Wow…I went almost went an entire month without an episode! It just goes to show you how unpredictable atrial fibrillation is. I was having an episode consistently every week or two and out of the blue I go almost a month in between episodes. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. It’s been a wonderful break.
This one started the same as most of my episodes – at night while lying in bed. It was 1:25 a.m. I was reading my usual news apps on my iPhone and five minutes later my heart started pounding. I knew what was happening so I immediately sat up in bed. I’ve had a few “afib runs” before like that and I have been able to prevent a full-fledged attack by simply sitting up for a few minutes. This wasn’t going to be one of those times. I sat up in bed for about 20 minutes reading the news and my heart just kept pounding away.
I was strangely calm about it. I guess part of me was just thankful that I was blessed with a four week break. I knew this moment would be coming sooner or later so I just took it in stride. I got up and grabbed my AliveCor monitor to confirm what I already knew:
I downed 300 mg of Flecainide and 240 mg of magnesium glycinate. I also lathered a tablespoon of magnesium gel all over my upper body. I’ve been using this gel for the past couple weeks as a way to get as much magnesium in my body as I can. You get 490 mg of elemental magnesium in one teaspoon so a tablespoon is 1,470 mg of magnesium. This stuff is super messy, however. I’ll write about it in a separate post but sufficed it to say, I had to take a shower 30 minutes after I applied it to wash it off.
I went downstairs and watched a bunch of TV shows I had recorded on the DVR. That’s one of the positives of having an afib episode. It gives me a chance to catch up on all of my shows! As I mentioned already, thirty minutes into my first TV show the magnesium gel had dried so I got up to take a shower to get it all off. When it dries, it leaves a white crust-like flaky layer on your skin. The shower was a bad idea. I like to take really hot showers and the heat made my heart work even harder so I felt worse for about an hour after the shower.
I spent the rest of the early morning hours in my chair watching TV. When I’m in afib, I can’t do anything other than watch TV. I can’t read. I can’t sleep. I can’t work on my computer. I can’t do anything as it’s just too hard to concentrate or relax when my heart is pounding out of my chest. Since my last episode took six hours before I converted I set my expectations accordingly. I figured I would be up until at least 7:30 a.m. That’s a lot of TV!
At 5 a.m. I was getting really tired so I went to bed to watch TV there. Can you guess what I watched? If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know – Family Guy! At one point I thought maybe I had converted so I took an EKG reading with my trusty AliveCor again:
Nope. I was still in full-fledged atrial fibrillation. At this point I started to get a little nervous. Even though I kept telling myself it would probably be 7:30 a.m. before I would be out of this, I wasn’t comfortable that I wasn’t making any progress on getting converted. My afib episode wasn’t any worse or any better than it was at 1:30 a.m. I continued to watch Family Guy.
Finally at 6:45 a.m. I had enough. I was just too tired to keep watching TV. I was exhausted. I popped .5 mg of Lorazepam, literally prayed to God to convert me in my sleep, shut off my light, and tried to go to sleep. It was super uncomfortable because no matter what position I was in I could hear and/or feel my heart pounding away erratically. I was so tired, however, I passed out. This was a first. I’ve never been able to sleep through an episode before.
When I woke up at noon, I was in NSR. What a relief. Even though this was a long episode, it was very manageable. It wasn’t as crippling as some of my episodes in the past. I wasn’t absolutely miserable. And when I got up to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water, I didn’t get faint or dizzy. It wasn’t exactly a picnic, but it wasn’t one of my episodes from hell. I was also just so grateful that I was given a reprieve from my constant episodes. I was happy that I got almost four full weeks without an episode and so it made it easier to deal with this latest one.
Possible Triggers
In hindsight, I think this atrial fibrillation episode was easy to predict. When I woke up Saturday morning I was tired – the kind of tired where I knew I was going to have to take a nap later in the day. There was also a lot of drama (translation STRESS) going on in our house. Let’s just say the kids were acting up so there was a lot of crying, yelling, and general chaos. And for whatever reason I was “on edge” all day as well as I was blowing up a lot. Every little thing was really irritating me so I was getting stressed out about everything.
Then at night I was having several PVCs or PACs on and off all night. They were so frequent that at times I thought maybe I was in afib. I knew I wasn’t because I know my heart. Whatever was going on it wasn’t afib.
A smart person would have read all of these signs and would have skipped the nightly cocktail and went to bed a little early. Not me. I never claim to be smart when it comes to my afib. Instead I ignored all the signs and didn’t have just one but two cocktails. I also proceeded to eat a bunch of food too because I was starving (I had a very light dinner). I also stayed up late as usual. I think I was getting cocky since I hadn’t had an episode in a month. I figured I was immune to another attack. I was wrong!
I’m just crossing my fingers and praying now that I can go another month – or at least 2-3 weeks – before my next episode. My ablation with Dr. Natale is scheduled for March 5th so I’m hoping to limit my attacks to no more than three before then.
Hi Travis,
Thank you for this blog. I used to have afib attacks everyday. Then I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism. Soon after I got my thyroid abated with rai. After that, the afib attacks stopped for a while. I began to take thyroid hormone replacement meds.
Last year I had to have my thyroid gland removed completely but soon after I started to have afib attacks almost exactly every two weeks at night during sleep. I learned to pin point when it is about to start. At the end of two weeks I would start feeling anxious and sense extra heartbeats before falling asleep. I tried to trick my body into not sleeping that night but I once I doze off the afib kicks in.
Today I got 50 mg of flecanaide as a pill-in-a-pocket. I have started to feel that afib is going to happen tonight so I am going to take it before afib starts to see if I can out smart it.
Jarrow Haw, Kirkman, (not kirkland), Taurine, Physiologics, ALC.
Travis, thought of you when I was looking into this site on chelation. http://www.immed.org/treatment%20considerations/07.24.09update/Ellithorpe.etal.Chpt14EDTA.pdf
On another note, my favorite Japanese Rest served up some food with MSG I think. Felt that chemical strain in body on ride home and at 1am woke up with a strong HB and HR 83 bpm. Downed 1000mg Haw, 1000 mg Taurine and 1000mg Acetyl L Carnitine, back to 63bpm in 15 min. Havent had that in a while.
James:
Thanks for sharing the PDF. Sorry to hear about your recent experience with MSG-laden food! Good to hear you were able to get things settled down with natural supplements. What specific brand and types of supplements do you take for hawthorn berry, taurine, and the acetyl l carnitine?
Travis
I bet from now until your ablation you wont get one AF episode. My heart works that way too – very erratic – sometimes I think it’s a food and then sometimes it happens for no rhyme or reason. I believe stress is the biggest factor.
Hey Mat! That’s funny you say that. My dad said the same thing – now that I have an ablation scheduled I’ll never have an episode. I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t have an episode before then but if I do, I’ll just roll with the punches. As for triggers, it varies for everyone and if you’ve read my posts, you’ll see a guy can go crazy trying to figure out what causes these damn episodes. I agree, however, that stress is a big one. It’s probably the main one for me too – along with poor sleep.
Travis
Travis, that cocktail looks like what Ive seen to treat Hyperthyroidism. Did he think your condition is thyroid related? I have HyPothyroid and treat with kelp/Iodine Lugol. I like that protocol. What did he think about ablations? Not wishing another episode for you but would be curious to see how that works.
I just havent felt the need for that much Mag. I could be getting it from other sources or built up some good stores. I think 600mg is great for you until you feel like its too much. Ive taken as much as 1200mg on rough days.
After I expressed to ND that all my episodes seemed to happen after I was feeling ill, out of sorts, flu like issue etc, he suggested the C, 2000mg twice daily. I have to tell you people are dropping like flies in the NE from all sorts of colds and flu, and knock on wood, Ive been the healthiest this winter than any other. C is basically a garbage collector in the body. Once again the RDA is ridiculously low as are most vitamins that were first labeled in the 40s by Pharma.
James:
No, we didn’t talk about my thyroid at all. Even if we did, I know that’s not the issue as I had my thyroid tested a while ago and everything was perfectly healthy. He didn’t have an opinion about the ablation one way or another. He seemed to be in more agreement with it than against it. He commented that for most afibbers an ablation is usually inevitable. Interestingly enough, I had a consultation call with another ND here in town and she was the same way. She seemed to think the ablation was a good idea. Most of the ND’s around here seem to be more “integrated” with conventional medicine than against it. I’ll keep you posted on how things work out with the current ND I’m working with.
Travis
P.S. I’ve been taking 2,000mg of vitamin C per day for years. I also take 6,000 IU of vitamin D. I haven’t been sick in a very long time. I don’t even get colds that much. When I do it lasts like 2 days.
Come to think of it, I never asked my ND his opinion on ablation, but my guess is if he didnt feel he could control mine and it was as frequent as yours, he would agree with it. I would not say its inevitable for all afibbers however. There are many that live with it with little interference into their old age. Some are still with conventional meds and choose not to be ablated. The good news is statistically ablations have greater success than not. For myself, I feel Im making more progress than I ever have over 5 years and Im getting older! Granted I did have twice the episodes this past year, but had never converted on my own and always dealt with premature beats for 4 years that have seemed to all but disappear.
How do you handle the D? I cant take it, nauseates me. The C I take as much as 6000 when I feel something coming on.
James:
I handle the vitamin D just fine. In fact, I can honestly say I have a very high tolerance for almost all vitamins and minerals. The only mineral I have a problem with is magnesium. The only form I can tolerate is glycinate and I can easily handle 1,000mg of that a day if necessary. For all other vitamins, including D, I could handle just about any dose I think. At one point I was taking 10,000 iu per day and didn’t notice a thing. It should also be pointed out that I have my vitamin D levels checked annually. I’m always hovering right around 50, which is about where you want to be for optimal health at least according to all the vitamin D gurus.
Travis
Travis, lets hope that works, I hope you found a good ND. Id like to know whats in that cocktail if you care to share, Im wondering now, if the Mag worked so well to get me back to NSR because it acted as a relaxant for my neck and shoulder muscles? I am down to the bare minimum on supplements now. Take 300mg mag at night, 4000mg C a day and 100mg Coq. and have almost zero pvc’s since working on my subluxation. I do have to add that last March I went into AF after a Chriro adjustment, and have not been back since. Not sure if its related, but Im seeking alternatives for neck. I would like to hear more about the vertebral artery danger with chriro adjustments. Yep, who the heck really knows!?
James:
That’s awesome to hear you’re taming those PVCs. I wish you continued success. Just curious, why the heavy dose of vitamin C? And the magnesium seems a little low. I’m pushing close to 600mg per day.
The cocktail my ND put together consists of these (I have no idea how much of each as he custom mixes all this stuff himself): lycopus, leonurus, Natrum Muriaticum (homeopathic). The protocol is for me to take 1,000mg of magnesium at the onset of afib along with 1 teaspoon of this cocktail and 1 teaspoon of this Hawthorn extract “jam.” I’m to repeat the cocktail and the hawthorn jam every 30 minutes. He said 90% of his afib patients will convert within a few hours of doing this. Again, I’m very skeptical of botanicals and homeopathy in general but who knows, maybe it actually works.
Travis
Travis, Agreed. Its not any one thing that triggers our condition, but any one of them can at any moment. I dont believe its solely associated with any one thing like drinking as much as what occurs in our systems due to drinking, eating, but I would put stress at the top of that list. Ive recently discovered an issue with my shoulder and neck area from an old whiplash accident. While being tested with different movements of my neck by a Neuromuscular doctor, I nearly went into AFib. I could feel my heart begin to pause when he had my neck in a certain position. After his adjustment on trigger tissues, For the next 2 weeks I ate and drank wine like my old days, took very little supplements, with absolutely no issues or PVCs. Who knows, it could be that simple.
James:
Wouldn’t that be nice if it really was that simple? Speaking of adjustments, I am working with a chiropractor right now – not for afib but for my back in general. It tends to get a little sore and stiff over time as I spend so many hours behind the computer. I’m also seeing a naturopathic doctor. You inspired me to give it a shot. He gave me some kind of botanical concoction that I can take when I go into afib. He says 90% of his afib patients are able to convert with this concoction without Flecainide or any drugs. I’m extremely skeptical but I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes. Hopefully I won’t have a chance to test it any time soon!
Travis
Travis, You give new meaning to “Trigger happy”!! Its human nature. We go along for a time and feel pretty good about ourselves, thinking, hey that fat slob I know is drinking and eating like a hog all the time without exercise, one or two and a bit decadent delights should be fine, right? But actually we find out we are truly different. Lets hope you make it to the finish line without another one. And after your ablation, I hope you dont change your lifestyle back to the old Travis. With that surgery you need to be sure to live as healthy as if you still have AF.
Hey James. I hope the New Year is treating you well. Ya, I’m kind of stubborn. I drink because it’s the one guilty pleasure I have left. I’ll hang on to that for as long as I can. I’m still not convinced that moderate drinking causes afib. I have a cocktail every night and I can go several days without an episode as I just proved. For me, I think it’s stress, lack of sleep, and what I eat that sets me off but who really knows.
Travis