Aloha fibbers,

There have been a lot of posts on the general form about vitamin D in avoidance of the Covid.
Here’s a new slant on the benefits of vitamin D in vagally mediated LAF.

A recent article (Apr 2020)
Physical Activity and Atrial Fibrillation Risk: It's Complicated; and Sex Is Critical
“Prominent among the underlying mechanisms is the engagement of inflammatory pathways like that associated with tumour necrosis factor-a (TNF-α).10,11 These systems activate profibrotic signaling that is responsible for atrial structural remodeling with intense exercise; the fibrosis-promotion and AF-substrate enhancement can be prevented by interventions that block TNF-α action.10,11.”
[academic.oup.com]

Vitamin D also inhibits TNF-α
Vitamin D Decreases NFkappaB Activity by Increasing IkappaBalpha Levels
[pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]
Serum TNF-α concentrations are negatively correlated with serum 25(OH)D concentrations in healthy women
[journal-inflammation.biomedcentral.com]

So take your D

No toxicity below 30,000 IUs/day or 500 nmoles/L (200 ng/ml)

Know I know why I may had gone into AF after 7 months of a successful ablation. Maybe it was because I listened to my GP. I was taking 2000 units of D a day to help prevent my cancer from returning and he took a D test and said to hold off for 3 months because it was a tad high. I was approaching 2 months off of D when I went into AF.

Thanks for the article! I just took 1000 units

🤙🏽😎

My Wife’s Vit D levels were low at her Jan yearly physical. The Doctor put her on 50000 iu 1X a week for 12 weeks. In the 12th week, my wife started having over 25000 , PVCs, PACs a day.
It turned out to be a overload of Vitamin D. After 2 weeks of being off the Vitamin D bolo, Her arrhythmias started to decrease. She is fine now. Vitamin D has a long half life also.
Food for thought

Thanks PC! As I've posted, Dr. Gundry likes our 25(OH)D levels high - around 100 ng/mL. He also tests TNF-α. My last value in Nov 2019 was 1.9 pg/mL (goal <3.0). I've been an advocate of moderating exercise as I've previously posted.

Here is resized version of your graph below.



Note that those with darker skin have less 25(OH)D and need to work harder to have sufficient levels. Don't have the link handy, but read an intervention study on respiratory illness in the ICU & vitamin D showed that dosing daily was much more effective than dosing weekly for the same cumulative dose.

Thank you George.

Smackman, thank you for your post.

My comment on toxicity came from the following graph
[www.grassrootshealth.net]
But it looks like your wife’s problem might be more allergic in nature, as this is not a symptom of toxicity.
The appearance of the ectopics in the 12th week is rather curious. Perhaps it was a different preparation.
Vitamins A,D,E,K are all fat soluble and do accumulate in cells. This legitimately worries many people. That’s why I included the toxicity graph.
Jackie is the expert on this and perhaps she will comment.

The vast majority of vitamin D supplements are processed through lanolin (sheep), which has been implicated in many of these reactions. Google it. There is a vegan type of vitamin D that she might consider.
[www.amazon.com]

D is so important that this bears further investigation. Don’t give up!

Great info thanks PC. No accident how the BAME community in the US have such low D levels and are worst impacted by Covid-19.

Since the start of 2020 I've upped D as follows:

09.01.20 - baseline (first test) 29.2 ng/ml
30.01.20 - 47.2
17.02.20 - 52.8
05.05.20 - 70.4

10,000iu/day - EDIT that should be 20,000iu/day - for 8 to 12 days before each of the above tests. (Now taking 5000iu/day maintenance dose along with with 200ug K2 (MK7)).

Still get as many ectopics as ever (was hoping I might have the success in that regard like Steve Carr did, but not so for me) but - touching wood - no AF since Bordeaux index ablation Aug 2018. I still get a lot of ectopics and runs of ectopics (that really do come in all shapes and sizes!) but even the worst of them don't precipitate AF, so maybe the D is helping in this regard.

Covid-19 hardly made a dent in me at all when I had it in mid-March so the D definitely helped there for sure.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2020 09:21PM by mwcf.

Aloha mwcf,

Thank you for your encouraging post.

The benefits of D cannot be overstated. The list of maladies it addresses is long (the COVID, the flu, insulin resistance, Alzheimers, ..., basically any inflammatory process). And so many of us are deficient. I take 4000 to 5000 once a day with a meal, preferably with some fatty component.

To expand on my original post and your input:

TNFα (Tumor Necrosis Factor-Alpha) activates NF-κB (nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells), a protein complex that controls cytokine production amongst other activities and is highly pro inflammatory. Google it.

Just read the abstracts for these articles to get a feel for this.

“Inhibition of the NF-κB signaling pathway by the curcumin analog, 3,5-Bis(2-pyridinylmethylidene)-4-piperidone (EF31): anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties"
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

"NF-kappaB Signaling Pathways in Neurological Inflammation: A Mini Review"
[www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

After my two Bordeaux ablations (2005 for AF and 2010 for flutter) ectopics continued to occasionally announce their presence for me as well, despite plentiful Mg and K.

My latest experiment has been turmeric that contains curcumin. I sprinkle some turmeric powder into my apple juice, which also gives me some K. Call me weird but I like the aftertaste the turmeric creates.

Sometimes I feel like Edison, but instead of a search for a filament to ignite I'm searching for a supplement to extinguish. So far so good, but who knows. Curcumin might even slow my short term memory deterioration since plasticity is supposed to also improve (see above article). Hopefully I might remember what supplements I've already tried in the search to eliminate ectopics (ha-ha).

For some of us these ectopics are electrolytic in nature and for others it's inflammation or a combination.

As Jackie so frequently points out, it's biological individuality.

Good luck!

I'm a big fan of vitamin D and of doing things that reduce TNF-α (for example, my doc, Gundry's, clinical experience is that eliminating foods high in lectins that humans are sensitive to will reduce TNF-α).

However, from PC's link. [academic.oup.com]

"On the other hand, intense physical activity can produce adverse remodelling consequences that increase AF risk. Intense endurance training in animal models produces atrial fibrosis and dilatation, along with autonomic changes such as enhanced vagal tone that, in addition to causing the well-known slow heart rates of trained athletes, also promote the initiation of reentrant AF.8,9 Stopping training allows for some of the adverse effects (like the autonomic changes) to reverse, whereas others (like fibrosis and dilatation) recover much more slowly, if at all.9 Prominent among the underlying mechanisms is the engagement of inflammatory pathways like that associated with tumour necrosis factor-a (TNF-α).10,11 These systems activate profibrotic signaling that is responsible for atrial structural remodeling with intense exercise; the fibrosis-promotion and AF-substrate enhancement can be prevented by interventions that block TNF-α action.10,11."

It makes a lot of sense to me to moderate the activity "that is elevating TNF-α and produces atrial fibrosis and dilatation, along with autonomic changes such as enhanced vagal tone that, in addition to causing the well-known slow heart rates of trained athletes, also promote the initiation of reentrant AF." Then perhaps worry about interventions that block TNF-α action.

Reading the paper, there is is a large subset of folks who would benefit by getting up and being more fit. Then there is a much smaller group of the overfit (I was in this category) who would benefit from detraining.

By the way, in this MedCram lecture, they note and cite studies showing that a high fructose diet impairs the conversion of 25(OH)D to the active form.

Here is one rodent paper [journals.plos.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/14/2020 01:22AM by GeorgeN.

Aloha,
I posted these two graphs in the General Forum under COVID and Vitamin D, but it applies to LAF too.
The below charts are from this article.
[shazidamain.com] (June 15, 2020)

[shazidamain.com]


[shazidamain.com]

PC, MD:

Have you ever thought of, or do you know any literature talking about a link with VMLAF being triggered in part by acute hypocortisolism, or adrenal suppression?

Aloha Anti,
I have certainly heard of an excess of adrenal hormones causing adrenergic LAF.
Hans Larson, the creator of this website, suffered from this (his moniker was the uninvited guest) and wrote extensively about it.
[www.afibbers.org]
You should look at what Jackie has written on LAF and the gut connection, where she talks about adrenal insufficiency.
[afibbers.org]
Dr Lam, with whom I’ve exchanged emails, has written about adrenal fatigue and hypoglycemia. The latter is a well-known trigger for LAF.
[www.drlamcoaching.com]

Quote
PC, MD
Thank you George.
My Wife is not allergic to Vitamin D3. Her body could not tolerate 50000 iu a week for 12 weeks. There is no other answer for it.
Smackman, thank you for your post.

My comment on toxicity came from the following graph
[www.grassrootshealth.net]
But it looks like your wife’s problem might be more allergic in nature, as this is not a symptom of toxicity.
The appearance of the ectopics in the 12th week is rather curious. Perhaps it was a different preparation.
Vitamins A,D,E,K are all fat soluble and do accumulate in cells. This legitimately worries many people. That’s why I included the toxicity graph.
Jackie is the expert on this and perhaps she will comment.

The vast majority of vitamin D supplements are processed through lanolin (sheep), which has been implicated in many of these reactions. Google it. There is a vegan type of vitamin D that she might consider.
[www.amazon.com]

D is so important that this bears further investigation. Don’t give up!

Quote
PC, MD
Hi PC

Hey PC, I'm pinging you to look at Anti Fib's question here. Perhaps you can comment.

Hi smackman,
I continue to ponder your wife’s ectopic/vitamin D conundrum.
Activation of vitamin D in the body requires magnesium and thereby less is available for other needs.
If your wife is not supplementing with adequate magnesium during this acute increase in vitamin D intake, she might be getting the ectopics from low potassium. The gradient of potassium concentration between that inside the cell and outside the cell is around 30 to 1. Magnesium helps maintain this gradient.
[www.easy-immune-health.com]

According to my only source so far, Dr. Dean's Magnesium Miracle, Vitamin D facilitates Calcium absorption, and Ca blocks Mg from getting into the cells where it's needed. So as Stephen Carr has pointed out in his posts that when we are increasing vitamin D, we really need to eat a super LOW calcium diet. Calcium is everywhere, even in cinnamon!

I am a lurker that comes and goes from here but I noticed this thread and thought I would share an app my husband found called "d-minder". You use it when you go out in the sun to gauge how much Vit. D you are getting-- and if you are in the sun it goes straight in the bod. Of course my husband gets twice as much per minute because he takes his top off and I don't have a privacy fence.. so there's that. You also put in how well you tan and that sort of thing. I saw the graph above awhile ago... and started being more particular about remembering my D (And C and Zinc .. ). We both have iPhones so not sure if it is on other phones. It also gives peak times to go out during the day. I know some don't like to or can't go out in the sun so no worries- I'm just passing this along to those who are interested. be blessed.

Thank you Betty Lou,
That's a nice little app.
The video at the beginning is quite informative.
Thank you for further highlighting vitamin D.
Just today I read an article In the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) at [click.alerts.jamanetwork.com]
indicating that Vitamin D did not significantly decrease the development of depression. Every time I read an abstract of an article like this I immediately peruse the details. And again I was disappointed.
They only gave 2000 international units (not 4000 or 5000) and didn’t adjust for skin pigmentation, obesity, location, all of which would necessitate even higher dosage. I guess they think that SADS (seasonal affective disorder syndrome) is a myth.
This is just another example of the control of lame stream medicine by Big Pharma. Instead of so-called “evidence-based”, these articles should be referred to as “agenda driven”.
I reviewed another similarly inept article on vitamin D and COVID here (last post) again purporting no benefit in preventing.
[www.afibbers.org]