Avoid AFIB more common during the Holidays....

Today's post:  Tuesday, 12-20-2016

AFIB (Atrial fibrillation….is a quivering or irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia) that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.)

You can feel lightheaded or dizzy or find it hard to keep your balance or even fall from AFIB.

AFIB is a nasty, quality of life ruiner. 

Worse, the standard medical treatment, “blood thinning” drugs, are harmful, unpleasant, and dangerous AND require extra doctor visits to keep adjusting the dose.

As we’ve posted before, this is an unneeded and less effective treatment than using natural ways to prevent excess blood clotting and much less effective than eating organic, fruit each day at preventing strokes. 

(Eating one or more pieces of organic fruit each day has been shown to prevent BOTH obstructive or ischemic strokes AND bleeding or hemorrhagic strokes AND reduces the death rate from all causes.)

But I got an email a bit less than a week ago from HSI noting that the alcoholic drinks in more than normal amounts and foods that tend to contain MSG are BOTH more likely in holiday feasts.

(A few days before that Medical News Today had the study that found that alcoholic drinks and MSG trigger or worsen AFIB)

So here’s a to do list to avoid or minimize AFIB with some notes on doing it at Holiday feasts.

1.  MSG & alcohol trigger AFIB

Avoid MSG as close to 100% of the time as possible. 

If a condiment or spice mix lists “spices” or even organic or natural “spices” they’ve added MSG.  Use only those that do NOT have “spices” on the label.  Organicville yellow mustard has none and tastes great.  Almost all its competitors DO list “spices”, contain MSG,  and will help make you fat, get AFIB or worse AFIB, and help cause high inflammation causing many diseases notably including Alzeimer’s disease.

Stuffing and gravy often included in Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey dinners are best avoided at other times 100% of the time to avoid the refined GMO hybrid wheat that fattens and causes so many diseases, notably heart disease and strokes.  So, since commercial cooks often also add MSG to stuffing and gravy too, only eat one small serving of each and stop.

(Of course if you are making these yourself, you can make them without wheat OR MSG!)

2.  Alcohol consumption at all levels can cause AFIB drink lightly or not at all. 

Binge drinking can trigger AFIB.  Minimize binge drinking both in frequency and in how many drinks at such occasions. 

(It also helps to drink before the dinner.  And if you drink during or after dinner limit your overall total to 4 or less.)

3.  Being fat also causes AFIB.  Use the health lifestyle and fasting to ensure you are lean.

4.  Stress and anger can trigger AFIB.  Find ways to lower stress and your body's over-reaction to it so the reaction turns off when the threat is over or you cannot fix it yet.  Learn ways to use anger but only when appropriate and how to defuse it when not appropriate.  Learn how to turn off the physical reactions of anger when the time they are needed is over.

(Taking DHA and omega 3 oils helps you be far less irritable, so be sure to do this BEFORE holiday dinners.  Then be proactively nice to everyone.  And anyone who is in a bad mood or often mean, simply stay away from them as much as you can.  Those actions can help cut stress at holiday dinners.)

5.  Inflammation may worsen AFIB and will make it more damaging to your heart. 

So follow the low inflammation lifestyle 100%:   Besides taking DHA and omega 3 oils each day, avoid high omega 6 foods as close to 100% of the time as possible.  Eat no hybrid wheat and very little other grains at all and none at least five days a week.  Either eat no fats from factory farmed animals or eat them after as close to 100 % of the fat is removed.  Never eat farmed fish!  And, eat more wild caught salmon, unsalted raw tree nuts, if you aren’t allergic, and eggs from hens fed on pasture.  Occasionally eat meat or poultry or dairy that is 100 % grass fed or pasture fed.  And, take or eat turmeric, curcumin, ginger, and boswellia.

6.  So will low intake of foods and supplements that prevent excessive or sudden blood clots.   Stay away totally from blood thinning drugs. They are almost impossible to manage safely.  They make many beneficial supplements dangerous to take.  And they have dreadful side effects.  They make lots of doctor visits mandatory and raise health care costs.

7.  Most of the problems related to AFIB and its extra blood clots are strokes.  Be totally sure to eat a serving a day or more of an organic fruit and consider taking fruit extract supplements such as bilberry, cherry, and cranberry.  Doing this slashes your risk of both ischemic strokes from clots triggered by AFIB AND hemorrhagic strokes caused by natural or drug clot preventers that have been overdone. 

Doing this also prevents death from all causes. 

AND, " For each 100-mg/day increase in magnesium intake, risk of stroke decreased by 7%."  (From a Medscape article on the cardiovascular benefits of a high magnesium intake.)

8.  Sleep apnea can trigger AFIB. 

So remove excess fat on your body. 

Exercise and eat the foods and take the supplements that increase the health and number of your mitochondria.  (Take ubiquinol, PQQ for sure and quercetin and rhodiola as well if you can. Eat an organic, nonstarchy cruciferous vegetable once a day or more. Do strength training and regular vigorous short cardio.)

Avoid alcohol after dinner or before bedtime. 

Follow protocols that make sound sleep at very regular times happen reliably. Sleep on your side only.  If needed try nasal strips. 

Do some vigorous exercise every morning even if it’s brief for 6 to 9 minutes.  That makes falling asleep much easier and tends to avoid waking at night too.

That set of things will give you better sleep and avoid many cases of apnea.

If still needed, get tested to see if you need further prevention.  (Neither the testing nor the preventive methods are very good.  And they are super expensive in their use of your time and in dollars.)

These actions will also directly reduce AFIB and reduce the damage from any you do get.

Here’s the article from HSI.  (They often follow their ad with a health article.  So whether their ad interests you or not, their emails are almost always worth opening.)

From: Health Sciences Institute   Sent: Wed, Dec 14, 2016 3:58 am

If you have Afib, the last thing you want to do is something that can trigger an episode.

Instead of being surrounded by family and friends this Christmas, that could land you in the ER… surrounded by doctors and nurses.

While an episode of this abnormal heart rhythm – one that can up your risk of a stroke -- can come on at any time, there may be two very important ways to avoid it.

One can be hidden in all sorts of holiday foods that seem totally innocent, unless you know what to look out for. And the other was a surprise even to the researchers of a new study.

Although stress and dehydration are well-known Afib triggers, many people who have this condition say they have no idea what can bring it on.

But while it's been known for some time that binge drinking can cause an attack, for the first time researchers are now saying that for some Afib patients, any amount of alcohol can do so as well. And that's especially true right now.

Because while it's the season to be jolly, it's also the season for a sleighful of stress, appropriately dubbed "holiday heart syndrome."

A new study from researchers at the Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia has found that (as was previously known) not only does heavy drinking cause an increase in Afib attacks, but so can "light-to-moderate" alcohol consumption.

And it can be much more than a one-time episode, too. This study – that the researchers called a "sobering" review – discovered that Afib patients who are sensitive to alcohol and continue to drink can progress into persistent Afib (where the heart doesn't convert back to a normal rhythm).

While a glass of wine or beer with dinner doesn't automatically mean that everyone with Afib will have an episode, the researchers said that it's "very likely that certain individuals" are prone to alcohol-induced Afib.

And the big, unanswered question is how to find out who they are before they land in the hospital.

Of course, the time to discover if you're one of them certainly isn't at that office party or big family get-together!

The second Afib trigger is something I've been warning you about for years now. It's none other than monosodium glutamate, or MSG.

And it isn't just me saying this. Even the American Heart Association had to admit that MSG is a "common trigger for Afib."

While MSG is something we should all avoid every day of the year, holiday foods in particular tend to be hotbeds of this dangerous additive.

Ones like stuffing, appetizers, gravy and the chicken or vegetable broth used to make it, soups – I could go on and on. But the bottom line here is that if you have Afib, you need to be super careful during the holidays.

Of course, MSG is one of those additives that's easier said than found. Even if you're the chief cook, it's difficult to know where it will pop up.

So here's what you need to do:

When eating out or at someone's house, be especially wary of stuffing, gravy and soup. These are the big three foods that MSG is most likely to be lurking in. Plus that, MSG in hot liquids, like soup, enter your bloodstream faster.

The simpler the food choices the better. Order the steak or a simple poached or grilled fish dish with lemon and butter (no sauce!) instead of highly seasoned entrees.

If you're cooking, aside from scanning ingredient labels for MSG, look out for its top aliases: anything "hydrolyzed" such as hydrolyzed protein, as well as soy protein, yeast extract and autolyzed yeast.

It may seem like a lot of trouble, but not nearly as much as spending the holidays in the hospital!