Bigeminy, Taurine, PACs, oh my!!

Well, it has been two weeks since the ablation and my heart has had a bit more time to settle. I do feel better without the incessant Atrial Tachycardia. I do wish they had been able to get the left Atrial ectopy, though. I am currently wearing the 48 hr monitor. The taurine seems to be helping more than any of the other supplements.

After all is said and done, I have settled into permanent, almost incessant atrial bigeminy. It seems fairly symptomatic, especially with exercise or an increased heart rate. I'm not sure what the plan will be for that. I won't hear anything until my EP gets the monitor results (about a week or two). It leaves me short of breath, sometimes dizzy, and very winded, especially when my heart rate is up. The Bisoprolol helps but just slows it down, with no change in the bigeminy.

I lived with bigeminy for about 6-7 months in 2015. The thing I noticed is that after about 2-3 weeks my brain would start filtering it out and I noticed it less and less. But my problem was then it would stop for a week or so. That kind of reset my brain and I noticed it all over again when it restarted a week later. That pattern repeated for months. So you might be better off if it remains continuous.

What stopped it? Did you have any ill effects? I'm starting to adjust to it during the day, but nighttime is hard, and exercising seems more tough.

Thankfully, the taurine seems to tame it during the day, but nothing seems to stop it in the afternoon, evening.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2024 04:03AM by MeganMN.

It stopped entirely on its own. I never noticed any correlation with anything I did or didn't do.

Across patients, the one thing that is so important to our mental health when in and out of AF is feeling that we can stave it off if only we remember to do X, and not Y.

The thing I think helps me the most is making sure I get 7 hours of sleep. I know this is difficult, but when I don't get enough sleep, my PACs/Bigeminy will start up within a day or two or will increase in intensity. Is there anything that might help you get to sleep? Some food item or drink? Maybe remove something that is stressful? Or move a medication that makes you drowsy to the night or evening?

I triggered an afib episode with taurine once. Really angered my cardiologist. "You can have a stroke!" he said. I said I saw in an NIH article that it was good for the heart. "It's in energy drinks," he said. Everybody is different.

Thanks for the messages. I am sleeping mostly okay, buy am waking up again from the bigeminy and short runs of SVT. I'm not sure how to combat that. Maybe a sleeping remedy, but none of the meds are working to stop it as of yet. I could try the natural sleeping meds I've used before.

I think everyone here wishes that they had the answer that would help everyone else as well. For myself, I just keep tweaking things until it gets a little better or stops for a while. I did have a run of three weeks without noticing any PACs I thought I had the answer (for me), but I guess not. I just finished two weeks of every other day of PACs for 10 to 14 hours a day. It might help to keep a diary/journal of what you eat, drink, what time medicines are taken, what time they start/stop, anything you can think of really. See if you can find something that correlates to better conditions. I have a framework of things that help, it is not perfect but does keep it a little better under control. I take a lot of medications right now, and I know it helps, but I am not sure how much it helps. If I miss diltiazem my heart rate increases and shortly after that I start getting PACs. But I am on 240mg CD with not a lot of room for an increase. I developed PACs about 4ish months after my ablation. We have talked about increasing my carvedilol, but we haven't yet. Multaq, I am really not sure what to think on this, I am having PACs while on it. On the positive side, I haven't had any AFIB, so there is that. Just so you know, there are plenty of others that are going through similar struggles. Stay positive and keep fighting the good fight.