Heart Rhythm Conditions – Welcome to the group

This was a very helpful article. I am copying it off and giving to my doctor. I think he will find it useful to give to any patient who comes to him with this concern. I know he is busy, but this would help when he doesn't have time to explain this important information to his patient. Thank you for posting the link.

My dr wants to implant a device to track my heartbeat. I don’t notice the irregularities.

This is where you might wish to know more about what he/she knows. Obviously, something is amiss. Your heart is showing signs of an electrical disorder that is causing at least premature atrial complexes, maybe some supraventricular tachycardia, maybe some ventricular problems....and he/she thinks that you should have more frequent monitoring than what you can get with an office visit.

The device is commonly called a loop recorder. They are commonly used for short periods, sometimes longer when the need is great, to develop a continuous and lengthy data-set of one's cardiac electrical activity. They don't get implanted unless there is sufficient concern and urgency that not knowing their output might put you at unnecessary and unacceptable risk of mortality, or maybe only permanent heart damage.

The Holter monitor that used to be used, and may still be used in some places, hangs at the waist and is bulky. More recently I had a patch monitor that was literally a small patch on the chest that had wifi capability. I was prescribed one for a month (but only did two weeks).

Very little walking. Beats over 100-103

I am interested in your balance comment. I had a pacemaker implanted in 2016 due to irregular heart beat ( very low). I have been experiencing swings in BP from 130 down to 95 in a space of 20 min while sitting still. My balance has worsened and the flutter has increased. 6 mo ago I had 4 clots removed that decimated my left side strength. Any ideas?

Hi, @willired. With my stroke several years ago, I developed balance problems, but my medical team could not determine what brain functions were causing them. We reviewed whether the cause was muscular, visual, neural, or stress or some combination, but came to no precise conclusion. Instead, we decided to concentrate on physical conditioning and therapy to teach my body to walk again and respond to stimuli in the normal fashion from before my stroke. We also explored whether my hypertension, combined with the side effects of several drugs treating that, might be at fault. Since it might be what's still causing some balance issues, our focus has been on resolving that. We've made some progress in that, but surgery last year to remove most of my colon led to 40 pounds of muscle and fat loss, so my focus now has been to rebuild muscles. To some extent I've improved, as my balance is improving gradually, but at age 89, the rate of improvement may be too little to appreciate. My AFIB is asymptomatic so that's not a problem, and my BP stays up in the 140-150 range and heart rate is strong in the low 50s, protecting me against circulatory deficiencies that could affect my balance. My BP medications are more likely than reduced BP to cause me to get a little fuzzy. Hope you can get something useful out of my experience. Martin

Years ago I gave a seminar in church regarding nutrition. A man that came said his doctor had increased is BP meds two times and would have to again soon. He followed my advice, and in about two months, he took him off all meds and said he had the blood pressure of an 18 yr old. My guess is, you eat way too much meat and cheese and animal products and processed foods.

So that others are not misled by your "guess," @lindy9, my diet is nothing like you imagine, and my medication regimen has been developed with expert medical care over the past 50 years. Martin

Lindy, the same has been widely reported by credible people, including physicians treating nutritional defects and deficits, that eating more protein, including animal protein, has turned around the metabolic problems in people with insulin sensitivity and who were often obese or nearly so. What they did was to avoid ingesting carbohydrates of all kinds, including alcohol, sweets, root vegetables, and grains. Also included were pretty much all prepared and processed 'foods'. My own daughter was deemed to be in metabolic disorder and was declared Type II only two years ago, at age 45. She immediately restricted her intake of carbohydrates, took metformin under direction, and has escaped her Type II onset. She is being monitored, but needs no insulin supplementation, lost 60 pounds, and was thereafter granted an ankle repair which the surgeon had declined to do unless she turned herself, and her lifestyle, around.

While it may be obvious that a pursued way of eating is harmful, the answer needn't be to give up animal products. It MAY BE, but it isn't necessarily the case that all of us can stand to gain by declining to eat the omnivorous way humans were intended to eat.