Shannon could you offer me some info?

Hi All,
I am a 39 year old male I had a briee Episode of afib 10years ago went to the ER had a HR of 150 and I converted with Cardizem in about an hour it was really scarey but odd because I have dealt with anxity since my early teens and would often have panic attacks. I thought at first this is what it was but i felt the fluttering and knew it was different. All tests were done blood, echo, and chest xray ecg all came back totally normal, The Cardio back then came to my bedside and called it LAF and he also told me my potassium level was only 2.3 it should be 3.5 or greater? Well to any avail It was scary but done and until last Thursday night I had not had any probs except for PACS or PVCS I have had those all my life and been told its nothing to be concerned with. I awoke to that same feeling again,about 3am.....10 years ag it walso happend to me while laying flat in bed at about 5am? I tried the Valsalva but it wasnt working so I went to the ER and same deal they gave me Metoprolol IV and I converted in about 2 hours this time my HR was highest at 166. Thing thing that is confusing to me is that both times I was under extreme stress, the first episode I had just bought a house and was overcome with anxiety. and I sold my business about 2 months ago to go into another venture and have been extremley filled with anxiety since. I read a ton back 10 years ago on the topic because I wanted to find out as much as I could, and it did say stress is a trigger, But also I am hearing so much about magnesium, taurine, potasieum on here im overwhelmed.

Can anyone elighten me on this topic? I was sent home taking 25mg of Metoprolol 2x a day and I have also taken lisinopril for HBP for ther last 10 years. I dont know If i will do more damage than good if i try screwing around with supplements or not? Also When i was reading on this 10 years ago i saw nothing about this being progressive? I have been out of the loop a long time and I am bummed out I am back lol.....Is this basically an indavidual to indavidual type thing? I dont understand if triggers cause it and it isnt from any underlying heart issue what makes it progressive? very aggravating to understand. I have been depressed and overwhelmed reading so many different opinions!

Joe
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Hi Joe,

Have been away a couple days, I see you got some good advice as usual from GeorgeN and Hans so make sure to follow up on those and in particular read Hans protocol and The Strategy and adopt those protocols fully in the manner in which they are suggested in both Hans program and as is spelled out within the Strategy.

You also need to insure you are restoring adequate intracellular magnesium levels at least simultaneously, if not before, really adding to the supplemental potassium, but both are key to have a good balance of to help support a quiet heart.

You are not going to throw yourself out of whack with too much Mag and K if you follow the Strategy protocol as written, and I can almost guarantee you that these electrolyte levels are low in you, if not critically so, based on your high anxiety reports and the AFIB as well.

There is a wealth of good info too in the Forum Archives, AFIB Database and Resources as well as Conference Rooms all linked too at the top of this page to give you a mountain of good advice and direction from which to embark on gaining a more proactive and successful process for managing AFIB in your life and gaining as much control over it as possible, including any of, or all of the following modalities nutritional/supplemental/drug/lifestyle modifications/stress reduction and ablation.

We all know it can be a scary thing to deal with and just be assured that addressing this issue is a long term process and this is definitely the right board from which to gain a real leg up over this beast over the long term.

Dive in and start your reading within the resources above and begin to implement The Strategy protocol as well. For the most part,those people who have a negative reaction to some of these supplements its almost always a key indicator of an underlying adrenal dysfunction that causes a hyper- reaction to natural endogenous biochemicals that are necessary for good health. Occasionally you might find someone with an actual allergy to some of the filler ingredients in some supplements, but its extremely rare for someone to actually be 'allergic' to something like Magnesium inherently and when we see those few that seem to have exacerbated their AFIB symptoms when taking normal doses of these supplements, it almost diagnostic of a long term unrecognized adrenal dysfunction. Nevertheless, don't worry about it, as its highly unlikely you will have any issues when following The Strategy Protocol as spelled out by Jackie Burress who contributes here often.

That is the best place to start along with Hans' and GeorgeN's insights and from there you will for sure uncover even more targeted questions and such that have likely been addressed here as well in the past. A good habit to get into in the early days of getting up to speed here is to first punch in your question or even just the topic you are interested in into the handy search function after choosing 'advanced search' as well and be sure to include all of the past forums to cast a wider net for your search and you will find all sorts of good information.

And of course, continue to read the ongoing threads that appear here the interest you and before you know it all this will start to sound more familiar and far less daunting.

As for your question on why AFIB tends to be progressive, is because the more you experience AFIB the more the cellular structure of your myocardial tissue lining the inside of your left and right atrium can start to 'remodel' and this remodeling can happen both structurally (meaning physical scarring or fibrosis developing within the left atrium for example) as well as electrical remodeling in which the heart, in its efforts to compensate for the obvious arrhythmia will gradually adapt toward accepting AFIB as more the norm rather than the exception and it gradually gets easier and easier to get triggered into AFIB and over time harder and harder to convert on your own back into NSR or normal sinus rhythm. This progression both electrically which is noted by the old adage 'AFIB begets more AFIB' and structurally as in increasing fibrosis within the atrium will commonly lead to eventual progression from paroxysmal AFIB ( meaning starts and stops on its own) to persistent AFIB meaning, in essence, that it is then 24/7/365 and the only way to get out of it is with either an Electro-cardioversion (ECV) ... which after a while many no longer work so well ... or with an ablation(s) by a very skilled EP ablationist.

In the meantime, take it easy and relax with knowing that you are not in any immediate mortal danger at the moment and embrace the fact that this is a long haul process and that your knowledge and comfort in dealing with all the options you have, including determining your next best steps, will all simply unfold as you spend more time exploring this very useful and comprehensive website frequented by many very knowledgable and helpful travelers down this road for many years.

Best wishes.
Shannon

Hi Shannon,
Thanks for all the info, would 2 short episodes in 10
Years require anything except the supplement program?
I just have a general practitioner at the moment, hopefully
I can be granted 10 more years of no episode!

Joe

Hi Joe,

You might well be able to get things under control with a thorough and dedicated adherence to the protocols linked too above. You have to really give it a good solid investigation and trial for the next 6 months to a year. Preferrably making it a permanent life style modification as, beyond possibly helping to keep a lid on your AFIB it will very likely help improve your overall health as well.

The EXATEST you can find at www.exatest.com and that is a good place to start to determine what your intracellular levels of the most important ionic minerals/electrolytes are and serve as a guideline for your repletion program.

Only time will tell. Its good that you have only had two episodes 10 years apart at age 39, but not so good that you have had any at all at age 39 as the vast majority of us didn't start to actually begin to have any arrhythmia as a manifestation of whatever the core metabolic issue is behind AFIB until our early to mid 40s to early 50s.

That means the odds are higher for you to have a possible genetic driver underlying your AFIB and that, in fact, you have a head start over the majority of afibbers who typically get started with having to deal with this beast a bit later in life.

On the other hand, its very lucky you found a site like this where you can get a wealth of guidance that, when digested and followed with discipline, might well help you put the lid on this bottle before it gets too much more out of hand.

Its good that you've only had two episodes in 10 years for sure, but the fact of two makes it a trend that is only likely to grow more frequent and with progressively shorter intervals in between unless you jump in with both feet and make it a priority in your life to get on top of this issue before too much of that underlying remodeling I mentioned above has a chance to make this a much bigger issue that you would ever wish for down the not too distant road.

Best wishes Joe, there is no time like the present to start.
Shannon

For the life of me, I don't understand why it matters so much on this site if you get your magnesium tested via a Red blood cell test or by the exactatest, both are said to be accurate, the serum test is not. I have always gotten the RBC test for my magnesium status, I do test towards the low end of the scale, so why take the exactatest, it might show me even lower, it would prove that I need Magnesium, I already know that. I recall a few other posters over the years that have said they test towards the lower end of the scale it seems to be hard for some of us to get our mag. higher. Some years ago I tried the Myers IV, the first time I got it, I had an episode of AF that night (go figure), I did get the I.V. a few more times without any problems, except for a very warm flush when getting the I.V, it was expensive and I had to travel a distance for the I.V. so I quit. My point is, if it is expensive and hard to find someone to do the exactatest, I wouldn't get all bend out of shape about it.

Liz

Shannon you explained that to Joe so well, im impressed by your ability to explain it all with such clarity and exactly how it all pans out for us-good job!

Glad to see all went well for you and you are free of A/fib and warfarin at last.

Janet

Thanks Janet for your kind words, I hope all is well with you too and that you are making some headway on the search we discussed by PM?

And Liz RBC magnesium testing is a better choice over regular serum mag and I use it periodically for spot testing but its range is relatively narrow and needs tighter interpretation. For example, you want to test in the upper third of the RBC range to typically feel more confident you have a decent level of mag on board, but even that is not always reliable. I did comparison testing 6 different times in the past in which I did RBC mag, serum mag and Exatest all within a 15 minute collection time window.

In addition to providing all the additional, and at times useful, other IC electrolyte measures as well as the informative comparative ratios between all the pairs of electrolytes that you get with an Exatest, it was clearly most consistent of the three measurement methods.

The issue with RBC Mag is that its not strictly measuring IC Mag only but when you do use RBC just keep in mind that a number of times when I would test frankly low on the Exatest, my RBC Mag showed that I was in the lower half of the RBC Mag reference range... Thus the need to push your RBC Mag levels up into the upper tertile of the reference range to be more confident that's this reflects a decent level of IC mag.

My Serum mag always looked misleadingly fine ranging from 2.3 to 2.8 even when I was frankly low on both Exatest and RBC Mag and having lots of flippies.

I recommend for sure doing at least two Exatest, if not three, to get a good baseline idea of your mag stores and how well you respond to various forms of magnesium .. Then you can do follow up once you know your general range and correlate how RBC mag relates in your case and then use it most often for spot testing going forward.

Shannon



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2013 12:23PM by Shannon.

Given that low magnesium is endemic and all you can do for low mag is to supplement to the level of bowel tolerance, it makes sense to start supplementing mag and not wait for an Exatest.

______________
Lone paroxysmal vagal atrial fibrillation. Age 62, female, no risk factors. Autonomic instability since severe Paxil withdrawal in 2004, including extreme sensitivity to neuro-active drugs, supplements, foods. Monthly tachycardia started 1/11, happened only at night, during sleep, or when waking, bouts of 5-15 hours. Changed to afib about a year ago, same pattern. Frequency increased over last 6 months, apparently with sensitivity to more triggers. Ablation 6/27/13 by Steven Hao.

I fully agree Iatrogenia, no time like the present to get started and then do a baseline Exatest as soon as possible as well. It typically takes up to 6 months or more to start filling the tank in a depleted person as the vast majority of Afibbers surely are so starting now is not going to really skew the test results much in any event in the early going.

By all means start implementing the strategy now and get the numbers when you can. What counts most is getting a lid back on the bottle if possible.

Shannon

Who performs an exatest ? And if your not deficient and you start supplementing
Can you make things even worse? I have only had the typical serum mag test which read low end
Of normal? Can my primary give me an RBC mag test?

Joe

Joe:

I have a Holistic doctor and he performs the RBC test, he says that he has found the exatatest to be unreliable, he says that the serum test for Magnesium is useless. As I said, whatever test you have for mag., if you are found to be low then you probably are, doesn't matter which test you have run.

Liz

Iatrogenia,

I tested with the Exatest 9 years ago and my mag was very close to the bottom of normal. I subsequently chose to not test as the test was fairly expensive and I had to go to an integrative MD to get it done, adding to the cost. Since my system continues to accept ~3g/day, I doubt if I'd learn anything new by retesting.

I think Joe already mentioned that he tested low on a serum Mg test. That nearly guarantee's he'd test low on RBC and Exatest.

So agree with you, in his case I'd just start supplementing.

George

joey -- You really can't go wrong with supplementing mag, your body will tell you when you're taking too much -- with gut distress or diarrhea. (Excess magnesium is excreted through the gut, where it draws in water. This is why it's good for constipation.)

Start low and go slow to find your own personal tolerance level. I found initially I could handle only 50mg doses. I'm now up to around 400mg per day, in divided doses.

______________
Lone paroxysmal vagal atrial fibrillation. Age 62, female, no risk factors. Autonomic instability since severe Paxil withdrawal in 2004, including extreme sensitivity to neuro-active drugs, supplements, foods. Monthly tachycardia started 1/11, happened only at night, during sleep, or when waking, bouts of 5-15 hours. Changed to afib about a year ago, same pattern. Frequency increased over last 6 months, apparently with sensitivity to more triggers. Ablation 6/27/13 by Steven Hao.

Thanks everyone for the great advice! I am
Going to start the mag this week I will start with 100mg a day
And work from there. I am
Going to try and get most potassium through food intake

Joe

Hey joe, I'd start with 300 mg per day 3 x 100mg. if thats ok you can move it on up by 100 per day.

Adrian

HI Joe,

As noted above by several, if your are even close to the lower half of the serum reference range on Magnesium you are for sure frankly low on intracellular Magnesium. In addition those that experience a fair amount of anxiety are almost certainly low in magnesium as well. Magnesium isnt always a stand alone solution for anxiety but frequent anxiety typical has mag deficiency as a major component of the condition.

You are in no danger of making any thing worse. If you take too much too quickly you might get loose stools which is a signal to back off slightly on the dose and work slowly up from there.

Shannon

PS. consider trying Jigsaw Time released Magnesium Jigsaw Magnesium. It comes in 125mg caplets of Di-magnesium Malate and is an Albion chelated magnesium bound to malate. The time release feature and the easy to swallow small 125mg dosing make it ideal for titration and maintaining a better 24 hour effect when dosing spread out several times a day and before bed.

Build up slowly to at least 6 caplets/day which will give you 750mg a day and if you can slowly and gradually tolerate it move up to 9 caplets which is 1,000mg/day if you can maintain decent bowel tolerance.

You can also use topical magnesium oil as well , ( its not really an oil but feels oily due to its Mag chloride make up). This avoid much of the bowel tolerance issues and is often a better way to absorb greater percentage of magnesium. I have to use both in addition to biweekly now 4 gram IVs of Mag Sulfate within an IV Meyers Cocktails containly other vitamins like lasrge dose C adn B vitamins as well as IV glutathione.

I get these IVs every second Friday now and include the twice a month IV along with 825mg of Jigsaw oral Mag a day and twice a day topical Mag using 25 sprays during each of the two daily applications on my upper torso and inner thighs and behind the knees of the highly absorbable brand of topical Magnesium called 'Magnesium Infusion' by a company called 'Activation' ... this is a special 100% pure form of Magnesium Chloride Hexahydrate which is claimed to be significantly more absorptive than regular Magnesium Chloride oil.

It sure seems to work great for me and this combination is the only thing that has kept my Exatest readings in a relatively decent IC range. This Activation Mag Infusion spray also doesn't sting at all nor does it leave much of a sticky residue as some of the thicker topical magnesium oils do.

Spray the 25 sprays morning and evening after a shower and rub it in thoroughly and don't put on a shirt until it is dry to the touch which only takes a few minutes to absorb through the skin quickly.