# How many people here have a-fib?



## walrus (Jan 29, 2004)

I was diagnosed with constant a-fib three years and over 12K miles ago. It's common in endurance athletes. I read the VeloPress book " The haywire heart" didn't come away with any ideas about what to do about it. My cardiologist says I have the heart of a healthy 30 tear old, I'm 68. 
Anyone else here have a-fib and what are you doing about?


----------



## Peter P. (Dec 30, 2006)

If your cardiologist doesn't recommend treatment, then you really don't have a problem.
You could get a second opinion if you were expecting a different result.

Is it affecting your cycling, or is it just a minor annoyance?

I have a 2nd degree Wenckebach heart block. Different than afib, and only reared it's head when exercising, but a horror show nonetheless. Had a pacemaker implanted a year ago. Read the Haywire Heart book, too.


----------



## walrus (Jan 29, 2004)

I give myself about 30-45 minutes to warm up. I don't ride quite as hard as I used to, on steep hills I just sit and spin now, I don't stand and pedal as often. I try to ride easy to cool down for the last 15-20 minutes of a 4 hour ride. I ride every other day now and rest on my days off, take a long walk, lift some weights. I still rode over 6,000 miles last year.
I usually ride 50-60 miles every other day, unless it's snowing..


----------



## bing181 (Oct 17, 2005)

Late to this, but in case it helps:

I have "exercise-induced tachycardia" (yes, that's a thing). So, it only occurs when I'm riding - and riding outdoors, I've never been able to duplicate it on a trainer.

I get one or two sudden jumps on most rides - but they tend to last a few seconds and auto-correct. Often, I'm only aware of them if I look at my HR graph afterwards. On the other hand, a handful of times a year it'll jump up to over 230 bpm and *not* want to come down. Usually then I stop, do the Valsalva manoeuvre, sometimes a couple of times, and it usually goes back into regular sinus. I've also found eating or drinking something is often enough to stabilise it.

From time to time, it hasn't come down at all, and I've returned home where I usually find that a cold (very!) shower is enough to knock it back down. The one time where it wouldn't stabilise, and continued overnight, I got up the next morning and spent 10 minutes on my home trainer - which sorted it out.

I have Flecainide to use as pill-in-the-pocket, but the one or two times I've taken it I'm not convinced it actually did anything.

Current state of play is that while my SVT doesn't really impact on my quality of life, we're not going to do anything. If it worsens, maybe ablation, but we're not there yet.


----------

