A new study has shed light on gender bias in diagnosing heart disease, which may apply to diagnosis of atrial fibrillation in women as well.
Read: Why Atrial Fibrillation May Be Missed More in Women
After reading the article, please come back here to the Atrial Fibrillation Blog to add your comments and experiences.
I recently wrote Olympic Athlete Nicola Coles Fights Atrial Fibrillation about the New Zealand rower who experienced atrial fibrillation during her final training for Beijing.
You may have wondered if Nicola’s afib impacted her during the Olympics. You’ll find the answer in the updated story:
Nicola Coles and Other Olympic Athletes Fight Atrial Fibrillation
Just scan about halfway down the page to find the update.
Stress reduction through heart coherence, by Vreni Gurd, is great food for thought for anyone dealing with stress, especially for those with atrial fibrillation triggered by stress.
Some interesting comments from the article:
The brain and the heart are connected via the autonomic peripheral nervous system, which is not under conscious control and regulates organ function.
The sympathetic branch (fight or flight), raises heart rate, blood pressure etc. whereas the parasympathetic branch slows heart rate, lowers blood pressure etc. The goal for optimal health is to have the two branches balance each other.
So, learning how to control the heart can make a huge difference in our ability to come to peace with the emotional brain.
These ideas come from a book, The Instinct to Heal - Curing Depression, Anxiety, and Stress without Drugs and without Talk Therapy, by David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., PhD
Gurd concludes:
It is said that we are happiest when we follow our heart, so learning to hear what our heart is telling us can be very valuable indeed.
Amen. In my most popular speech and signature story, Hear Your Heart, I talk about how hearing your heart can actually save your life. It saved mine.
Do you have a story about hearing your heart?
Whether or not you have atrial fibrillation, stress isn’t good for you.
We’ve all had e-mail disasters, and they are stressful. I had one earlier this year. A writer for MSNBC.com recently had her own e-mail disaster, but as I shared my experience, she realized that there is life after e-mail disaster.
She wrote up my experience at MSNBC.com in Hell Is Losing Your E-mail Address. Here’s the backstory behind it, including what saved us and my health.
I love the Olympics, and find myself staying up half the night watching them. Yes, I know it’s bad, but it’s only for a short while. I found myself transfixed the other night by the women’s gymnastics competition. They were so incredibly graceful, and yet so powerful, too.
Not being athletic myself, I find this level of athleticism amazing. But being athletic can be a problem, too, when it leads to atrial fibrillation.
The latest story on StopAfib.org is about Nicola Coles, an Olympic athlete competing in Beijing, who stopped by the Atrial Fibrillation Blog recently while struggling with her afib…here’s the story:
Nicola Coles and Other Olympic Athletes Fight Atrial Fibrillation
If you’re a Blackberry addict or a stress junkie, which can contribute to atrial fibrillation, you may be interested in this new article in which Mellanie True Hills, CEO of StopAfib.org, was quoted.
Mellanie True Hills quoted at FOXBusiness.com
P.S. A reader just sent this additional link for Blackbery addicts:
Texting and walking is bad for your health, emergency-room doctors say
So texting can kill, too.
Since the shocking death of political commentator Tim Russert a few days ago, we have seen a huge outpouring of love and respect for this man who was so admired. I admired him, too, but this post is not about what his life taught us, but about what his death taught us.
Many of us with atrial fibrillation also have heart disease. Even those with lone atrial fibrillation may be at risk for heart disease. Thus this story hits close to home for many of us even though it’s not about atrial fibrillation.
We were shocked that Tim Russert was taken from us at age 58. Why, and how could that happen to one so young? Why couldn’t he have been saved?
While heart attack symptoms for men are usually overt, and for women subtle, there are some men for whom the symptoms are subtle as well. So for many of us, a heart attack is the first recognizable symptom. He may have had subtle symptoms that could have saved him had they been recognized and acted on in time—that’s how I had a different outcome—but maybe not as it’s not always possible.
We’ve since heard from Tim’s doctor that an autopsy showed that he had coronary artery disease and an enlarged heart, which is often a by-product of the heart having to work too hard. A cholesterol plaque ruptured an artery, caused a clot, and led to his death.
His coronary artery disease was being treated with medication and exercise, but medication doesn’t generally reverse significant heart disease and you have to question whether he was able to find time to exercise with his intense job.
He had just had a good stress test, too. Of course, passing a stress test is no guarantee of good heart health—it’s a reasonable screening test, but it’s only accurate at indicating heart disease in about 2/3 of men and only 1/3 of women.
Interestingly, Tim had just come back from a trip to Italy with his family to celebrate son Luke’s college graduation. Some doctor blogs have suggested this as a possible source of a clot. This hit home for me because my very first episode of atrial fibrillation was just a few days after my own long flight back from Italy. I had artery clots (not vein clots from “economy class syndrome”) and a close call with stroke. Tim’s trip to Italy could have played a role.
To me it seems that Tim’s intensity and relentlessly high standards drove him to literally work himself to death, the same as what almost happened to me. His colleague, Tom Brokaw, said, “He worked to the point of exhaustion so many weeks.” That sure sounds familiar.
It didn’t help that his role in “Meet the Press” was to confront. And the media business is stressful—always on deadline and always trying to scoop the other media. The stress on Tim’s face told us that he was a heart attack waiting to happen.
Is Tim Russert the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the media? There are so many heart attacks just waiting to happen there. In one particularly heated Fox News debate about immigration, Bill O’Reilly was so angry that the veins on his face popped out—I thought he would have a heart attack or stroke right there. His sparring partner, Geraldo Rivera, appeared equally angry and at risk. Come on, guys, take it easy! It’s not worth a heart attack!
The media isn’t the only occupation at risk—there are many other high-stress occupations as well.
What about you? Will this be a reality check for you? If you need to, will you make changes that will save your own life?
Heart attacks can be prevented. Eating right, exercising, managing the insidious stress that hijacks healthy habits, getting enough sleep, and taking proactive control of your health—the HEART Program’s five simple steps—saved my life and could have saved Tim’s, too.
If you need help, there are many books out there (including my own). Just do something to save your own life.
It was so easy to like and admire Tim, and he really made us think. He was always influencing and teaching us. May he influence and teach us in death just as he did in life.
Atrial fibrillation is so sneaky. So is afib really stress in disguise? Afib seems to sneak up on you when you least expect it and you wonder “where did that come from?” It’s hard to pin down an atrial fibrillation cause or trigger when it’s different every time.
For some, it’s triggered by alcohol or caffeine. For others, by certain types of foods or food additives. For some, it may come on during exercise or from something as simple as bending over. For still others, eating late or sleeping on the left side triggers it. It varies all across the board.
In medical information you rarely see mention of stress causing afib, but I think that stress is a huge contributor. Of the patients I’ve interviewed, about 3/4 said that stress was a huge component in bringing on their afib episodes.
Stress certainly could be a factor that leads us to indulge in alcohol, caffeine, or certain foods. But is the food the cause, or is the stress the actual root cause?
Here’s a short video clip of what triggered my afib:
Mellanie True Hills talks about what triggered her atrial fibrillation
We know that the numbers of folks having afib is growing exponentially, which is generally chalked up to Baby Boomers hitting their 60s. But I also see so many younger folks struggling with afib and wonder if the stress epidemic that’s due to our 24/7 lifestyles is causing an afib epidemic, too.
What do you think? Does stress trigger afib for you?
