Food Triggered Irregular Heart Rhythm?

[FedRetired50]

...drinking a cup of orange juice...

Interesting! Worth a trial for me. I rarely have it in the house even though I like it, because of acid reflux. But I happen to have purchased a bottle yesterday for an upcoming recipe and only need one cup for that.

 

[mountainsoft]

Interesting! Worth a trial for me. I rarely have it in the house even though I like it, because of acid reflux. But I happen to have purchased a bottle yesterday for an upcoming recipe and only need one cup for that.

As is often the case, as soon as I made that post I had a full day of annoying PAC's. Overall though, I still think the OJ is helping. Even if it's not, a cup of OJ is healthier than a can of soda in the morning. Thankfully I do not have acid reflux so that's not an issue. My wife suffers with that, so I understand completely.

Just make sure your OJ is 100% juice, no added sugar, not from concentrate.

I doubt I'm ever going to find a complete cure for the PAC's, but I welcome anything that provides any relief, however small or temporary.

 

[GrayHare]

OJ has vitamin C, and vitamin C can reduce histamine. Reaction to foods can be an immune response involving histamine, which can influence the heart. Have you tried any of the OTC antihistamines?

 

[The Cosmic Avenger]

Vitamin C is also an antioxidant, as is CoQ10.

 

[marko]

Timely. I had a bad case of the flu this week. Doc had me take (among other things) 1000mg of vitamin C four time a day. Way early, but I can say that my PVCs have almost completely gone away over the past four days. We'll see.....

 

[mountainsoft]

Unfortunately, the orange juice experiment turned out to be another fail...

The first week it really seemed like it was helping, but by the second week I started getting more and more PAC's and the tired/weak symptoms got worse. I stopped drinking the OJ, and everything went back to baseline within a day or two.

After a little research, I discovered 8oz of OJ has as much potassium as the bananas that were giving me trouble initially. Figures. I've had issues with other high potassium foods like cashews and watermelon, so I guess I can add OJ to that list.

I typically have a bowl of cereal each day with 1% milk. Surprise, it also has 366mg (or more) of potassium. So I tried alternative breakfasts this week in an attempt to minimize my potassium intake. Turns out that's difficult to do as just about everything has potassium. Unfortunately, I did not see any difference in my PAC's on my low-ish potassium diet. Granted, I wasn't all that strict with my food choices, but enough to see it wasn't making a difference.

So, too much potassium in foods seems to affect me, but anything under a certain level doesn't seem to change my results. My last couple of blood tests have showed my Potassium have been right in the middle around 4 mmol/L.

The worse part about the PAC's is their random nature. They flare up one week, disappear the next, with no apparent cause. This makes it very difficult to find any common cause and effect with anything. Most times I'm just chasing another crackpot theory with no meaningful results. So frustrating.

Doc's say I'm fine, but telling myself "just ignore them" is so difficult to do...

 

[RAE]

I doubt I'm ever going to find a complete cure for the PAC's, but I welcome anything that provides any relief, however small or temporary.

Not sure if this will help, but here is my experience with PVC's. I started having them several years.........got BAD, couldn't sleep at night, as they kept waking me up. Spent a lot of time (and went to several doctors) trying to figure out the cause. None of them really helped. I finally started going through my blood test results myself, and noticed that my serum ferritin was very high........about 450, as I recall. Ideal ferritin is about 80 or so (from all the research I did). I mentioned that to one of the docs, and she said, yeah, your ferritin is a little high, but that can't be the cause. Well......the way to reduce serum ferritin is to donate blood. So I started doing regular blood donations. After the first one, I noticed the PVC's were somewhat less frequent. After about the third donation, they were gone. And I had other symptoms that faded away also. Now I donate blood 3X yearly, and have my serum ferritin checked once each year, to keep it somewhere around 60-100. I feel great, no PVC's. I have no idea if too much free iron is your issue or not, but it can't hurt to check your serum ferritin. It is an inexpensive blood test.

 

[mountainsoft]

Not sure if this will help, but here is my experience with PVC's. I started having them several years.........got BAD, couldn't sleep at night, as they kept waking me up. Spent a lot of time (and went to several doctors) trying to figure out the cause. None of them really helped. I finally started going through my blood test results myself, and noticed that my serum ferritin was very high........about 450, as I recall. Ideal ferritin is about 80 or so (from all the research I did). I mentioned that to one of the docs, and she said, yeah, your ferritin is a little high, but that can't be the cause. Well......the way to reduce serum ferritin is to donate blood. So I started doing regular blood donations. After the first one, I noticed the PVC's were somewhat less frequent. After about the third donation, they were gone. And I had other symptoms that faded away also. Now I donate blood 3X yearly, and have my serum ferritin checked once each year, to keep it somewhere around 60-100. I feel great, no PVC's. I have no idea if too much free iron is your issue or not, but it can't hurt to check your serum ferritin. It is an inexpensive blood test.

Interesting. My Ferritin level was 175 ng/mL when I had it tested back in March. It's probably not high enough to worry about, but I didn't realize Ferritin could cause irregular heartbeat. Good to know. I'll have to look back at old records and see if I've ever had it tested before the PAC's started.

 

[FedRetired50]

I've noticed a definite difference between different brands of CoQ10.

Nature Made (Walmart) 200 mg - reduces all PACs for about 3/4 of the day, a 2nd dose will work for the rest of the day
Clear Formulas (CVS?) 200 mg - reduces the frequency/severity of PACS but they are still definitely there (recently changed to this brand when I ran out of the Nature Made and was amazed how much more I was feeling them again)
Kirkland (Costco) 300 mg - reduces all PACs all day (after a week on Clear Formulas I switched to this since I had it waiting in my cabinet)

 

[yofi]

This happened to me when I chewed gum with phenylalanine (in most sugar-free gums). I now check only xylitol gum.

 

[FedRetired50]

Update since my last post in November. I decided to do a "damp" January and cut out most of my alcohol intake. I was drinking 2-3 drinks per night, and I only had 3 drinks in all of January. Feb/March I've kept myself to 1 drink per day, weekends only (with a few exceptions). My symptoms have almost completely disappeared. Just one drink and I often feel them come back, although mildly since I've continued taking CoQ10.

 

[mountainsoft]

Update since my last post in November. I decided to do a "damp" January and cut out most of my alcohol intake. I was drinking 2-3 drinks per night, and I only had 3 drinks in all of January. Feb/March I've kept myself to 1 drink per day, weekends only (with a few exceptions). My symptoms have almost completely disappeared. Just one drink and I often feel them come back, although mildly since I've continued taking CoQ10.

Alcohol is a common trigger, but I haven't noticed any significant difference with my PAC's. I skipped a couple months last year and there was no real change in the number or severity of my PAC's. Occasionally I will see a slight increase in symptoms if I drink a liquor like bourbon or rum, but I drink those so rarely (maybe once every 3-4 months) it's not really a factor. Wine or beer don't seem to change anything, but I generally only drink 2-3 glasses a night on weekends. Very rarely during the week.

I keep looking for triggers, but it really just seems like the PAC's occur at random for no reason.

 

[marko]

An interesting turn of events here.

Despite being on 100mg of Metropolol and trying several of the things on this thread, my PVCs continued, almost constantly. A bit annoying but tolerable. "Live with it "

Two weeks ago, tired of my pot belly, I began a very low carb diet. Nothing crazy or unsustainable, just no (very, very little) bread, pasta, sweets etc. Already lost 7 pounds despite a few conscious cheats.

BUT, keeping meticulous BP records, (monitor also shows PVCs) I see that I haven't had a PVC in a week or so. Very unusual! Too early to tell for sure but an interesting trend.

YMMV as it seems that we all respond to different things, but right now I'm going to keep going. I'll report back in a few weeks and see where I am.

IMO I haven't lost enough weight to make the difference as I've had PVCs since childhood, so it likely would be the carbs themselves.

 

[qwerty3656]

An interesting turn of events here.

BUT, keeping meticulous BP records, (monitor also shows PVCs) I see that I haven't had a PVC in a week or so. Very unusual! Too early to tell for sure but an interesting trend.

What type of monitor do you where? Some kind of watch? I have the Google watch 2 and it doesn't track BP or PVCs

 

[marko]

What type of monitor do you where? Some kind of watch? I have the Google watch 2 and it doesn't track BP or PVCs

Just a regular $65 cuff BP monitor. It tells me my BP and if there was a PVC. I then put it in an excel sheet.

 

[qwerty3656]

Just a regular $65 cuff BP monitor. It tells me my BP and if there was a PVC. I then put it in an excel sheet.

OK - so it's not a continuous monitor then. You have to sit down and take your BP, right?

 

[Buckeye]

I have a Microlife BP monitor that is bluetooth capable to send my measurements to the Microlife and it flags if it detects an irregular heartbeat during the measurement. I bought it at Costco for about $45 on sale.

There is currently a Homedics BP monitor on Costco dot com for $49.99 with bluetooth and irregular heartbeat detection, 2 user.

 

[marko]

OK - so it's not a continuous monitor then. You have to sit down and take your BP, right?

Right.

I was hospitalized with myocarditis 2 years ago. As a result I take my BP / Pulse every morning and evening. I also have been causally/manually taking my pulse every few hours for the past 20 years.

 

[mountainsoft]

Despite being on 100mg of Metropolol and trying several of the things on this thread, my PVCs continued, almost constantly. A bit annoying but tolerable. "Live with it "

Two weeks ago, tired of my pot belly, I began a very low carb diet. Nothing crazy or unsustainable, just no (very, very little) bread, pasta, sweets etc. Already lost 7 pounds despite a few conscious cheats.

BUT, keeping meticulous BP records, (monitor also shows PVCs) I see that I haven't had a PVC in a week or so. Very unusual! Too early to tell for sure but an interesting trend.

Metoprolol had no effect on my PAC's, but it did lower my BP too much (around 90/60), dropped my heart rate to the upper 40's, and made it impossible to increase my heart rate enough to any kind of activity without being exhausted. So glad to be off that stuff. Tried Atenelol and that was even worse.

I switched from drinking Coke all day long to Zevia zero calorie sodas and lost about 25 pounds just from that one change. But that had no effect on my PAC's either.

I'm on 300mg Diltiazem now which keeps my BP in the 125/75 range, but still have PAC's most days. Trigeminy seems to be my most common pattern (two normal beats followed by a premature beat, continually repeating), though sometimes I'll get several normal beats between early beats. Doctors don't seem concerned and it seems to be my "new normal".

I have an Emay portable EKG monitor to take 30 second readings of my heart rhythm. It clearly shows my PAC's. I was taking readings multiple times a day, but knowing my rhythm was off just stressed me out more, so I rarely take readings anymore. Not much point in taking the readings if there's nothing I can do about it.

Minimizing some of my trigger foods and taking the Diltiazem seems to minimize the worrying symptoms, so now I just try to ignore the PAC's and live with them. Although, in the back of my mind I always have this little fear my heart is a ticking time bomb just waiting to kill me some day...

 

[marko]

Re: Post #113.
An update: So it's just been a month that I started a low carb diet. Nothing difficult or unrealistic, just dropped potatoes, pasta and "pane" (breads). Kind of bottomed out at a 10 pound loss but hoping for more to go.

As noted, I'm highly conscious of my PVCs for a number of reasons and check my pulse several times a day. I can also tell when they are more severe without having to check.

Here's what I've seen: I wish I could say that all of my PVCs went to zero, but....they almost have. After having them almost every few days for 60 years, I've had 3 or 4 in the past month. The severity has also gone from an 8 to a 2. I feel terrific and have been sleeping much better as well. I'm going to keep going!

FYI and YMMV