 2.5G a day to reach that point if needed.
This supl. has done wonders for me....i have tried every supl. know to afibkind and only have gotten temp. relief from a select few but no long term relief and about 3k no less out of my pocket the last 3 years trying......although i have only been taking Taurine for about a week now...NOTHING has affected me like this stuff.....i was still getting the odd pac when lying down on my back or left side at night after being perfect the rest of the time but that was stopped by taking a 4th 2.5G dose around 3-4 hours after going to bed and i can increase the dose if nes. but i think i have reached my sweet spot....so much so that i have a 2nd ablation (1st one was a cryo. up here in Canada that did absol. nothing for me) scheduled for prob. late july (RF) that i will cancel now because of this wonder supl. for me. Funny thing is this was the 1st supl. i bought 4 years ago when diag. with lone Afib and it had no effect at that point in my life....this time with a more reliable brand of Taurine i have purchased...it has made all the diff. i guess....or my afib (around 5 years running now...ave. about 2 AR a week that i PIP with propafenone and a few K's pac's a day) has changed my heart during that time so allowing the Taurine to work who knows......as i have read many mention here and i can attest to...one can do the same thing 1 day with food/supl/activity's ect. and feel fine then do the same stuff the next day and have K's of pac's then an AR after that like has happened to me too many times to mention....off the charts frustrating esp. considering at 60 years old i am very fit....eat close to perfect....sleep well (although pac's and AR's disrupt that most nights until recently) never drank or smoked or drugs....lift weights and power walk near 3 hours a day and RUN UP 17 flights of stairs once a day or as much as my condition allows and i still have to deal with this horror until 10G of Taurine a day has changed everything for me. I will say this though and this piggy backs on a comment earlier i made...this may work for a while and then stop like other supl. i have taken did (but nothing has made me so near perfect like this before so not likely i hope) and if it does i would rather go see Dr. Natale in Austin and pay what around 50K or so out of my pocket to get this one done correct than get my next ablation for nothing from these assembly line doctors up here....so i will let anyone who is interested know how i am doing on this Taurine longterm and or whether i will need shannon to set me up with the greatest ablationist of them all. New to the forum...My 1st post...a little long but everybody has their own story and that was most of mine down nightmare alley.
Cheers



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2018 01:06PM by vanlith.

Thank you vanlith... and welcome to the forum. That's a great testimonial for taurine. Thanks for sharing your experiences. Many people need higher dosing of taurine daily because so many functions are dependent and not just heart function.

Keep us updated.

Best to you,
Jackie

Thank you all for your replies.

I have been a frequent reader and sometime contributor to this forum starting about 15 years ago. It is definitely the best. Had an ablation in Bordeaux 10 years ago last month which helped me a lot, so haven't used the forum for a while. But still need to take drugs - flecainide and diltiazem, plus warfarin. Before that took drugs, but was still in afib. Now afib is very rare, but as I said the irregular beats have been increasing dramatically over the last year, which worries me. Last night had a couple of hours with extra beats every 6 beats or so. Sleep difficult. Mornings and after dinner not good, daytime better.

Anne C, you asked about potassium. What used to be recommended on this forum was potassium gluconate, easier to absorb. Maybe one of the experts can comment on whether this is still recommended.

I used to take the low sodium vegetable juice, the one by Knudsen I think. Was fine, but sometimes upset my stomach, and also worried that the tomato base might not be good for my arthritis. So now I just use a teaspoon of potassium gluconate in any liquid, which is about 500 mg I think. I do that morning and evening. I also eat as much potassium as I can - avocados and bananas are quite high.

Vanlith, it's a bit of a paradox that very fit people often get afib. I think I read on this forum years ago that triathletes and marathoners are more likely to get afib. Also taller people. I used to be very active, and still swim almost daily at 66.

Used to take 600mg of magnesium, but bowel tolerance became issue, so backed off to 400.

I will raise taurine to 2000 per day and see how that goes.

Thanks again

Piggybacking on this thread to ask related questions.

I'm up to about 550 mg magnesium per day now - that seems to be the right amount so far, gradually increasing and backing off per the instructions on this site.

I tried adding taurine - only 2 doses on back to back days (1/2 teaspoon one day and 1/4 teaspoon the next)- and it seemed to make me SUPER TIRED and also give me a lot more ectopics, so much so that I abandoned ship. Can I just ask how to start taurine (dosage/frequency, etc) and what to watch for/how to proceed? The instructions for magnesium are a lot more specific...

Now that the heat and humidity have returned I've found it mandatory to up my potassium intake. A can of LSV8 after a workout, and daily bananas and avocados 2-3 times a week. My broccoli intake is probably abnormal as I love the stuff in a daily salad. Taurine and magnesium supplements come iHerb about every 6 weeks. All of these things have significantly reduced my ectopics. Also, don't forget to hydrate hydrate hydrate!

I'm 3 weeks from the one year anniversary of my Natale ablation, and free of all arrhythmias and AA drugs. My Natale ablation was my 2nd ablation (first by him). Still grateful every day!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2018 02:53PM by AB Page.

TY all and i got your message JACKIE about Dr. Verma in newmarket, ontario...i live in Winnipeg (not a jets fan btw)....might be a bit of logistics nightmare to have me go there to be treated with all the red tape in canadian health care but i will look into the possibility if my current luck on my Taurine path fails me.



TY so much JACKIE for you message and concern.

Quote
vanlith
this time with a more reliable brand of Taurine i have purchased..

Would you mind sharing the brand.

George

Ist time it was from ALLMAX which has a good rating for this supl....top 5 on most internet searches.......so not to dis them but my fav. brand overall for all supl. and nuts/seeds ect. turned out to work for me here also....NOW BRAND powder 227 grams......with both USA and Canada warehouses. Great prices for NOW and about the most complete list of products out there from A to Z.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2018 09:45PM by vanlith.

Hi Jackie,

I like to take a junior (75mg) aspirin each day. Does this cause any adverse issues when supplementing with Taurine? Which brand of Taurine powder do you yourself use??

Cheers,

Mike

Hi Doug,

Who did your ablation for AF? Jais or Hocini? Were you persistent by the time you had the ablation? Hope you don't mind me asking - just that that's where I'll be doubtless heading in due course.

Gill here on this forum had an ablation at Bordeaux 15 years ago and is still AF-free but she does report having a LOT of PACs daily - a nuisance but a lot preferable to AF!

Cheers,

Mike

Hi Mike - I take taurine in powder form and it's from Designs for Health.

There was this post on Taurine Contraindicated with Aspirin...
[www.afibbers.org]


Here's the original post from the archived Conference Room Sessions
What About Taurine?
[www.afibbers.org]

There are risks with taking aspirin regularly and long term so just be aware... even low dose.
We need taurine. It's a functional nutrient.

I can send you some of the reports on the aspirin risks if you like.

Jackie

Jackie:

There are risks on taking Eliquis also, yet you are taking it. I take a baby aspirin everyday.

Liz

Liz - I don't have a choice for taking Eliquis. If I did, it wouldn't take Eliquis or aspirin. I have a large file of study references for risks of using aspirin.

There are safe choices for helping reduce blood hyperviscosity that don't involve aspirin and aspirin's side effects. Even prior to the Eliquis mandate, I chose various fibrinolytic enzymes to keep inflammation in check and reduce the risk of platelet aggregation.... and of course, have my documented history of that clot in my LAA 103 days after my first ablation... and since I'm still alive to tell about it 15 years later, confirming that those enzymes do work.

I would also be taking appropriate doses of pycnogenol.

Jackie



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2018 01:13PM by Jackie.

Hi Jackie,

I take the aspirin for 2 reasons: first my birth father died of MID aged 85; second it seems to prevent/delay cancer metastasis - not that I have a family history of cancer but even so as a preventative I like the idea of buying more time to find the primary first before it metastasises. That said I also take serrapeptase 80,000iu/day so maybe this is enough without the aspirin? As ever, hard to know what is the lesser of the available evils/the right thing to do! Maybe I'll drop the junior aspirin to every other day.

As regards Taurine the NOW brand looks OK is reasonably priced and readily available in the UK.

14 years ago, I was working out my remission strategy. The mag/potassium/taurine idea that is commonly used here did not exist. There were indications that each might be helpful, but I was trying to work this out for myself. After trying many things, using PAC counts on a recording monitor monitor as a metric (I recall I was monitoring for 30 minutes and then going back and counting PACs & PVCs, too, I settled on mag, pot & taurine as the most effective for me.. I had a 4 month run of no afib, this is after a 2.5 month episode. Then I had two a month apart. I reviewed what I'd been doing. I realized I ran out of taurine and had not bothered to replace it. I added back and proceeded to have a two year run of no afib. That was broken because I thought I was "cured" and stopped everything. Afib returned within 24 or 48 hours, I don't recall exactly now. In any case, I never tried the "I'm cured" bit again...

Mike - I just added to the post on Lumbrokinase for Clot Risk Prevention - a weblink to a report in the May 2018 issue of Townsend Letter titled:

Lumbrokinase - An Enzyme for More Than Just Circulatory Health!
by Martin Kwok, BSc, MSAOM, ND

My FM MD prefers to recommend Lumbrokinase as a fibrinolytic and this report confirms the difference in strengths of serrapeptase, nattokinase and lumbrokinase. Boluoke is the tradename of the reliable lumbrokinase product produced by Canada RNA.


[www.afibbers.org]


Jackie

Mike,

Sorry it took me a while to respond. I've been away for a couple of days.

Both Jais and Haisseguerre worked on me - tag team! It was a bit of a marathon, and I guess I wore out the first one. 5 hours I think. That was in 2008.

I was permanent, 24-7, for most of 7 years. It was kind of controlled by drugs so that the rate didn't go to high, but I still felt lousy. During that time I had a number of unsuccessful ablations.

My Bordeaux ablation didn't cure the problem, but made it manageable. I still take drugs, but have had very few afib issues. Had two returns to permanent afib in the first two years after the ablation, both of about a month. The first stopped on it's own after changing from flec to sotalol. Then about a year later same problem, which was stopped by a cardioversion, then changing back to flec (!) 2 x 100 and adding in diltiazem 1 x 180, which I think is just a rate controller. That seemed to make the difference, I haven't had much real afib for more that an hour or two in the last 6 years.

I also take warfarin.

But I still feel tired most of the time. I think the drug overload I've experienced over the last 15 plus years is taking it's toll - I'm now 66. Lately I haven't been able to tolerate any alcohol.

I don't know if there are others out there in my boat - I may have to make a separate posting about that.

Maybe I need to try another ablation, but I'm a bit afraid of upsetting the applecart - I have something now that kind of works, and for years I had constant afib. Another ablation could possibly help, but could also make it worse. And there are other risks during the ablation process.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit.

Doug:

How long have you been taking that potassium supplement? You seem to be eating a lot of Potassium also, do you know what your potassium blood level is? I know a lot on here believe in taking potassium supplements, I am one that cannot, my pot. level is good, so I get what I need from food. A few years ago I took some pot. supplement and got small runs of AF, I am vagal and they just showed up anytime. When I stopped the pot. the runs stopped, for me, I cannot take those supplements, maybe you also are taking too much.

Liz

Doug:

The way I understand your Situation, you were in Permanent AFIB for 7 years, then after your last Ablation and Medication change, you are in NSR almost all of the time, except for a few short episodes. That is a very good success Story. Another Ablation might help you get off of the Flecainide, that would be a positive, but as far as the other issues it probably would not help. Ablations do not stop Extra Beats, and it doesn't sound like their frequent enough to be the cause of your feeling tired. If the Flecainide/Diltiazem is causing you to be tired, then yes an Ablation may help in that regard. Perhaps something else is causing the fatigue, other than AFIB or Extra Beats.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2018 06:25AM by The Anti-Fib.

I came back here after an absence of 6+ months last week and this was the first thread I came across.

Needless to say, I've now planned on adding I-Arginine to my daily supplements as well!