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What are the top 10 things you can do to reduce your amount of atrial fibrillation?
So, when I think about things that people can do to reduce their atrial fibrillation, I think about things that slow down the progression of your atrial fibrillation and things that keep it from waking up, the so-called triggers. And I do see them as different because you can have remember the sources of aphib whether you call them triggers or sources or aphib cells. These are little areas in the walls of your left upper chamber of your heart that are waking up randomly electrically and they are fighting for control of your heart electrically from the normal source and then taking over control of your heart and making it speed up. This is what we are saying when we say you are under the control of an abnormal heart rhythm. These abnormal cells, aphib cells, sources, triggers, whatever you want to call them.
So, the problem with atrial fibrillation is it's one of the rhythms that progresses as you get older. So, as your heart walls age, these abnormal cells can grow more and more on different walls and almost like a spreading forest fire that gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The more of you have the more it wakes up the less it wants to go to sleep and the more time you spend under the control of that abnormal rhythm with rapid heart rates.
So the more time you spend in AIB, so if you say, okay, I want to slow down the progression. How do I make these cells grow slower or grow a lot less than before? Well, there are things that can do that. Then there are things that don't necessarily make the aphib cells grow or progress, but can wake them up. So if you only had a little bit of these aphib cells and it's not waking up that much because you just don't have that much yet. But you do certain things that trigger them awake, you can have a lot more episodes and it may seem like you're at a later stage of the atrial fibrillation than you really are.
So what are things that slow down the progression of atrial fibrillation? Well, there are modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors. The non-modifiable risk factors, things like getting older, the changes in your heart from that, or any genetic predispositions or uh structural heart issues, congenital. We're not going to really talk about that too much in this video. Those are the things you can't really do anything about. You can't stop yourself from getting older. I wish we could, but you can't. So, that's certain things.
But, what are the 10 modifiable common risk factors that you can do something about that will slow down the progression? And you need to think of this similar to like a blocked heart artery. People would come in and say, "Hey, it took me 10 years to block off my heart artery from 5% to 50% to 80 90% I finally cut off enough blood supply to have a heart attack." Well, if one of our plumber cardiologists opens up the blockage back down to zero, you want to keep that blockage from growing as slow as possible. You know that it can grow back and you know there are certain things you can do that will make it grow faster. Well, same kind of thing with atrial fibrillation. We talk about the things that cause stretching. Stretching of the walls of the heart. The more you stretch these this left upper chamber of your heart, the walls, the more these aphib cells grow.
So number one, poorly controlled high blood pressure. This is a very common problem. Lots of people have high blood pressure. And even though they may feel fine, it is causing problems. It is causing stretch of the heart walls. And as you stretch the heart walls over time, you form more of these aphib cells sources or triggers. And so it will grow and it will wake up more and more. Plus, it can cause a bunch of other things. And you definitely want to have high blood pressure controlled because if you don't, it's going to cause blockages in your heart arteries, causing heart attacks. It's going to cause blockages in your brain vessels, causing strokes. It can damage your kidneys, lots of things. So, poorly controlled high blood pressure, number one. Controlling that will definitely help slow down the progression of your atrial fibrillation.
Number two, sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a condition that lots of people have and don't know that they have. This is a condition where you don't breathe or stop breathing while you're sleeping and it disrupts your sleep. So, your breathing stops, you wake yourself up to breathe again and it causes tiredness, but it also causes a lot of pressure in your heart that can cause stretching of the walls of your heart over time. And just like high blood pressure, that can lead to more atrial fibrillation. And there are screening tests that are now available that your primary care doctor can order to check to see if you have sleep apnea. Common signs and symptoms would be heavily snore or your spouse says that they see you stop breathing or you feel tired even though getting a good night's rest. But this is something that is very common in people with atrial fibrillation causes progression of atrial fibrillation and treating it definitely helps.
Number three, being overweight. Being overweight puts a lot of stress on your heart over time and your heart and the rest of your organs have to deal with the extra weight. You have to move and carry around all that extra weight and it puts a lot of high pressure on your heart and in the chambers of your heart such that it also causes stretching of the walls of your heart and leads to atrial fibrillation. There have been studies that have shown that the closer you are to your ideal body weight, the less atrial fibrillation you have, the less it progresses. In fact, some studies have actually shown that if you lose even 10 or 20 pounds, you can actually cause some reversal or some remodeling of your heart walls where the dilation of the walls of the heart from being overweight actually can sometimes remodel and become less dilated, less stretched out. And you could actually reverse or reduce how much aphib you have. Now, it's unlikely that it's going to reduce or reverse it all the way to zero, but it definitely can make a big difference. And so, not only does it keep it from progressing, it can even reverse it a little bit. And so, the more you can lose weight, the better it will be for your atrial fibrillation.
Number four, diabetes. Poorly controlled diabetes is a big cause of inflammation in the walls of your heart. Diabetes is a common condition that people have where they don't produce enough insulin or their tissues are insulin resistant. So, it's hard to get blood sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells of your body. And so, by doing this, it actually causes lots of inflammation in the walls of your heart, which progresses or propagates the formation of more aphib cells. So if you do have diabetes, controlling your diabetes tightly and well can greatly slow down the progression of atrial fibrillation.
Number five, smoking. Smoking besides all the risk of cancer and emphyma and chronic obstructive lung disease, it also causes lots of inflammation throughout your body, especially in your heart. So smoking definitely causes inflammation in the walls of your heart and definitely progresses your atrialation. If you smoke, stopping smoking, not only will it reduce your risk of lung cancer, risk of emphyma, risk of heart disease, it will also slow down and reduce your risk of atrial fibrillation progression.
Number six, excessive alcohol intake. Now, alcohol can cause atrial fibrillation to progress a number of ways. First off, it has direct toxic effects. It causes lots of inflammation throughout your body, especially in the walls of your heart. And the inflammation can greatly accelerate the development of aphib cells. Plus, there are a lot of calories in alcohol. So, drinking lots of alcohol can also lead to weight gain, which as we said, weight gain puts a lot of stress on your heart. Pressures get higher inside the walls of your heart. And so, it stretches the walls and causes stretching dilation, which also causes more atrial cells. So alcohol can cause aphib both by stretching the walls of the heart by increasing pressure as well as generalized inflammation. So reducing or eliminating alcohol will definitely improve how much progression of your aphib. And alcohol can also trigger episodes of aphib. It doesn't just progress the cells, it also wakes up whatever cells you have in there. So you could be at an earlier stage of aphib, but you drink lots of alcohol. It could wake up more and seem like you're at a later stage. There's actually a condition called holiday heart. It's people who have very little atrial fibrillation, maybe tiny little bit of cells of aphib in the walls of their heart that aren't waking up very much on their own. And seems like mostly they're not in aphib, but then they binge drink alcohol over the weekend and they go into it for several hours and they show up in the emergency room overnight. They get the alcohol out of their system and then the aphib cells stop waking up and it seems like it's gone. So this would be an example of atrial fibrillation being triggered by excess alcohol intake both trigger a atrial fibrillation to wake up but it can also progress the aphib cells. It can do both.
Number seven, processed foods. Now it's hard with our western diet to avoid processed foods. There's just lots of foods that are unhealthy and very processed and they can cause generalized inflammation throughout your body especially your heart. Plus, if you try to eat more vegetables, fruits, things that are less processed and healthier for your body, it can also lead to weight loss, which as we said, being overweight greatly affects how much aid progresses. So, you can both lose weight and reduce the inflammation from your diet. So, overly processed foods definitely causes more atrial fibrillation progression.
Now let's turn our attention to the remaining causes of atrial fibrillation and these are more triggers of atrial fibrillation. So things that don't necessarily cause the aphib cells to grow and spread in the walls of your heart but can definitely wake up the aphib cells and wake up more episodes of aphib irregardless of what stage you're at.
Number eight would be stimulants. So atrial fibrillation will wake up with any type of stimulant. This can be both external stimulants such as coffee with caffeine, uh drugs, any type of stimulant. It can also be intrinsic stimulants such as thyroid disease. If you have an overactive thyroid or hyperyroidism, this is causing tremendous stimulation of your heart and your organs and it can actually trigger or wake up more episodes of EIB. So any kind of stimulant can definitely trigger you to more ephib. So avoiding power drinks, caffeine, chocolate, various other stimulants will definitely reduce how often your aphid wakes up.
Number nine, stress. Highly stressed lifestyles definitely propagate more atrial fibrillation. When you're stressed, it can wake up the aphib cells. It can lead to them developing more. And this is easier said than done, but trying to eat healthy, trying to relax, have a healthy work life balance, and also to avoid dehydration, drinking lots of fluids can definitely help trigger less of your atrial fibrillation episodes.
And then finally, number 10, being very sedentary and out of shape. Studies have shown that if you have two people with the same amount of atrial fibrillation and one person goes to the gym three times a week and does some cardiovascular exercise and is more healthy and the other person is very sedentary and doesn't exercise at all, the person is more sedentary will trigger more aphib cells to wake up more episodes and they will also tend to progress their aphib quicker. Plus, exercise is helpful in a lot of different ways. It can help your heart be more conditioned. It can help you lose weight. It can help many of your other medical problems. And it just helps your heart do better with what it's got. So, not only does it slow down the progression of atrial fibrillation and wake up less efficacy of atroofibrillation, it also is healthier and cause weight loss, which can reduce your atrial fibrillation and cause less stress and less stimulation, which also can reduce your atrial fibrillation.
So these would be the 10 things that people can do to not trigger their atrial fibrillation awake and not progress their atrial fibrillation. But remember, age alone can cause your atrial fibrillation to grow and progress to the next stages. But you can't do anything about getting older. But there are things you can do to make sure your atrial fibrillation progresses as slow as possible.
For everything atrial fibrillation related, please feel free to go to my website drscottle.com where you're going to find more resources and also can follow me on social media.