Another great video as i go through your library. Maybe talk about the minority of people with Afib. Life long athletes. I feel we are not talked about enough and lumped in with the other half of the U shaped curve of people who develop Afib. Overweight people with other comorbidities. If you already have a video on that please provide the link. Thanks
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve developed Afib. But remember, Afib is usually caused just be getting older. Once you hit your 50’s y/o 3% of people develop Afib. Once you hit your 60’s y/o it is 7%. Once you it hit your 70’s y/o, 12% have Afib. At 80’s y/o it is 20%, and by 90’s y/o 30% have Afib. So it is truly an age related disease. Also, the amount of time you are currently spending in AFib correlates with how progressed your AFib is and the stage. If you are going in and out of AFib and your episodes are less than 7 days at a time you are technically Paroxysmal AFib (early stage). If you are spending more than 7 days at at time in AFib you are Persistent AFib (mid stage). If you are in the Persistent stage spending more than a week at a time in AFib and you have been that way for more than a year then you are Longstanding Persistent AFib (late stage). And if you are spending 100% of the time in AFib and it doesn’t go to sleep at all by itself and it is too strong to get it to go back to sleep with an antiarrhythmic drug (AAD) or too much to get rid of it from the inside with an ablation then you are Permanent AFib (end-stage). (See my videos “Stages in Afib Explained” and “Ablation Techniques #1”) But even if you ever reach Permanent AFib stage, as long as you don’t have a clot and stroke from your AFib (the decision as to whether you need to be on a blood thinner to prevent this depends on your exact risk which in turn is based on your age and comorbid medical problems-see the video “Can AFib Cause a Stroke?”) you won’t directly die from AFib because it is not life threatening and mostly treated for symptoms. It’s just that once your Afib reaches permanent status and is always there, we no longer have the option of keeping it asleep with an antiarrhythmic med or getting rid of it from the inside with an AF ablation. All we can do at that point is slow the speed of it down with a “rate controlling” medication to a level where hopefully you can tolerate it. And remember the symptoms are usually palpitations depending on how fast the Afib is making your heart speed up to, and even if your Afib is well rate controlled it can still cause fatigue. But AFib basically just causes 3 problems. Problem #1: It wakes up and takes over control of your heart away from your normal source of electricity thereby causing your heart rate to speed up. While this is not directly life threatening because AFib will never make your heart speed up to a life threatening speed, it can cause symptoms depending on how fast your heart rates goes to and that is why there are multiple ways of treating symptoms: using a simple rate controlling medication to slow your heart rate down while in AFib (these meds are simple meds that don’t have any potential dangerous side effects but they aren’t doing much other than slowing the speed of your AFib down so that you can tolerate the symptoms a little better; versus using a stronger antiarrhythmic medication that potentially has stronger side effects to actually keep the AFib cells asleep so that you don’t keep going in and out of AFib and stay in normal rhythm feeling completely normal (these drugs don’t get rid of the AFib cells and they don’t keep you from forming more AFib cells as you get older, they simply “mask” your AFib cells until they can’t “mask” them any longer; versus, doing an AFib ablation where we do a special procedure to map the electrical cells inside your heart and try to destroy them from the inside in order to get rid of your AFib directly because they won’t wake up and take over control of your heart if they are gone (this procedure is never a permanent cure because AFib cells can grow back in other walls of the heart given time and the results are not “all or nothing;” Your results will vary depending on how many AFib cells you start out with, your “stage of progression,” and the skill of the operator doing your ablation). The ablation potentially can get you the longest lasting results but involves the most risk upfront (the risks of doing a procedure) whereas the rate controlling meds don’t even get you out of AFib so get you the least results but are the least risky treatment option. See my videos “4 Basic Facts About AFib”, “How Do I Treat the Symptoms of AFib?”, and “Catheter Ablation in AFib Part 1 & 2.” Problem #2: AFib can lead to a stroke. Every time you go in and out of AFib there is a small 3-6% chance that a small clot can form in your heart that if it does so can then break loose, float out of your heart, float up to your brain, cut off blood supply to your brain and cause a stroke. That is why most people who have AFib are placed on a powerful blood thinner in order to reduce the risk of this to less than 1% (not zero but close). However, some people have difficulty being on a powerful blood thinner either because of bleeding issues or because they fall a lot and could hit their head and bleed into their head. For these people a Watchman device can be implanted to get them off their blood thinner. We found out that 90% of the clots that form in the left upper chamber of your heart where Afib is, forms in a little pouch structure called the Left Atrial Appendage. The Watchman device closes off this structure so that any clots that form in it can’t get out to cause a stroke. But putting a Watchman in won’t necessarily protect you against developing a clot and stroke better than a blood thinner because 10% of clots can form outside that Left Atrial Appendage structure, and a blood thinner can prevent clots from forming anywhere in that chamber not just the Appendage. So I would say protecting against clots and strokes is best with a blood thinner (less than 1%), and second best with a Watchman (maybe 1-2% risk). See my video “Watchman in AFib Explained.” Problem #3: AFib is primarily caused by aging and getting older. Once you develop AFib cells in the walls of your heart that are starting to wake up, every year you get older these cells keep growing and spreading and the more of these you have, the more walls they’ve spread to, the stronger they become, the more they want to be awake, and the less they go to sleep. Eventually you can reach a stage where you have enough AFib cells/sources where they are awake 100% and at that point we can’t put them back to sleep or get rid of them and your AFib will be 100% permanently awake from that point forwards. But the good news is that even if you reach that point you will never die from AFib because it is not directly life threatening. As long as you don’t have a clot and stroke from it you will live just as long as everyone else. Please see my videos on “What Causes AFib?” and “Stages of AFib Explained.” I hope this helps!
Good information - I have had both and luckily they have been correctly diagnosed from ECGs read by electrocardiologists. I have also been told that Atrial Flutter is much more likely to be "cured" by an ablation than is Afib.
Yes, atrial flutter is a "loop" circuit of electricity going around areas of scar. To break this circuit one needs to map it then do a little bit of cauterization to "fill in the gap" between scar so the "loop of electricity" is broken. This is curative if done properly. However, AFib is comprised of individual cluster of abnormal cells that are generating abnormal electrical signals. These can be found and destroyed, but as one ages these AFib cells continue to grow and proliferate in the heart walls so that is why AFib is never permanently cured because even when you get them all they can potentially grow back in areas we didn't ablate.
So much enlightenment…thank you. I think I have atrial flutter, I hope the cardiologist realizes that when doing the ablation, what are the chances they will know the difference. I’m panicking now since going to get an ablation and not sure what exactly I’m going to get.
Don't worry. As Electrophysiologists, during an ablation we have electrical catheters touching the inside of the heart walls and recording the electricity and displaying them on giant computer monitors so we can see and map where the electricity is coming from within the heart. That is how we home in on the abnormal rhythms and then destroy them using various energy sources. Atrial Flutter has a different mechanism than AFib and a competent Electrophysiologist can tell the difference. Often patients have both AFib and Atrial Flutter and both need to be gotten rid of during the ablation. In general, Atrial Flutter is easier to ablate than Atrial Fibrillation.
My understanding of the ablation procedure is that it places an impassable stockade or coffer dam, if that makes sense for those who know what the words mean, around the re-entrant focus where the spurious electrical impulse enters the atrial endothelium and causes the atrial wall to contract as the wave of electricity propagates across the endothelium. So, my understanding is that the ablation does not destroy the extra cells, but blocks their issue of electricity from spreading outward, whether from the coronary sinus, the pulmonary vein ostia, the septum, or even from the left atrial appendage. That is to say that, if the outcomes of my two ablations were to somehow be undone, I would immediately begin fibrillating once again because those extra cells are still there, still firing, but what they send out is dammed by the RF ablation lesions that heal and create scar tissue over which the signals cannot travel. No signal, no fibrillation.
amazing how misimformed you are...fainting is bc of low blood pressure,and that can kill u...we hope to cure this bodies afib with a zero carb diet like Carnivore...whaich has been proven the best diet to cure the human body.
I appreciate your feedback. You certainly have the right to disagree with me, but I find it unclear from your comments what specifically I am misinformed about. While it is true that fainting (loss of consciousness, syncope) is due to low blood pressure, not all causes of fainting are life threatening or will kill you. It depends the specific cause of the low blood pressure and how low your pressure goes to. For example, vasovagal syncope, also known as “the common faint,” is when someone sees blood or needles, feels nauseated, cold, clammy, sweaty, then they get lightheaded, briefly lose consciousness, then wake up fine. This is due to an oversensitive autonomic nervous system where the person initially feels scared from seeing the blood and needles, then their heart rate and blood pressure temporarily increases, but then their body thinks it is overdoing it and so it sends out parasympathetic stimulation to transiently drop the heart rate and blood pressure enough where the person briefly loses consciousness. Then the body reverses itself and raises the blood pressure and heart rate and the episode is over. In these situations the systolic blood pressure (SBP) may drop to 70-90mmHg whereas normal is 110-130mmHg. Contrast this with my discussion of a directly dangerous life threatening abnormal heart rhythm such as the rhythms that originate in the ventricles, the bottom chambers of the heart. Examples of these rhythms are “Ventricular Tachycardia, Ventricular Flutter, and Ventricular Fibrillation.” These rhythms can take over control of your heart and and make your heart rate speed up to a life threatening speed of over 300bpm. At this speed your heart is beating too fast to effectively pump blood because there isn’t enough time to fill up in-between heart beats so the blood pressure drops to below 60mmHg which isn’t enough to perfuse the brain and other organs of the body. This causes immediate loss of consciousness and death within 20-30 minutes without chest compressions and defibrillator shocks for resuscitation, and is called a cardiac arrest. Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial Flutter are not capable of making the heart rate go at life threatening speeds of over 300bpm and as such they are not abnormal heart rhythms that can cause a life threatening cardiac arrest event. Even in the cases where Afib or Aflutter speeds the heart rate up enough such that the blood pressure does drop enough to make the patient feel lightheaded, it is rare that the blood pressure gets low enough to cause full syncope/loss of consciousness. Secondly, while I appreciate that you believe in and perhaps have had success with a zero carb diet for losing weight, when it comes to Afib, studies have actually shown that a low-carb diet is associated with a higher rate of Afib. In a study sponsored by the NIH (National Institute of Health) where they looked at over 13,000 patients to see if there was a correlation between their diet and Afib, those patients who were on a low-carb diet actually had a higher incidence of Afib development compared with those with a higher carb diet. And lastly, I’m just curious: what exactly are you basing all of your comments and disagreements with me on? For example, everything I say on my videos and comment responses aren’t just my personal opinions. They are my opinions based on information I’ve gathered after completing four years of medical school, three years of Internal Medicine Residency, three years of a General Cardiology Fellowship, two years of subspecialty training in Cardiac Electrophysiology (all done at what I believe are still reputable institutions), passing a Board Certification Exam in both Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology upon completion of my Fellowships and every ten years thereafter, and experience as a practicing Cardiac Electrophysiologist for over twenty years. Now this certainly doesn’t mean that everything I say has to be correct or that I’m never wrong. On the contrary, people are entitled to listen to what I have to say and agree or disagree as they see fit. But I am under no illusion that the only reason anyone is even bothering to listen to me at all on this topic is because of my listed training and experience and the belief that perhaps because of it I may have a more informed opinion on this topic than them. So again, I’m curious. Are your statements based on a specific expertise you have about Afib and Cardiac Arrhythmias, or are they merely personal opinions?
@@afibeducation educate yourself about afib, drugs and fainting and you should find your answer...Beta blockers would be the best place for u to start...
@@afibeducation this is another Great video about afib and how lifsyle effects and causes afib , but the right diet can cure afib as well...ruclips.net/video/mmjPv-1RirY/видео.htmlsi=L8rjYhsIDWoKE1D1
Well now that you mention it, I actually have over forty videos on my channel and website to provide education and answers about AFib, drugs, and fainting. Feel free to watch my videos “What is AFib?”, “How to Treat Symptoms of AFib,” and “Antiarrhythmic Medications in AFib Explained” for a start. And yes, beta blockers are where most general cardiologists start in treatment of AFib because it is a simple medication that has no dangerous side effects such that even a non-cardiologist can safely prescribe it and not run into any trouble. But it doesn’t do very much. It doesn’t actually keep one’s AFib cells from waking up like an antiarrhythmic medication or get rid of the Afib directly like an AFib ablation, but those treatment options require the expertise of a Cardiac Electrophysiologist. For those practicing 30 year old medicine, saying “Here is a simple beta blocker to slow your Afib rate down and just live with it” might be adequate, but I believe that the right thing to do nowadays is to explain and offer the entire range of treatment options currently available including Antiarrhythmic Medications for suppression or an AFib ablation to turn the patient’s Afib back to an earlier stage of progression or even to zero. Please feel free to watch my videos “Rate Controlling Medications in AFib Explained”, “How Do you Treat the Symptoms in AFib?” and “Catheter Ablation in AFib Explained.” Thank you for giving your personal opinions on this subject.
I watched the video you linked to and I agree with Dr. Mandrola, who is a fellow cardiac electrophysiologist. Things like poorly controlled diabetes or being overweight can definitely cause or progress existing AFib. Although I find it interesting that at no point does he say that the right diet can cure AFib which you are asserting. But while there are many factors that contribute to Afib that can be improved with lifestyle changes such as high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, and being too sedentary, the truth is that Afib is also caused just by getting older. This is why statistically once you hit your 50’s y/o 3% of people have Afib. Once you hit your 60’s y/o it is 7%. Once you it hit your 70’s y/o, 12% have Afib. At 80’s y/o it is 20%, and by 90’s y/o 30% have Afib. So it is truly an age related disease. The analogy would be like heart disease; being overweight with a high cholesterol diet and hypertension and diabetes and smoking can cause a heart attack sooner but not doing these things doesn’t guarantee you will never have a heart attack as it could still occur just by getting older but at a much later age. And unfortunately, once you live long enough to develop Afib cells in the walls of your heart that start to randomly wake up, every year you get older the more Afib cells form on the walls of your heart. The more walls-worth of Afib you have the stronger it becomes, the more it wakes up, and the less it goes back to sleep resulting in you spending more and more time in AFib percentage-wise until it is eventually Permanent AFib which usually occurs after 10-15 years. And as mentioned there are things that can cause the AFib cells to grow and develop faster on top of just aging. These would be things like poorly controlled high blood pressure, untreated sleep apnea, poorly controlled diabetes, being overweight, and being too sedentary. So it is definitely possible that by controlling these risk factors one may not develop AFib or develop it at a much later age. Losing weight, even 10% of your current body weight, has been proven to not only slow the rate of progression of AFib, but can sometimes cause some remodeling of your heart walls such that your AFib may even regress to an earlier stage. Although trying to “reverse” your AFib back to zero is unlikely and the amount of regression is likely dependent on what stage of AFib you are currently at. Please see my videos on “Can I Prevent Afib?” and “Stages of AFib Explained.” Then there are the things that don't cause AFib cells to grow or progress directly but can wake them up more at any given stage of progression. This would include things like stimulants, stress, caffeine, and alcohol because of its direct toxic effects on the heart. Avoiding these agents will definitely decrease the amount of "triggered" AFib episodes, but whatever stage of progression of AFib you are currently at (early, mid, late) will determine how many AFib cells you have inside your heart presently and they can wake up randomly on their own even without a "trigger" with the more AFib cells you have on the more walls of that left upper chamber of the heart (the more advanced stage of AFib progression) leading to you having more AFib episodes and a greater percentage of time spent in AFib overall.
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Another great video as i go through your library. Maybe talk about the minority of people with Afib. Life long athletes. I feel we are not talked about enough and lumped in with the other half of the U shaped curve of people who develop Afib. Overweight people with other comorbidities. If you already have a video on that please provide the link. Thanks
Thank you very much doctor Lee.
I’m diagnosed with AFIB 5 years ago.
I’m sorry to hear that you’ve developed Afib. But remember, Afib is usually caused just be getting older. Once you hit your 50’s y/o 3% of people develop Afib. Once you hit your 60’s y/o it is 7%. Once you it hit your 70’s y/o, 12% have Afib. At 80’s y/o it is 20%, and by 90’s y/o 30% have Afib. So it is truly an age related disease. Also, the amount of time you are currently spending in AFib correlates with how progressed your AFib is and the stage. If you are going in and out of AFib and your episodes are less than 7 days at a time you are technically Paroxysmal AFib (early stage). If you are spending more than 7 days at at time in AFib you are Persistent AFib (mid stage). If you are in the Persistent stage spending more than a week at a time in AFib and you have been that way for more than a year then you are Longstanding Persistent AFib (late stage). And if you are spending 100% of the time in AFib and it doesn’t go to sleep at all by itself and it is too strong to get it to go back to sleep with an antiarrhythmic drug (AAD) or too much to get rid of it from the inside with an ablation then you are Permanent AFib (end-stage). (See my videos “Stages in Afib Explained” and “Ablation Techniques #1”) But even if you ever reach Permanent AFib stage, as long as you don’t have a clot and stroke from your AFib (the decision as to whether you need to be on a blood thinner to prevent this depends on your exact risk which in turn is based on your age and comorbid medical problems-see the video “Can AFib Cause a Stroke?”) you won’t directly die from AFib because it is not life threatening and mostly treated for symptoms. It’s just that once your Afib reaches permanent status and is always there, we no longer have the option of keeping it asleep with an antiarrhythmic med or getting rid of it from the inside with an AF ablation. All we can do at that point is slow the speed of it down with a “rate controlling” medication to a level where hopefully you can tolerate it. And remember the symptoms are usually palpitations depending on how fast the Afib is making your heart speed up to, and even if your Afib is well rate controlled it can still cause fatigue. But AFib basically just causes 3 problems. Problem #1: It wakes up and takes over control of your heart away from your normal source of electricity thereby causing your heart rate to speed up. While this is not directly life threatening because AFib will never make your heart speed up to a life threatening speed, it can cause symptoms depending on how fast your heart rates goes to and that is why there are multiple ways of treating symptoms: using a simple rate controlling medication to slow your heart rate down while in AFib (these meds are simple meds that don’t have any potential dangerous side effects but they aren’t doing much other than slowing the speed of your AFib down so that you can tolerate the symptoms a little better; versus using a stronger antiarrhythmic medication that potentially has stronger side effects to actually keep the AFib cells asleep so that you don’t keep going in and out of AFib and stay in normal rhythm feeling completely normal (these drugs don’t get rid of the AFib cells and they don’t keep you from forming more AFib cells as you get older, they simply “mask” your AFib cells until they can’t “mask” them any longer; versus, doing an AFib ablation where we do a special procedure to map the electrical cells inside your heart and try to destroy them from the inside in order to get rid of your AFib directly because they won’t wake up and take over control of your heart if they are gone (this procedure is never a permanent cure because AFib cells can grow back in other walls of the heart given time and the results are not “all or nothing;” Your results will vary depending on how many AFib cells you start out with, your “stage of progression,” and the skill of the operator doing your ablation). The ablation potentially can get you the longest lasting results but involves the most risk upfront (the risks of doing a procedure) whereas the rate controlling meds don’t even get you out of AFib so get you the least results but are the least risky treatment option. See my videos “4 Basic Facts About AFib”, “How Do I Treat the Symptoms of AFib?”, and “Catheter Ablation in AFib Part 1 & 2.” Problem #2: AFib can lead to a stroke. Every time you go in and out of AFib there is a small 3-6% chance that a small clot can form in your heart that if it does so can then break loose, float out of your heart, float up to your brain, cut off blood supply to your brain and cause a stroke. That is why most people who have AFib are placed on a powerful blood thinner in order to reduce the risk of this to less than 1% (not zero but close). However, some people have difficulty being on a powerful blood thinner either because of bleeding issues or because they fall a lot and could hit their head and bleed into their head. For these people a Watchman device can be implanted to get them off their blood thinner. We found out that 90% of the clots that form in the left upper chamber of your heart where Afib is, forms in a little pouch structure called the Left Atrial Appendage. The Watchman device closes off this structure so that any clots that form in it can’t get out to cause a stroke. But putting a Watchman in won’t necessarily protect you against developing a clot and stroke better than a blood thinner because 10% of clots can form outside that Left Atrial Appendage structure, and a blood thinner can prevent clots from forming anywhere in that chamber not just the Appendage. So I would say protecting against clots and strokes is best with a blood thinner (less than 1%), and second best with a Watchman (maybe 1-2% risk). See my video “Watchman in AFib Explained.” Problem #3: AFib is primarily caused by aging and getting older. Once you develop AFib cells in the walls of your heart that are starting to wake up, every year you get older these cells keep growing and spreading and the more of these you have, the more walls they’ve spread to, the stronger they become, the more they want to be awake, and the less they go to sleep. Eventually you can reach a stage where you have enough AFib cells/sources where they are awake 100% and at that point we can’t put them back to sleep or get rid of them and your AFib will be 100% permanently awake from that point forwards. But the good news is that even if you reach that point you will never die from AFib because it is not directly life threatening. As long as you don’t have a clot and stroke from it you will live just as long as everyone else. Please see my videos on “What Causes AFib?” and “Stages of AFib Explained.” I hope this helps!
Good information - I have had both and luckily they have been correctly diagnosed from ECGs read by electrocardiologists. I have also been told that Atrial Flutter is much more likely to be "cured" by an ablation than is Afib.
Yes, atrial flutter is a "loop" circuit of electricity going around areas of scar. To break this circuit one needs to map it then do a little bit of cauterization to "fill in the gap" between scar so the "loop of electricity" is broken. This is curative if done properly. However, AFib is comprised of individual cluster of abnormal cells that are generating abnormal electrical signals. These can be found and destroyed, but as one ages these AFib cells continue to grow and proliferate in the heart walls so that is why AFib is never permanently cured because even when you get them all they can potentially grow back in areas we didn't ablate.
So much enlightenment…thank you. I think I have atrial flutter, I hope the cardiologist realizes that when doing the ablation, what are the chances they will know the difference. I’m panicking now since going to get an ablation and not sure what exactly I’m going to get.
Don't worry. As Electrophysiologists, during an ablation we have electrical catheters touching the inside of the heart walls and recording the electricity and displaying them on giant computer monitors so we can see and map where the electricity is coming from within the heart. That is how we home in on the abnormal rhythms and then destroy them using various energy sources. Atrial Flutter has a different mechanism than AFib and a competent Electrophysiologist can tell the difference. Often patients have both AFib and Atrial Flutter and both need to be gotten rid of during the ablation. In general, Atrial Flutter is easier to ablate than Atrial Fibrillation.
Thank you for the peace of mind. Would have loved to get my ablation by you but we are in completely different states/cities.
My understanding of the ablation procedure is that it places an impassable stockade or coffer dam, if that makes sense for those who know what the words mean, around the re-entrant focus where the spurious electrical impulse enters the atrial endothelium and causes the atrial wall to contract as the wave of electricity propagates across the endothelium. So, my understanding is that the ablation does not destroy the extra cells, but blocks their issue of electricity from spreading outward, whether from the coronary sinus, the pulmonary vein ostia, the septum, or even from the left atrial appendage. That is to say that, if the outcomes of my two ablations were to somehow be undone, I would immediately begin fibrillating once again because those extra cells are still there, still firing, but what they send out is dammed by the RF ablation lesions that heal and create scar tissue over which the signals cannot travel. No signal, no fibrillation.
amazing how misimformed you are...fainting is bc of low blood pressure,and that can kill u...we hope to cure this bodies afib with a zero carb diet like Carnivore...whaich has been proven the best diet to cure the human body.
I appreciate your feedback. You certainly have the right to disagree with me, but I find it unclear from your comments what specifically I am misinformed about. While it is true that fainting (loss of consciousness, syncope) is due to low blood pressure, not all causes of fainting are life threatening or will kill you. It depends the specific cause of the low blood pressure and how low your pressure goes to. For example, vasovagal syncope, also known as “the common faint,” is when someone sees blood or needles, feels nauseated, cold, clammy, sweaty, then they get lightheaded, briefly lose consciousness, then wake up fine. This is due to an oversensitive autonomic nervous system where the person initially feels scared from seeing the blood and needles, then their heart rate and blood pressure temporarily increases, but then their body thinks it is overdoing it and so it sends out parasympathetic stimulation to transiently drop the heart rate and blood pressure enough where the person briefly loses consciousness. Then the body reverses itself and raises the blood pressure and heart rate and the episode is over. In these situations the systolic blood pressure (SBP) may drop to 70-90mmHg whereas normal is 110-130mmHg. Contrast this with my discussion of a directly dangerous life threatening abnormal heart rhythm such as the rhythms that originate in the ventricles, the bottom chambers of the heart. Examples of these rhythms are “Ventricular Tachycardia, Ventricular Flutter, and Ventricular Fibrillation.” These rhythms can take over control of your heart and and make your heart rate speed up to a life threatening speed of over 300bpm. At this speed your heart is beating too fast to effectively pump blood because there isn’t enough time to fill up in-between heart beats so the blood pressure drops to below 60mmHg which isn’t enough to perfuse the brain and other organs of the body. This causes immediate loss of consciousness and death within 20-30 minutes without chest compressions and defibrillator shocks for resuscitation, and is called a cardiac arrest. Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial Flutter are not capable of making the heart rate go at life threatening speeds of over 300bpm and as such they are not abnormal heart rhythms that can cause a life threatening cardiac arrest event. Even in the cases where Afib or Aflutter speeds the heart rate up enough such that the blood pressure does drop enough to make the patient feel lightheaded, it is rare that the blood pressure gets low enough to cause full syncope/loss of consciousness. Secondly, while I appreciate that you believe in and perhaps have had success with a zero carb diet for losing weight, when it comes to Afib, studies have actually shown that a low-carb diet is associated with a higher rate of Afib. In a study sponsored by the NIH (National Institute of Health) where they looked at over 13,000 patients to see if there was a correlation between their diet and Afib, those patients who were on a low-carb diet actually had a higher incidence of Afib development compared with those with a higher carb diet. And lastly, I’m just curious: what exactly are you basing all of your comments and disagreements with me on? For example, everything I say on my videos and comment responses aren’t just my personal opinions. They are my opinions based on information I’ve gathered after completing four years of medical school, three years of Internal Medicine Residency, three years of a General Cardiology Fellowship, two years of subspecialty training in Cardiac Electrophysiology (all done at what I believe are still reputable institutions), passing a Board Certification Exam in both Cardiology and Cardiac Electrophysiology upon completion of my Fellowships and every ten years thereafter, and experience as a practicing Cardiac Electrophysiologist for over twenty years. Now this certainly doesn’t mean that everything I say has to be correct or that I’m never wrong. On the contrary, people are entitled to listen to what I have to say and agree or disagree as they see fit. But I am under no illusion that the only reason anyone is even bothering to listen to me at all on this topic is because of my listed training and experience and the belief that perhaps because of it I may have a more informed opinion on this topic than them. So again, I’m curious. Are your statements based on a specific expertise you have about Afib and Cardiac Arrhythmias, or are they merely personal opinions?
@@afibeducation educate yourself about afib, drugs and fainting and you should find your answer...Beta blockers would be the best place for u to start...
@@afibeducation this is another Great video about afib and how lifsyle effects and causes afib , but the right diet can cure afib as well...ruclips.net/video/mmjPv-1RirY/видео.htmlsi=L8rjYhsIDWoKE1D1
Well now that you mention it, I actually have over forty videos on my channel and website to provide education and answers about AFib, drugs, and fainting. Feel free to watch my videos “What is AFib?”, “How to Treat Symptoms of AFib,” and “Antiarrhythmic Medications in AFib Explained” for a start. And yes, beta blockers are where most general cardiologists start in treatment of AFib because it is a simple medication that has no dangerous side effects such that even a non-cardiologist can safely prescribe it and not run into any trouble. But it doesn’t do very much. It doesn’t actually keep one’s AFib cells from waking up like an antiarrhythmic medication or get rid of the Afib directly like an AFib ablation, but those treatment options require the expertise of a Cardiac Electrophysiologist. For those practicing 30 year old medicine, saying “Here is a simple beta blocker to slow your Afib rate down and just live with it” might be adequate, but I believe that the right thing to do nowadays is to explain and offer the entire range of treatment options currently available including Antiarrhythmic Medications for suppression or an AFib ablation to turn the patient’s Afib back to an earlier stage of progression or even to zero. Please feel free to watch my videos “Rate Controlling Medications in AFib Explained”, “How Do you Treat the Symptoms in AFib?” and “Catheter Ablation in AFib Explained.” Thank you for giving your personal opinions on this subject.
I watched the video you linked to and I agree with Dr. Mandrola, who is a fellow cardiac electrophysiologist. Things like poorly controlled diabetes or being overweight can definitely cause or progress existing AFib. Although I find it interesting that at no point does he say that the right diet can cure AFib which you are asserting. But while there are many factors that contribute to Afib that can be improved with lifestyle changes such as high blood pressure, diabetes, being overweight, and being too sedentary, the truth is that Afib is also caused just by getting older. This is why statistically once you hit your 50’s y/o 3% of people have Afib. Once you hit your 60’s y/o it is 7%. Once you it hit your 70’s y/o, 12% have Afib. At 80’s y/o it is 20%, and by 90’s y/o 30% have Afib. So it is truly an age related disease. The analogy would be like heart disease; being overweight with a high cholesterol diet and hypertension and diabetes and smoking can cause a heart attack sooner but not doing these things doesn’t guarantee you will never have a heart attack as it could still occur just by getting older but at a much later age. And unfortunately, once you live long enough to develop Afib cells in the walls of your heart that start to randomly wake up, every year you get older the more Afib cells form on the walls of your heart. The more walls-worth of Afib you have the stronger it becomes, the more it wakes up, and the less it goes back to sleep resulting in you spending more and more time in AFib percentage-wise until it is eventually Permanent AFib which usually occurs after 10-15 years. And as mentioned there are things that can cause the AFib cells to grow and develop faster on top of just aging. These would be things like poorly controlled high blood pressure, untreated sleep apnea, poorly controlled diabetes, being overweight, and being too sedentary. So it is definitely possible that by controlling these risk factors one may not develop AFib or develop it at a much later age. Losing weight, even 10% of your current body weight, has been proven to not only slow the rate of progression of AFib, but can sometimes cause some remodeling of your heart walls such that your AFib may even regress to an earlier stage. Although trying to “reverse” your AFib back to zero is unlikely and the amount of regression is likely dependent on what stage of AFib you are currently at. Please see my videos on “Can I Prevent Afib?” and “Stages of AFib Explained.” Then there are the things that don't cause AFib cells to grow or progress directly but can wake them up more at any given stage of progression. This would include things like stimulants, stress, caffeine, and alcohol because of its direct toxic effects on the heart. Avoiding these agents will definitely decrease the amount of "triggered" AFib episodes, but whatever stage of progression of AFib you are currently at (early, mid, late) will determine how many AFib cells you have inside your heart presently and they can wake up randomly on their own even without a "trigger" with the more AFib cells you have on the more walls of that left upper chamber of the heart (the more advanced stage of AFib progression) leading to you having more AFib episodes and a greater percentage of time spent in AFib overall.