Atrial Fibrillation (AFib) Support Group

Atrial fibrillation (AF or afib) is an abnormal heart rhythm (cardiac arrhythmia) which involves the two small, upper heart chambers (the atria). Heart beats in a normal heart begin after electricity generated in the atria by the sinoatrial node spread through the heart and cause contraction of the heart muscle and pumping of blood.

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IslandLuvr 08/06/2013

There are several really interesting afib discussions on this website for endurance athletes.

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/gforum.cgi?post=3471190;

I was just researching afib while swimming because I'm a lap swimmer. I get "skips" but not sure if they're PACs and/or PVCs or afib.

Since getting the monitor that Petey recommended, I'm surprised that nearly every time I use it, it tells me my heart is out of rhythm. One of my friends asked me what it was like, as I get PVCs CONSTANTLY. I said, "Imagine having the hiccups and they last for hours and keep coming back." That's what they feel like to me.. hiccups in my heart. It drives me CRAZY!

I'm swimming despite them, and hope I'm not doing more harm.

snowshoedude 08/06/2013

Thanks for passing this along. As far as doing harm, I was afraid I had something structurally wrong with my heart (a little bit if hypochondria) even though I was logging 20 mile runs on my heart at 53. So I jumped/ran for joy when my EP sent me in for an Echo Stress Test. It was fun for me - they wired me up, put me on ther treadmill, and made me run as they continually increased the grade and speed of the treadmill until I could not go futher - . An exercise physiologist was there to tell me how I was doing in a sadistic way which was awesome. When I hit the wall and layed down on my side so that the technician could do the echocardiogram art max rate, I could feel what I thought were missed beats here and there. But passed the thing with flying colors. So now I don't lose energy worrying about missed beats during my runs. I think the average runner/biker/swimmer naturally slows down their pace when they feel their heart do weird things so I felt it comforting have the Echo Stress test done. Keeping Swimming...And I will be investing in a heart monitor too so need to start researching to see what's out there now!

deleted_user 10/27/2013

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/11/marathon-training_n_4086102.html

Might be worth taking a break mate it happened to me a few years back I was pushing myself too far to quickly

I had bouts of unexplained afib and after countless tests it came back I had a mildly enlarged right ventricle ... This was what was causing my afib etc

This shrank back to normal but its worth looking into ....

I'm still running and in completely better fitness but it's not worth over training

deleted_user 10/29/2013

Mark,

Did your afib go away or do you still have episodes?

hegel 11/03/2013

Mark: very interesting comment. My first afib episode happened after three hard days of nordic skiing at altitude. I had been pressing my heart rate on my cardio workouts pretty high for a number of years--I'd always be sopping with sweat. During my after afib check ups one doctor mentioned that I had a slightly enlarged right ventricle. Who knows? The doctor, who was not a cardiologist but just one of the people that you see passing through, said nothing about this. In the meantime, I've definitely been dialing back my cardio workouts. I'm still doing them, but keeping my heart rate lower. My hope is that I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm hoping that the enlarged ventricle was 'causal' and that backing off and having the ventricle reduce in size will help. Again, who know?

In any case, doctors say that even a mild cardio workout is good, even sufficient for good health. My workouts now are probably a step or two above mild, but not sweat sopping hard as before. Though I still work up a sweat!

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