I have a haywire heart (apologies to Chris Case). Fortunately not a-fib. My SVT is now well controlled by medication, but it still shows up at races. Probably stress. Yesterday I was looking for something to listen to on my drive home and stumbled across episode 203 and that made me think about what Trevor shared about his heart in the last round table. I think it’s time for a show on this topic. Bring in Chris and Dr. Zinn was it? Authors on the Haywire Heart. How is athletic a-fib different from a-fib in the general population? New treatments. When should coaches insist on heart stress tests or other screening? Impact of long Covid, is any.
Hi Gary,
Really sorry to hear you’re dealing with similar issues! It’s no fun. But glad you have it under control.
We definitely need to do an “update” episode at some point. This is a topic we’re actually hoping to come back to from time to time since it impacts so many of our listeners.
We did do an episode covering the Haywire Heart. It was one of Chris’ first episodes - goes way back! If you’re interested and haven’t heard it yet, here’s the link: Too Much of a Good Thing? Heart Arrhythmias in Endurance Athletes - Fast Talk Laboratories
Thanks for sharing!
Trevor
Trevor,
I too had to deal with A-flutter/A-fib after a lifetime of endurance sports. am now largely/completely symptom free. if you are interested I can tell you how I did it. I was told I would always have Afib after my ablation for A-flutter. you can imagine the surprise when I did a follow up heart monitor ~ a year later and it was all gone at 64.
A couple posts here as well including my experience and others. I’m going on 5 years without any AFibs and am fitter than ever. I just have to be very careful with my intensity sometimes only doing 0-1 days a week if life gets to hectic
I underwent pulmonary vein ablation for paroxymal afib episodes that got worse as the years went on. The research I read then said if you had an otherwise healthy heart, the ablation procedure had higher success numbers. Never had one since, now 6 years ago.
One of the big issues with afib is a tendency for a mini circulatory pattern to develop in the left auricle, so that that blood does not go in and out as usual. That in turn can create a clot, which is why patients with afib have around a 5-6x higher risk, every thing else being equal, of a coagulative stroke.
I use to get the afibs lying on the couch at night watching TV. So I realized mine originated from a deep parasympathetic trigger, which I had read about.
So I would get on my LeMond yellow trainer back then, and ride not too hard but just hard enough to create a stronger sympathetic signal to the heart to overide the fibrillating one.
This only if I didn’t feel dizzy or weak. It worked over half the time. I got out of a number of afib attacks in less than 15 minutes.
Don’t try this at home…