AFib is a medical term for what we know as heart skipping a beat. On a physiological level, it occurs when your heart misfires electrical impulses. Thus, if AFib is dependent on the misfiring of electrical impulses, anything that can trigger this misfire can lead to an AFib episode. Hence, it’s important to discuss these AFib triggers so we can avoid them in the future.
Excessive Body Stress And Strain:
When the body is under the weather or not working to its maximum capacity, it is under physical stress. Now, under stress, there is a higher risk of the heart’s atria misfiring electrical impulses.
Illness, sleep deprivation, or recent surgeries can place your body under stress. Hence, these events can trigger AFib episodes. Therefore, we recommend you get enough sleep each night and enjoy a balanced diet. Other than that, a burst of strenuous exercise is also considered as stress for our body. Thus, posing a risk for increased AFib episodes. Nonetheless, it occurs in quite extreme scenarios. Hence, don’t use it as an excuse to skip on your daily exercises because exercise tends to do more good than harm.
Emotional Triggers:
We know that our emotions have a significant impact on our health and body. For example, stress can lead to headaches and sleep deprivation. Similarly, emotions have a notable impact on our hearts. Take extreme joy as an example; moments of sheer delight and happiness can increase our heartbeat to the extent that you can feel your heart skipping a beat. Thus, a range of extreme emotions such as anger, sadness, or excitement can increase an AFib episode.
Dietary Triggers:
Diet has a significant role to play in cardiac health. Essentially, you are what you eat. However, here we will focus our discussion on alcohol consumption, water consumption, and caffeine.
Dehydration: Water in our body derives vital functions. Thus, significant changes in the bodily fluid can bring out some adverse health effects, and AFib can be one of them. Now dehydration can be caused by our diet, daily activities, or weather. Alcohol consumption, caffeine, and excessive salt intake are a few things that can dry you out. Exercise leads to sweating which can also decrease bodily fluids. At last, during a hot day, you are likely to sweat more, increasing dehydration risk. Either way, you need to keep up with the fluid loss through your water intake.
Alcohol: Alcohol can lead to dehydration. However, other than that, alcohol can also affect “vagal tone”. Research has found a possible link between impaired vagal nerve activity and AFib.
Caffeine: Shrouds of controversy surround the connection between caffeine and AFib. Caffeine can amp up the activity of the cardiovascular system. Hence, for some people, this can lead to an AFib episode.
Conclusion:
We have covered major triggers for AFib episodes. Thus, you need to look out for them if you have AFib. The help of a medical professional can make the process a lot easier. Thus, enlist the help of professionals at the Atrial Fibrillation Centers Of America. You can call us at 832-478-5067 for more inquiries.