1-3 min afib every day

I've been having small attacks 1-3 minutes at a time every day for the past 3 weeks or so. I keep a journal and usually attribute episodes to something I ate, but lately I'm wondering what's going on or if it's significant or should I be alarmed or what.

For instance I had one minute of afib at 1:30 this morning after lying back down. I'm careful to lie back down slowly and have my bed tilted up a bit. But it's not always during sleep time that I'm getting these mini episodes.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Is it unusual, bad, not important, or what?

How do you know it's afib?

But whether it is or not, I would find a good EP and get a monitor to wear for a week or so. If it's afib then it needs to be addressed because afib doesn't get better on its own.

Yes, AF is important because it signifies a disordered heart electrically. It tends, not absolutely, but so commonly that it's pretty much a given, to get worse over time. It goes typically from paroxysmal to persistent to permanent. Unfortunately, the heart tends to remodel itself eventually, and that includes changes to the substrate and to the structure, principally the mitral valve and the atrium walls that pump to spurt blood through that valve. The atrial walls thicken, and that is a step towards heart failure, a condition best avoided.

Atrial fibrillation won't kill you, but what it leads to could. So, initially at least, the protocol is to keep your heart's speed down when you ARE in AF, and that means a beta blocker...usually. Small doses at first, but over time, as the condition progresses, you'll almost certainly end up increasing the dose...always on advice, of course. Sometimes a small dose of an anti-arrhythmic drug helps, or even taking a small dose when the AF starts, like having a pill in the pocket that you carry around for when you need it.

I would urge you to get some professional care for this, get an official diagnosis if there isn't one, and then find a really good, in-demand, electrophysiologist and get on that person's good books for when you feel you might want to have an ablation to curb the arrhythmia. The wisdom is to get this done earlier rather than later because a disordered heart is more and more difficult to ablate successfully as it gets more and more remodeled and more and more cranky. Not to mention the structural changes that happen over many months.

I know what was causing the arrhythmia. I have a new trigger: ice water. Dehydration is a trigger of mine so I try to stay hydrated and got into the habit of ice water over the summer.

Yesterday I had quite a few sudden episodes of between 5 and 12 fast beats, SVTs I'd assume, plus two, one minute episodes of afib during the night. I get those from taking a drink or water and going to the bathroom. The water is cold because it's cold in my bedroom. Then when I go to lie back down the afib starts. I sit back up, both feet on the floor, and it's back to normal in 1-3 minutes.

Now that I'm pretty sure about what my latest problem is, I feel pretty good today.

A couple of thoughts. You might try hydrating early in the day & than back off later. Then you are less likely to need to get up at night. Secondly, if you wake up with a dry mouth or are thirsty, you may be breathing with your mouth open. This is dehydrating. A way to remedy this is mouth taping when you go to sleep. This is a search on mouth taping posts here: [www.afibbers.org]

That's actually pretty decent advice, George. For whatever reason, over time I have settled on just that practice. I drink a whole liter of tea between rising and about 1100 hrs each day, with some milk, and then have a coffee in the early afternoon. Apart from that, and some washing-down pill water, maybe some almond milk later in the evening, half a cup, I back off naturally from about coffee time onward. I never have to get up between going to bed and rising. Maybe twice in a year. As we age, our sleep is pretty much crap anyway, so anything you can do to stay asleep is a huge benefit.

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gloaming
That's actually pretty decent advice, George. For whatever reason, over time I have settled on just that practice. I drink a whole liter of tea between rising and about 1100 hrs each day, with some milk, and then have a coffee in the early afternoon. Apart from that, and some washing-down pill water, maybe some almond milk later in the evening, half a cup, I back off naturally from about coffee time onward. I never have to get up between going to bed and rising. Maybe twice in a year. As we age, our sleep is pretty much crap anyway, so anything you can do to stay asleep is a huge benefit.

One thing I noticed is (as long as we're functioning normally) that we awake first, then we've to go to the toilet. When we can't quickly get back to sleep, our body leaves the sleeping mode which keeps away the need to urinate.
The lighter the sleep, the more often the need may come.
When I'm camping, my sleep is not as good as usual. I may get up two or three times during the night.