Our body’s synergy keeps everything in order, keeps our body in top shape, and helps us achieve the most out of our amazing organic machine. The heart is an example from our body that works in complete synchronization for peak and optimum performance. After all, our heart is entrusted with one of the most critical jobs for the body. Your heart has to establish a continuous blood-run even to the body’s extremities. Our heart has some tricks up its sleeves to achieve such a feat, and reigning high among them is the utter synchronization of atrial and ventricular valves. However, a disorder known as atrial fibrillation threatens the rhythmic heartbeats.
What Is Atrial Fibrillation?
A quivery and fluttery heartbeat is known as atrial fibrillation, also known as arrhythmia. The natural rhythm of your heart, the “lub-dub,” gets disturbed due to this disorder, and brings the idiom “skip a beat” to life. With abnormal heartbeats, your heart would not perform at its peak capacity that eventually leads to heart failure.
What happens during AFib? The atrial and ventricular contractions get out of sync. During a normal routine, the atrium contracts first and pumps the blood into the ventricular capacity. When the ventricles contract, they pump and circulate blood through the body. However, due to arrhythmia, atria do their own thing and contract out of sync. The communication between valves of the heart occurs through the electrical signals, and a mess-up in these signals causes fluttering.
Types of Afib:
AFib is often classified according to their duration. There are four main categories of AFib.
Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation: That’s a fancy name for a disorder. However, you don’t need to be afraid of it. This is because it is a short-lasting episode of AFib that doesn’t last for more than a week. It will come and go, and either you won’t feel a thing, or you will feel it strongly. Therefore, there is no specified formula for this type of AFib. The common symptoms you can experience include heart palpitations, fatigue, and chest pain. Furthermore, as it is not an ordinary occurrence, extreme conditions, such as heavy drinking or extreme stress, can cause such disarray in the atrial muscles.
Persistent atrial fibrillation: If AFib lasts for more than a week, it’s classified as a persistent condition. However, it often goes away on its own without any formal treatment.
Long-term persistent atrial fibrillation: This one lasts for more than a year and requires treatment to normalize the muscles.
Permanent (Chronic) Atrial Fibrillation: Even after trying out several treatments and bringing your heartbeat back to its normal rhythm, the condition persists. Then, fluttering beats are the new norm for the heart, and in such scenarios, atrial fibrillation is considered a permanent occurrence.
Conclusion:
When our body organs and tissue work in harmony, only then we can achieve optimum performance. The same goes for the heart, and atrial fibrillation is a disorder that causes out of sync contraction of heart muscles. The types of AFib are sorted according to their duration. The condition requires medical attention from professionals like Atrial Fibrillation Center Of America when it lasts for a long time. You can learn more about AFib by calling us at: 832-478-5067.