From chronic AFIB to a nuisance?

I would like to share my AFIB experience since it is a bit different than most of the experiences I have seen here. However in a lot of ways it is the same.

I believe my AFIB was caused by chronic endurance exercising along with not replenishing my electrolytes properly. I am 63, low blood pressure, BMI of 21, and completed multiple marathons and triathlons. I eat mostly plant based with three servings of fish/shellfish per week. My last triathlon was 6 months prior to my first AFIB. Over the years before AFIB, I was experiencing crazy symptoms, especially over the hot summer months, such as, tingling in the extremities, twitching muscles, severe muscle soreness, skipped beats, and a black mole the size of a pencil eraser that suddenly appeared on the left side of my face three years ago. I know now that all these symptoms are the result of mineral insufficiencies.

A year and a half ago I woke up at 2:00 a.m. in AFIB, I had no trouble diagnosing myself by feeling my erratic pulse and feeling the flounder in my chest. Since I did not feel dizzy, I didn't think it was serious. The AFIB lasted about a half hour so I thought it was a once and done thing. Two days later the same thing happened again. My wife wanted me to go to the ER, however I converted to NSR on the way. At the ER the EKG showed NSR. At 3:00 am they administered an IV with Metroprolol which quickly caused me to go into AFIB for about an hour which allowed the diagnosis. The next day I had the usual tests, all normal. The cardiologist said thing like “it’s only AFIB” and “I can go back to doing triathlons.” My CHADS score was zero so the only thing he said I could do is take Metroprolol if I wanted to ease the symptoms when I was in AFIB and come back to see him if things were not going well. Things were not going well. I took the Metroprolol for one week and stopped due to tiredness and having pulse rates in the 30’s. However I chose not to go back to the doctor.

I believed the doctor and kept up the vigorous exercise. My heart was volatile from 9:00pm until 6:00am such that any wrong move could trigger an AFIB. I was having nightly AFIBs usually lasting around 15 minutes. I was able to get it down to having AFIB every two to three nights by jumping out of bed as soon as my heart started palpitating. Sometimes it would work sometimes not. I also started sleeping sitting up which also helped. Needless to say, having almost daily AFIBs and getting little sleep was extremely taxing.

Deep down I knew it was the chronic exercise that got me into this and I needed to stop. I substituted walking moderately (over an hour a day) instead of the running, biking, and swimming. I also started taking magnesium glycinate (800 Mg) every day. I finally started to see a reduction in AFIB events and after a couple of months reduced to every 7 to 10 days. However I still had to sleep mostly sitting up, as soon as I tried to sleep on my back the palpitations would start. My next step was to add more potassium by drinking a large coconut water and eating more potatoes, about 2000 mg more each day. I felt much better almost immediately, especially in experiencing fewer palpitations during the day. After two weeks of the increased potassium, the black mole that was on my face for three years lifted up, flaked off, and disappeared. That’s when I knew I was on the right track.

Over the next six months I kept feeling better to the point of trying vigorous exercise again, bad idea. I also found that taurine, calcium, Hawthorne, and iodine were bad ideas. So I stuck with walking 1-2 hours per day, 800 mg magnesium glycinate, high potassium content foods, and getting ample sunlight. After a year and a half, I feel almost normal again, i.e., virtually no palpitations and able to sleep on my back again. The gap between AFIBs has been steadily increasing such that my last was two months ago and lasted 15 minutes. I am now calling it a nuisance.

You’re on the right track.

Beta blockers (metoprolol) are contraindicated in vagal a-fib, which you clearly have.

Very interesting and encouraging.

Why do doctors say "It's only Afib?" I remember when I was diagnosed, and really nervous (I knew nothing about Afib except that it was a heart problem), the NP on duty said "If you have to have anything with your heart, it's AFib."

Because they see it all the time. And it's usually in ERs where bedside manner is non-existent.

There is obviously a very wide bandwidth of Atrial Fibrillation burden i.e. at one end there is afib and at the other end is AFIB. To explain that further there are afibbers reporting 3 or 4 episodes a year each lasting for say 15 minutes to max 1 hour duration. There are then great differences in the rates of beats per minute. In my own AFIB history my episodes would last up to 48 hours at heart rates 100BPM to 150BPM as recorded at the A&E as my OMRON heart rate monitor could not register the erratic beats. After 48 hours of AFIB NSR would kick in for 12 or so hours and then back to AFIB again. There is no comparison between afib and AFIB and for a doctor to say learn to live with it, or at its just a nuisance shows they haven't got a clue. Last time I had a successful cardioversion 10 years ago for Left Atrial Flutter - 3 months after a successful AFIB ablation - I walked in the hospital a very old miserable man at 59 years old and walked out an hour later a 29 year old man with a mighty spring in his step. How could the difference between my condition before the cardio version and my condition when walking out of the hospital be described as a nuisance level, I walked out into an whole new world.

Cheers,
Barry G.

Mike,

Your experience correlates with mine. Chronic fitness was my path to afib. Detraining from endurance activity, supplementing with magnesium and also potassium, avoiding excess calcium have been my keys to relative afib remission for over 14 and 1/2 years. I do use on-demand flecainide to convert whenever I do go out of rhythm. Ever since I had a 2.5 month episode 2 months after my afib journey began, I don't take a chance on a "natural" conversion. But this usage is very infrequent.

I can still do HIIT activities and bodyweight training so maintain a decent level of fitness. For me, it seems it is the product of duration and intensity. Hence I can do short duration, high intensity or long duration low intensity without issue. I have a subjective line of "how much is too much" that I rarely cross.

Good on you for figuring it out!!

Thanks for posting.

George